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Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

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Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#61

Post by iLoveOncall »

Galanwe wrote: post #44
zeafoamrun wrote: post #4

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.

Its the maintenance and details that kill your NAS. You will probably rely on it for 10 years at least, so building your NAS means committing to maintaining it in the long term, you have to be sure this is something you will uphold. Also while setting up your NAS initially is definitely doable, there are a trillion little things to get right and make sure won't bite you later on (scrubble, etc). All these things comp…

> All these things compounds if the NAS is not just for you, but your wife, kids, family, etc. Now it becomes your responsibility that all these precious data and photos entrusted to you are 100% safe for the decades to come.

A NAS is not a backup? It's hot storage.

I have a NAS but I backup my photos on AWS in S3 Deep Glacier. It costs me less than $1 a month for 500GB of pictures. That's a backup.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#62

Post by vladvasiliu »

Galanwe wrote: post #44
zeafoamrun wrote: post #4

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.

Its the maintenance and details that kill your NAS. You will probably rely on it for 10 years at least, so building your NAS means committing to maintaining it in the long term, you have to be sure this is something you will uphold. Also while setting up your NAS initially is definitely doable, there are a trillion little things to get right and make sure won't bite you later on (scrubble, etc). All these things comp…

But are these off-the-shelf solutions actually supported for ten years? And since they're usually bought for "easy remote connectivity" and whatnot, that's rather important. Bonus points for updates typically being installed automatically, so people won't even think to check whether it's still updated or not.

I have a NAS made from a 15-year-old computer, with standard parts. It can saturate a gigabit link over WireGuard, so it's good enough for my needs. I installed the latest Linux kernel on it the other day. And it doesn't have random unknown stuff calling home. Since it runs ZFS and scrubs regularly, I'm quite confident the data on it is still in good shape.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#63

Post by crabbone »

userbinator wrote: post #32

This architectural shift eliminates the user’s ability to expand memory capacity as self-hosting demands grow, effectively putting a permanent ceiling on running memory-heavy Docker containers, ZFS pools, or virtual machines. That's not a NAS anymore, that's a full server. I think of a NAS as "low-power computer with lots of storage attached", so not being able to upgrade the RAM on one isn't all that surprising.

You missed the point the author really complains about: soldered in memory chips create a single point of failure.

What you quoted needs to be seen in the context of what author calls "increasing media demands". I.e. the author believes that while the way the system is configured might be OK today, it won't be OK in the future.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#65

Post by dijit »

iamshs wrote: post #54
userbinator wrote: post #32

This architectural shift eliminates the user’s ability to expand memory capacity as self-hosting demands grow, effectively putting a permanent ceiling on running memory-heavy Docker containers, ZFS pools, or virtual machines. That's not a NAS anymore, that's a full server. I think of a NAS as "low-power computer with lots of storage attached", so not being able to upgrade the RAM on one isn't all that surprising.

If I have CPU power at my disposal, why should I waste it? I love the fact that my NAS can serve my other needs too.

Sure, but then shouldn’t they have a lower power CPU?

I’d be worried about starving my storage need for CPU (ZFS can use a good amount of CPU power) inadvertently.

Running some small services is nice, to avoid having more devices, but I think people want “server with storage” and not actually a NAS, which on the face of it is growing out from nothing more than an SMB share.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#66

Post by izacus »

dijit wrote: post #65
iamshs wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I have CPU power at my disposal, why should I waste it? I love the fact that my NAS can serve my other needs too.

Sure, but then shouldn’t they have a lower power CPU? I’d be worried about starving my storage need for CPU (ZFS can use a good amount of CPU power) inadvertently. Running some small services is nice, to avoid having more devices, but I think people want “server with storage” and not actually a NAS, which on the face of it is growing out from nothing more than an SMB share.

Lower power CPUs are very powerful nowadays. Like the one in your phone - it sips power and can do what a full server could do a decade ago.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#67

Post by nubinetwork »

esikich wrote: post #41
stavros wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 often are you testing those backups? What kind of monitoring do you have? Do you pay attention to it? Skip any of those and it's just a prayer.

They're zfs snapshots, assuming you're actually taking them, a send/recv shouldn't cause any problems... (ignoring the hole_birth and encryption bugs from the 0.6.x days - to my knowledge, they should both be resolved by now)

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#68

Post by throwawayffffas »

stavros wrote: post #14
bob1029 wrote: 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?

Nightly? what happens in between and how many different sites? What happens if your Internet goes down one night? How many parity drives do you have? Will the array survive replacing a drive or will another one die during the sync will you lose data if that happens?

S3 takes replication seriously to a professional level, when you upload a file to S3 the chance of s3 losing it is capped by the chance of a civilization killing asteroid hitting the earth.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#69

Post by dijit »

izacus wrote: post #66
dijit wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but then shouldn’t they have a lower power CPU? I’d be worried about starving my storage need for CPU (ZFS can use a good amount of CPU power) inadvertently. Running some small services is nice, to avoid having more devices, but I think people want “server with storage” and not actually a NAS, which on the face of it is growing out from nothing more than an SMB share.

Lower power CPUs are very powerful nowadays. Like the one in your phone - it sips power and can do what a full server could do a decade ago.

storage has also increased (thus, its management overheads).

And, to be honest with you, I’d prefer phones that are battery powered get the 3nm process node and these kind of devices lagging on 7nm or whatever, since they have the capability to be powered from the wall, and you can have less consumptive cpus taking a larger spaces making a bit more heat/power per cycle: but since you need less you can get away with it.

Not everything can be 3nm or lower, the yields aren't good enough.

What I care more about is ECC.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#70

Post by tym0 »

fuzzy2 wrote: post #6
zeafoamrun wrote: post #4

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.

Why wouldn't they be? No fiddling, super compact form factor, (usually) far superior energy efficiency, maybe phone apps, did I mention no fiddling? Also, the form factor!

Yeah the compact form factor and energy efficiency were the strongest point for me.
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