choosing low-power/low-noise/free NAS servers to run Debian
There are a lot of ARM-based small NAS servers out there now.
How many can be upgraded to Debian and operated with 100% free software,
no binary firmware blobs at all? Is there any comparison table that is
useful for people buying these things with the intention of running free
software?
For the average buyer, factors like low noise levels, less heat and low
power consumption are likely to be more significant than the need to be
100% free. However, the fact these devices are theoretically more free
than x86-based solutions may be a good reason to raise awareness of 2 or
3 of the better models that are known to run Debian.
Has anybody done any comparison of the IO throughput in different
non-x86 boxes, especially for use with SSDs?
Are there any ARMv8 / 64-bit in this market yet?
Maybe this is too much to expect in this price range, but has anybody
seen one providing flash-backed write cache? This can make NFS faster
when dealing with many small files such as Maildirs and large Git
repositories.
Are there any useful articles comparing the 32 bit entry level boxes,
newer ARMv8 solutions and the x86 equivalents such as the HP
Microserver[1], Lenovo TS140 and Qnap TS-451 and helping users decide
which things run well enough on ARM and for which use cases is the x86
solution really essential?
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