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Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

nascompares.com

11–20 of 178 posts

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#11
I've always had a relatively bad experience with NAS hardware. Not necessarily due to anything the hardware manufacturer could have done. I have lost entire enclosures to lightning strikes on more than one occasion. Everyone thinks their IT skills are hot shit until they wake up to a closet full of burned hardware in the morning. It is quite a humbling experience if you've never been through it before. There isn't any kind of semiconductor process tech, file system design or RAID configuration that can save you from this. An off-site backup is the only thing that would count, which brings me to my next point.

These days I just store my files in S3. Whether or not this actually costs me more money becomes a very irrelevant shade of grey once I factor in the value of my time and sanity. I prefer having the capability to store and retrieve large files, not spending time maintaining this capability. This is also my "off-site" backup. I am paying for my operational NAS and its backup effectively at the same time. No one doing DIY is remotely close to 99.999999999% durability, even with all the kings horses and men put together.

I often see this urgency with total control pushing tech people into the very systems of oppression they seek to avoid. Putting your bits in some blob storage provider like AWS is not "losing the game" unless you frame it that way in your head. You can frame it as "getting one over on the bad guys" if you are a little bit clever with how you approach the problem. You can compel Amazon host any kind of bits with a sprinkle of AES256 on the client. I've been a customer with them for over 15 years and not once have they rug pulled me. I've never seen a NAS-style solution survive that long without intervention.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#12
post #5

Soldered RAM being bad is an opinion, not a fact. I’ve seen way too many RAM slots go bad. Smart people always get the highest configuration in computers, unless they know they’ll never need some of the resources and can tolerate a lower option.

> Smart people always get the highest configuration in computers

Smart rich people, maybe. Have you got the money for extra RAM right now?

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#13
post #5

Soldered RAM being bad is an opinion, not a fact. I’ve seen way too many RAM slots go bad. Smart people always get the highest configuration in computers, unless they know they’ll never need some of the resources and can tolerate a lower option.

Not everyone lives in SanFra, my man, and can afford to throw a salary on a lab.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#14
post #11

I've always had a relatively bad experience with NAS hardware. Not necessarily due to anything the hardware manufacturer could have done. I have lost entire enclosures to lightning strikes on more than one occasion. Everyone thinks their IT skills are hot shit until they wake up to a closet full of burned hardware in the morning. It is quite a humbling experience if you've never been through it before. There isn't an…

I have a NAS at home with ZFS snapshots and nightly offsite backups. What's so hard about that, or how is it less durable than your S3 solution?

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#15
post #5

Soldered RAM being bad is an opinion, not a fact. I’ve seen way too many RAM slots go bad. Smart people always get the highest configuration in computers, unless they know they’ll never need some of the resources and can tolerate a lower option.

You've seen RAM slots go bad? DIMMs can also fail!

I'd much rather replace a bad stick than a whole motherboard/device.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#16
post #14
post #11

I've always had a relatively bad experience with NAS hardware. Not necessarily due to anything the hardware manufacturer could have done. I have lost entire enclosures to lightning strikes on more than one occasion. Everyone thinks their IT skills are hot shit until they wake up to a closet full of burned hardware in the morning. It is quite a humbling experience if you've never been through it before. There isn't an…

I have a NAS at home with ZFS snapshots and nightly offsite backups. What's so hard about that, or how is it less durable than your S3 solution?

How much do you pay for offsite backups? How durable are they?

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#17

I built my own NAS, just Ubuntu+ZFS using an old PC I had and it works great. Don't know why people are so crazy about buying prebuilt NASes.

i did that, and really wish i bought something , mostly because i have like 4 hhds just lying in the bottom of the case

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#18
Expensive drives have become such a pain. Maybe five years from now, if supply meets demand, I just wish I can afford a 1PB all-flash NAS. I really don't want to hear noise and I wish data centres would release their used supply on market. I will put backup on HDDs.

Soldered RAM and novel format hardware is a pain point. Macbook storage upgrade needs special custom hardware. Synology still doesn't allow third party HDDs in their extension units. NAS devices are truly a fantastic category on its own. My data remains local, while also allowing me to use it as a server for my workloads.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#19
post #11

I've always had a relatively bad experience with NAS hardware. Not necessarily due to anything the hardware manufacturer could have done. I have lost entire enclosures to lightning strikes on more than one occasion. Everyone thinks their IT skills are hot shit until they wake up to a closet full of burned hardware in the morning. It is quite a humbling experience if you've never been through it before. There isn't an…

> Everyone thinks their IT skills are hot shit until they wake up to a closet full of burned hardware in the morning. It is quite a humbling experience if you've never been through it before.

> I've been a customer with them for over 15 years and not once have they rug pulled me.

I actually tend to agree with the thrust of your argument, but how is your view of getting your account banned different than others' view of managing a NAS?

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#20
I don't think it is that bad. Especially Ubnt just released their UNAS Pro. ( Although only comes with BTRFS on consumer and ZFS only on the Enterprise. )

I still think Apple should have bring their AirPort Express and Time Capsule back. Instead they wanted everyone to be on their iCloud subscription.

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