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.
Well that's just for home use. Say a small to medium enterprise needing a shared drive. Or even things like say video editing you might need a 10G connection. Furthermore for most it's just a hobby so there's no right or wrong, if you can live with the noise and power of old enterprise gear then kudos to you, or if you think a raspberry pi with a sata hat works then go ahead
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”.
This "no fiddling" could be the single entire counterpoint to the article and hacker culture in general. All the problems stem from "consumer wants no fiddling".
I think it's a little more nuanced. Most people cannot fiddle (with PCs). They would have to learn to, first. Does this mean they deserve to have shit shoved down their throats? No. However, they are very vulnerable, and companies want to capitalize on this fact.
Hackers (whatever kind) are just one portion of the total populace. Others deserve genuinely good products, too. And maybe sometimes even a hacker wants to take a break. ;-)
No fiddling is definitely not a primary point. If one has both valuable or large amounts of data fiddling is inevitable. Nothing I have seen in retail markets is at a level of chromecast or phone setup or TV setup.
And often not only the price is high but poor reliability.
Of course no fiddling is a primary point. That’s probably _the main point_. Sure you need _some_ configuration/setup, but it’s in a completely different ballpark to a custom built solution.
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 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.
I bought a plastic tower for disks which let's me have 10 disks with some space between them. I then bought some Artic fans and attached them with tape to the 'tower'. Then I used a 11 years old optiplex 990 as Debian zfs connected to 8 of the disks, and I have 2 spares which I'll be able to use when the others die.
Performance is great. I could do it because I was given those disks for free, with plenty of ours on each of them.
For me, it was laziness. While I have the skills to built one from parts, I just wanted a big drive in an aesthetically pleasing box. I didn't want a project. I wanted something small and somewhat rugged. So I got a synology 5-bay almost seven years ago and have never looked back. It lives beside my UPS and wifi router in a small tower, all objects I expect to "just work" for months on end without any attention.
My AI rig ... that is a project. (After a kernel update, one of my GPUs has disappeared. Fixing that will be a project for my next day off.) I don't want my NAS to ever become a weekend project.
> The cookie preference pop up on this site is unacceptable - 1 click to accept all cookies, SEVEN clicks to reject all cookies.
Yeah, that kinda dark pattern / malicious compliance junk ought to be straight up illegal. At least on par with "contempt of court" type situations. Sure, they may (just barely) comply with the absolute letter of the law, but the spirit of the law is surely being very much abused and deeply disrespected there.
> Yeah, that kinda dark pattern / malicious compliance junk ought to be straight up illegal.
It is illegal.
> To comply with the regulations governing cookies under the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive you must:
> [...]
> - Allow users to access your service even if they refuse to allow the use of certain cookies
> - Make it as easy for users to withdraw their consent as it was for them to give their consent in the first place.
7 clicks is not as easy as one "accept all", violating the last point. Not allowing you to dismiss the banner and access the site violates the other point.
And after a few minutes of reading a pop-up shows for joining their mailing list.
There is no mention of the usual enshittyfication, instead their complaint is that things look generic and that is the last of the list. I would say this is a feature.
The points about locking and dumbing down products are well researched, true and worrisome.
I’ve bought a NAS after watching NASCompares a few years ago, and also an ethernet adapter. His videos are nice. Talking about enshittyfication on an enshittyfied site misses the mark a little bit. “Legitimate interest”… lol.
And if you scroll down you get a popup to ask for your email for their newsletter. The irony of an article about enshittification on a site that is clearly enshittified is strong.
I don't share the author's view of the OSs becoming copycats of eachother and not that specialized.
Truth to be told, a NAS is the perfect place to have your home server. You can have both your applications and data on the same device and avoid having to build a lab just to have nextcloud or some other utility self hosted. However, to achieve this, the OS must become more similar to a normal linux distro, for better or for worse
While I don't disagree with the individual complaints, I've seen this niche go from running scuffed OSes on underpowered Synologies or building DIY NASes with limited case options like the Node 304, to multiple hot swap NASes running great x86 chips (and memory slots) and many DIY build paths including 3D printed cases. Things probably suck for those reliant on Synology, but I'm stoked for this hobby, especially when Minisforum/Aoostar to start pumping out Wildcat Lake stuff.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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?
