Re: Can an NAS appliance be used as a regular computer?
On Thu, Apr 28, 2022 at 05:42:38AM -0500, 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?
>
> Thanks.
>
> -Tom
Tom,
Things like the Synology / Buffalo or similar are designed as storage
appliances. They often have a low power ARM processor in (or similar)
to run the disks/Samba/a web interface or similar.
The expensive business ones are expensive but quality: the cheap ones
are cheap. They're all designed to be used as easy storage but not
designed for power users necessarily. They may be running Linux under
the hood - but you'll be on the hook and dependent on the vendor
doing the right thing because you can't do much, if anything, to
patch it or keep it up to date outwith the vendor doing it right.
[And their quality of security is ... mixed ... ]
The quality of disks/disk interfaces and proprietary filesystems are
all in the mix.
If you want to _use_ the system for anything else, then the Dell / HP
Microserver route might be a good one: two Microservers here are useful
for more than one thing, for example. A four disk system will handle 16T
with no problem.
All the best, as ever,
Andy Cater
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