On the first point specifically, everyone is going to need to wrap their heads around memory being more tightly integrated with compute in future generations. The modular form factor restricts DRAM speed, bus width, hurts reliability and cost. Memory modules provide flexibility, but the cost is real. I suspect in the future we will get better at re-balling memory ICs.
Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified
161–170 of 178 posts
Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified
#162I can easily accept that arguments like "an Iphone is just a computer" are often overly reductionist. But people justifying much of this segmentation? Come ON, any NAS is just a server. What are people DOING here?
Unfortunately an iPhone is less than a computer due to all the restrictions from Apple.
Yup. My point exactly. That's an unfortunately useful distinction that is fact these days.
I don't think NAS v. Server or whatever this whole thread is about is -- or more importantly, should be.
(In other words, the concrete position should be e.g. -- soldering RAM is just BAD actually. It's dumb and terrible and they just shouldn't do it ever.)
Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified
#163I 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 do the same with Debian. An old 3079 nvidia card for the server, docker for most service, and the onboard amd onboard discrete gpu passed through to a blueiris vm. Power is a bit higher but I’m fine with the flexibility and lack of vendor lock in and upgrade paths. If it dies any zfs machine could mount those drives.
Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified
#164Are there any good out of the box NAS options?
I have no complaints about my QNAP TS-462.
Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified
#165I didn't see them mention anything about adding features that aren't strictly about storing files... things like containers and virtual machines...
That's really just a side effect of processors becoming much more powerful, no point letting it go to waste just because historically a NAS had enough on its plate facilitating file access.
Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
He didn't make the point clear, but the recent OSes are just trying to be Synology DSM copycats.
funny that you think Synology is a leader here where only thing they lead is bad customer practices and CVEs
DSM is very nice, but this is a web interface for Linux they built a long time ago and have coasted for the last decade.
Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified
#167Synology is truly dead to me now. I used their stuck mostly happily since my first DS412+ way back when. But this thing with locking down features to require their own branded drives is madness. No way, no how. Last year they tried restricting the OS from creating new volumes unless all drives in it were Synology branded. People tore them a new asshole in the press and they backed away from that. Now their newest DSM…
majority of Synology storage-compatibility-related _problems_ can be solved with this: https://github.com/007revad/Synology_HDD_db - seems to 'just work'
unsure about this 'smart storage' as my Syno is too old anyway :)
Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified
#168I 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!
For me, "fiddling" is now the job of Claude Code. Nobody who can manage to install Claude needs to be intimidated by anything else in Linux.
Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified
#169Are there any good out of the box NAS options?
Given the article's bullet points, I would think the UGreen options bypass the first six... the following bullet points are just general market pricing issues and other issues outside of the NAS manufacturer's control. EDIT: OK I see he doesn't like the onboard eMMC - fair enough. I paid $280 for a DXP 2800, and was fortunate enough to get drives before the recent price increases. But I've only got 8GB and missed my…
I'm also team DXP2800. I was very surprised to see a super rural Walmart have DXP2800s and NAS-grade drives in stock and found out they did some weird partnership to sell UGreen hardware in some stores.
(Oddly, my store still has exactly one in stock for ~$240 on clearance which is really funny seeing the very current price hike at $439 "MSRP" now. That is painful. Of course, the $279 drive I bought in store is now $399, so that also sucks.)
I killed the onboard eMMC (it's just a BIOS setting - turn the eMMC off at the same time you disable the OS watchdog), slapped an NVMe inside the slot, and put my 10TB rust spinner in the bay and threw TrueNAS on the flash and it's happy as all can be.
ANNOYINGLY they now seem to stock an ARM-based UGreen for around $200 as the new 'Walmart' unit and that's kinda a bit more limited in what you can do.
Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified
#170This 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", so not being able to upgrade the RAM on one isn't all that surprising.
Home NAS machines have often been used as full servers and in the past allowed those upgrades. And it makes sense in a home to have one device that's flexible enough to fill multiple roles, be small, and quiet.