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Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

nascompares.com

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Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#51

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.

Maybe power efficiency?

And simplicity. And cost vs suitability for purpose. And form factor. And vendor support for the unit.

Jank ass recycled pcs and expensive, overbuilt diy rigs simply don’t even belong in the same conversation.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#52
Here's my single story with NAS in 10+ years of software development.

A client had a NAS for their SaaS startup. Disks were having issues. The NAS was a prosumer product that was connected via USB. Had some SATA to SATA cable shipped by Amazon to the garage/colocation facility which basically meant removing the NAS and connecting the disks straight to the motherboard.

Issue solved.

It seems like one of those tarpit product categories that you are just better off by skipping completely, like ORMs, MCPs or reverse proxy HTTP servers.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#54

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.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#55
post #6

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!

I setup one on an old pc 4 years ago freebsd zfs, literally an hour of maintenance over the course of 4 years now with ai anyone can do it.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#56
post #41
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.

Every day, healthchecks.io, yes.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#57
I built my "NAS", which is just a normal computer with no GPU but 3 hard-drives in RAID 5, for $400 + storage cost. It is much more powerful that any NAS, even thousands of dollars ones, I'm not too sure at what cost (power consumption maybe?).

I don't understand why people would go with an actual pre-built NAS from a manufacturer over my approach. It's always a complete rip-off.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#58
post #16
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 much do you pay for offsite backups? How durable are they?

I think around $50/yr for around a TB? It's rsync.net, so I think very durable.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#59
post #44

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…

As some kind of cosmic karma for making my smug comment, one of my metadata mirror vdevs died this morning while my wife was doing a big transfer.

Re: Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified

#60
post #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 H…

> I wish data centres would release their used supply on market. They do: https://serverpartdeals.com/ Haven’t used them myself, but afair Wendel (Level1Techs) mentioned them at some point.

Server Part Deals is really good since they test the drives themselves. But even the used drives are on the verge of being unaffordable now. They increased the price of their 28TB re-certified drive last month by $120.
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