Re: Can an NAS appliance be used as a regular computer?
Tom Browder wrote:
> All I want is a small PC able to host multiple drives for redundant
> storage. Can a typical NAS appliance be used for that?
There's no such thing as typical, here.
If the *only* thing you want is a networked filesystem,
most NAS boxes are adequate for that: after all, that's what the
manufacturer intends them to be used for.
The problem with NAS boxes is that the manufacturer not only
doesn't want to support other use cases, the manufacturer doesn't
expect to run arbitrary software - only their own. So they feel
free to put in their own proprietary everything.
Debian can run on some NAS boxes directly, with more or less
effort.
https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/QNAP
https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Synology
Some Synology models support running virtual machines on
the NAS.
https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/feature/virtual_machine_manager
That's pretty flexible, but they tend to be relatively expensive
and low on RAM... and while the disks are upgradable, the RAM
frequently is not.
-dsr-
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