> Software Homogenization and Interface Uniformity
While I do prefer the DIY route, I'd struggle to call that "enshitified". Vensors consolidated around solutions because they work reliably, without reinventing the wheel. I'd much rather a NAS be a lightweight wrapper around a proven and easily maintained base than try to over extend themselves and jerry-rig some abomination.
And for customers who rely on them it means they can shift brands and still feel basically just at home.
Just last month I bought a HP Micro server (N54L) from 2012, two second hand 4TB drives, 16GB of DDR3, and a 2.5GbE dual port network card. All in, that was about £180. I may shell out another £30 or so for a half depth, low profile graphics card that can support a couple of transcoding streams.
Reading the article, I don't regret it. Part of what puts me off the regular NAS market is price, but also things like non redundant boot options, ambiguity about whether or not I can install my own OS, and the lack of slots. The NAS form factor itself is off-putting because if you're buying something that isn't Synology or whatever, the RAM tax is still there.
Maybe I'm a cheapskate who will have slightly higher opex, but old hardware does seem to be pretty much as good as new hardware, to me.
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.
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, unless they know they’ll never need some of the resources and can tolerate a lower option.
So if I'm buying a server and it's available with anything between 8GB and 4TB of RAM (the price difference being ~$70,000), and my current use only requires 8GB, how much should I get? There is a 50% chance the project fails and I never need more than 8GB and a 50% chance it succeeds and then I'll need 64GB or 512GB or 4TB depending on how well it goes.
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.
Well that's just for home use. Say a small to medium enterprise needing a shared drive. Or even things like say video editing you might need a 10G connection. Furthermore for most it's just a hobby so there's no right or wrong, if you can live with the noise and power of old enterprise gear then kudos to you, or if you think a raspberry pi with a sata hat works then go ahead
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”.
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!
This "no fiddling" could be the single entire counterpoint to the article and hacker culture in general. All the problems stem from "consumer wants no fiddling".
I think it's a little more nuanced. Most people cannot fiddle (with PCs). They would have to learn to, first. Does this mean they deserve to have shit shoved down their throats? No. However, they are very vulnerable, and companies want to capitalize on this fact.
Hackers (whatever kind) are just one portion of the total populace. Others deserve genuinely good products, too. And maybe sometimes even a hacker wants to take a break. ;-)
But form factor and energy efficiency may be helped by some of the changes that producers are doing.
Why complain about those, then?
Diy is still possible. Looks like nas is becoming more specialized.
No fiddling is definitely not a primary point. If one has both valuable or large amounts of data fiddling is inevitable. Nothing I have seen in retail markets is at a level of chromecast or phone setup or TV setup.
And often not only the price is high but poor reliability.
It is amazing that no one spoke about security in any of the child comments of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49131785
Of course no fiddling is a primary point. That’s probably _the main point_. Sure you need _some_ configuration/setup, but it’s in a completely different ballpark to a custom built solution.
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 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.
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.
i did that, and really wish i bought something , mostly because i have like 4 hhds just lying in the bottom of the case
My old case was a big workstation one with 10 drive bays already. Definitely preferable to having them loose
I bought a plastic tower for disks which let's me have 10 disks with some space between them. I then bought some Artic fans and attached them with tape to the 'tower'. Then I used a 11 years old optiplex 990 as Debian zfs connected to 8 of the disks, and I have 2 spares which I'll be able to use when the others die.
Performance is great. I could do it because I was given those disks for free, with plenty of ours on each of them.
For me, it was laziness. While I have the skills to built one from parts, I just wanted a big drive in an aesthetically pleasing box. I didn't want a project. I wanted something small and somewhat rugged. So I got a synology 5-bay almost seven years ago and have never looked back. It lives beside my UPS and wifi router in a small tower, all objects I expect to "just work" for months on end without any attention.
My AI rig ... that is a project. (After a kernel update, one of my GPUs has disappeared. Fixing that will be a project for my next day off.) I don't want my NAS to ever become a weekend project.
The cookie preference pop up on this site is unacceptable - 1 click to accept all cookies, SEVEN clicks to reject all cookies.
> The cookie preference pop up on this site is unacceptable - 1 click to accept all cookies, SEVEN clicks to reject all cookies.
Yeah, that kinda dark pattern / malicious compliance junk ought to be straight up illegal. At least on par with "contempt of court" type situations. Sure, they may (just barely) comply with the absolute letter of the law, but the spirit of the law is surely being very much abused and deeply disrespected there.
