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Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

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Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#141

Post by [deleted] »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #84
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.

> 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" I disagree. And we can at least discuss whether a NAS that doesn't have ECC is that much of a NAS or not. I'd take an old Xeon server with 64 GB of ECC memory, run its CPU in powersave mode, and slap TrueNAS (with ZFS) on it any day over buying a dedicated NAS. YMMV but actual professional server g…

[deleted]

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#143

Post by mindslight »

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.

I think of a modern consumer NAS as a backdoor server that a user buys to solve one problem they know they have, plus a whole bunch of additional problems they didn't know they have... A critical part of of the vanguard in the war against proprietary centralizing webapps.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#144

Post by Henchman21 »

inigyou wrote: post #99
close04 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For business it should be all storage. But for home use the best is all-in-one. A home user doesn’t benefit from specialization of equipment, just brings them more headaches managing more stuff. One device that has storage and can also run Plex, Immich, HA in a single package makes the lives much easier for those who have to take care of the IT in the house especially of they’re not “IT people”.

That isn't a NAS, then. It's a home server.

You’re splitting hairs for no purpose

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#145

Post by hackshack »

Many of us are sysadmins at home. Home Assistant, home NAS, home DVRs, etc. Consumer NASes are in tension against the DIY hacker / homelab people who often run these things. These NASes are just complicated enough to be consumer unfriendly, but not enough for "our" needs. The author has a good point about how NAS hardware is more integrated - less capable for power users - while the software has stagnated into a sort of semi embedded, minimal viable product.

Just yesterday I heard about a friend-of-a-friend type situation where the sysadmin husband was in hospice, and the wife was struggling to figure out how to operate the NAS to recover family photos, etc.

I think consumer NAS manufacturers could add a "foolproof backup connection method," such as a USB port in USB device mode, so the NAS could be easily connected to a laptop by someone with little computer knowledge, in read-only mode.

That said, my home NAS is "the littlest server": an aging ProLiant DL380 Gen8 MicroServer. It's behind a double conversion UPS. SAS card + drives, Proxmox running virtualized FreeNAS, etc. Typical overdone geek build. I have not seen a finer NAS platform for the precocious home admin. I wish there were newer versions which kept the enterprise style "lights out management," and added m.2 and such, but I think HP Enterprise as a company is not interested in the homelab use case.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#147

Post by mindslight »

mcfedr wrote: post #17
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.

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

Several hardware generations back, my old 4x160GB raid5 had two drives on the bottom of the case, held on by screws going through holes I drilled in the outer wall of the case.

These days I managed to snag a deal on a Supermicro 846. I'm still settling into it, the main thing that concerns me is being able to suck enough air through the drive bays without making a lot of noise. My previous incarnation used some iStar toolless drive bays. I've learned to appreciate hot-swap bays, mainly for only having to do the cabling once.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#148

Post by ButlerianJihad »

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.

I think we can all agree that "NAS" for consumers is a marketing term, like "atomic clock". Anyone who works in an office with a NAS may come to admire its functions, and want the same experience at home.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetApp

When I think of NAS, I think of Network Appliance. Even in the mid-90s they were already well-known as the makers of the most formidable turnkey NAS that an enterprise could have. They are so awesome and specialized that I never even worked near one. Their systems were called "filers" and they have proprietary filesystems with proprietary kernels and CLI, that present with an NFS interface, among other things. The Filers are blazingly fast and ultra-high-capacity.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#149

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

hackshack wrote: post #145

Many of us are sysadmins at home. Home Assistant, home NAS, home DVRs, etc. Consumer NASes are in tension against the DIY hacker / homelab people who often run these things. These NASes are just complicated enough to be consumer unfriendly, but not enough for "our" needs. The author has a good point about how NAS hardware is more integrated - less capable for power users - while the software has stagnated into a sort…

Consumer NASes should take advantage of physical presence. There should be better functionality for a user that is standing next to the thing.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#150

Post by 1970-01-01 »

The term got enshittified. Compare the definition over time via Wikipedia. Technically, NAS by the original definition can not host anything but a filesystem. It is simply free disk space, a SAN with a GUI. Anything you do to that disk space does not change what it is, until you start adding OS features, monitoring features, Wi-Fi, etc. Now it no longer is NAS - it is a server. We did this to ourselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-attached_storage#Descr...

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Network-attached_...

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