The (somewhat affordable) productized NASes all suffer from big tech diseases.

I think a lot of people underestimate how easy a "NAS" can be made if you take a standard PC, install some form of desktop Linux, and hit "share" on a folder. Something like TrueNAS or one of its forks may also be an option if you're into that kind of stuff.

If you want the fancy docker management web UI stuff with as little maintenance as possible, you may still be in the NAS market, but for a lot of people NAS just means "a big hard drive all of my devices can access". From what I can tell the best middle point between "what the box from the store offers" and "how do build one yourself" is a (paid-for) NAS OS like HexOS where analytics, tracking, and data sales are not used to cover for race-to-the-bottom pricing.

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prmoustache 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don't even understand what kind of webui one would want.

All you really need is a bunch of disk and an operating system with an ssh server. Even the likes of samba and nfs aren't even useful anymore.

	▲	jeroenhd 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		A bunch of out-of-the-box NAS manufacturers provide a web-based OS-like shell with file managers, document editors, as well as an "app store" for containers and services. I see the traditional "RAID with a SMB share" NAS devices less and less in stores. If only storage target mode[1] had some form of authentication, it'd make setting up a barebones NAS an absolute breeze. [1]: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/257/systemd...

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zaptheimpaler 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Actually I host everything on a linux PC/server, but a different box runs PFSense and a local DNS resolver so I was talking about setting up a split-brain DNS there. So I don't have to manually edit the hosts file on every machine and keep it up to date with IP changes. Personally I really like docker compose, its made running the little homeserver very easy.

	▲	jeroenhd 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Personally, I've started just using mDNS/Bonjour for local devices. Comes preinstalled on most devices (may need a manual package on BSD/Linux servers) and doesn't require any configuration. Just type in devicename.local and let the network do the rest. You can even broadcast additional device names for different services, so you don't need to do plex.nas.local, but can just announce plex.local and nas.local from the same machine. There's a theoretical risk of MitM attacks for devices reachable over self-signed certificates, but if someone breaks into my (W)LAN, I'm going to assume I'm screwed anyway. I've used split-horizon DNS for a couple of years but it kept breaking in annoying ways. My current setup (involving the pihole web UI because I was sick of maintaining BIND files) still breaks DNSSEC for my domain and I try to avoid it when I can.

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AndyMcConachie 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The real trick, and the reason I don't build my own NAS, is standby power usage. How much wattage will a self built Linux box draw when it's not being used? It's not easy to figure out, and it's not easy to build a NAS optimized for this.

Whereas Synology or other NAS manufacturers can tell me these numbers exactly and people have reviewed the hardware and tested it.