> Yeah, that kinda dark pattern / malicious compliance junk ought to be straight up illegal.
It is illegal.
> To comply with the regulations governing cookies under the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive you must:
> [...]
> - Allow users to access your service even if they refuse to allow the use of certain cookies
> - Make it as easy for users to withdraw their consent as it was for them to give their consent in the first place.
7 clicks is not as easy as one "accept all", violating the last point. Not allowing you to dismiss the banner and access the site violates the other point.
The real problem is enforcement, unfortunately.
And after a few minutes of reading a pop-up shows for joining their mailing list.
There is no mention of the usual enshittyfication, instead their complaint is that things look generic and that is the last of the list. I would say this is a feature.
The points about locking and dumbing down products are well researched, true and worrisome.
I’ve bought a NAS after watching NASCompares a few years ago, and also an ethernet adapter. His videos are nice. Talking about enshittyfication on an enshittyfied site misses the mark a little bit. “Legitimate interest”… lol.
And if you scroll down you get a popup to ask for your email for their newsletter. The irony of an article about enshittification on a site that is clearly enshittified is strong.
I don't share the author's view of the OSs becoming copycats of eachother and not that specialized.
Truth to be told, a NAS is the perfect place to have your home server. You can have both your applications and data on the same device and avoid having to build a lab just to have nextcloud or some other utility self hosted. However, to achieve this, the OS must become more similar to a normal linux distro, for better or for worse
While I don't disagree with the individual complaints, I've seen this niche go from running scuffed OSes on underpowered Synologies or building DIY NASes with limited case options like the Node 304, to multiple hot swap NASes running great x86 chips (and memory slots) and many DIY build paths including 3D printed cases. Things probably suck for those reliant on Synology, but I'm stoked for this hobby, especially when Minisforum/Aoostar to start pumping out Wildcat Lake stuff.
Given the (non-) responsiveness of the page, I’m going with they focused too much on “storage” and not enough on “network attached.”
Haha touché! Hope it starts working soon so I can verify this statement.
The website is also so hilariously enshittified that the “enshittification” text barely peeked through the ads and other popups.
I didn't see them mention anything about adding features that aren't strictly about storing files... things like containers and virtual machines...
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.
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.
Yes because most people don’t have an off site backup strategy.
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.
> 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.
A power surge protector?
> 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?
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.
How much do you pay for offsite backups? How durable are they?
> Software Homogenization and Interface Uniformity
While I do prefer the DIY route, I'd struggle to call that "enshitified". Vensors consolidated around solutions because they work reliably, without reinventing the wheel. I'd much rather a NAS be a lightweight wrapper around a proven and easily maintained base than try to over extend themselves and jerry-rig some abomination.
And for customers who rely on them it means they can shift brands and still feel basically just at home.
Just last month I bought a HP Micro server (N54L) from 2012, two second hand 4TB drives, 16GB of DDR3, and a 2.5GbE dual port network card. All in, that was about £180. I may shell out another £30 or so for a half depth, low profile graphics card that can support a couple of transcoding streams.
Reading the article, I don't regret it. Part of what puts me off the regular NAS market is price, but also things like non redundant boot options, ambiguity about whether or not I can install my own OS, and the lack of slots. The NAS form factor itself is off-putting because if you're buying something that isn't Synology or whatever, the RAM tax is still there.
Maybe I'm a cheapskate who will have slightly higher opex, but old hardware does seem to be pretty much as good as new hardware, to me.
That's what I was running for the best part of 8 years until last year. Was very reliable.
In the end I just cleaned out all my shit and got rid of it. Less is more.
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.
> 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.
nitpicker here: enshitified or enshittified?
Maybe they're irish
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?
It's implied. Truly smart people manage to become affluent.
The legendary wealth of Paul Erdős was indeed largely of legend alone.
You've seen RAM slots go bad? DIMMs can also fail!
I'd much rather replace a bad stick than a whole motherboard/device.
For real. Reballing a chip is hard!
> 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.
So if I'm buying a server and it's available with anything between 8GB and 4TB of RAM (the price difference being ~$70,000), and my current use only requires 8GB, how much should I get? There is a 50% chance the project fails and I never need more than 8GB and a 50% chance it succeeds and then I'll need 64GB or 512GB or 4TB depending on how well it goes.
Not everyone lives in SanFra, my man, and can afford to throw a salary on a lab.