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.

I run some light services on my NAS cause well, in the end, the distinction in naming is arbitrary at best, it’s a computer, and I use it for computer things. In an ideal world where I can afford separate purpose-built machines for everything, I’ll have a storage-only NAS, but it’s a computer I have that also happens to have many hard drive bays. Being able to service my own machines shouldn’t be all that surprising either.

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”.

> 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"

I disagree. And we can at least discuss whether a NAS that doesn't have ECC is that much of a NAS or not.

I'd take an old Xeon server with 64 GB of ECC memory, run its CPU in powersave mode, and slap TrueNAS (with ZFS) on it any day over buying a dedicated NAS.

YMMV but actual professional server gear, with ECC memory, is to me more of a NAS than a consumer NAS.

And nothing forces you to run a "full server": you can dedicate a real server to be only a NAS and slap the lowest consuming Xeon on it, which moreover you can run with a powersaving CPU governor.

Slap a 10 Gbit/s ethernet NIC in it and call it a day.

It shall be more reliable too.

You can of course cosplay with a consumer NAS but the real thing is better.

P.S: mine is a HP Z440 with a 14-cores Xeon (so a workstation, not a server: the advantage is that it's totally quiet)

If I have CPU power at my disposal, why should I waste it? I love the fact that my NAS can serve my other needs too.

You missed the point the author really complains about: soldered in memory chips create a single point of failure.

What you quoted needs to be seen in the context of what author calls "increasing media demands". I.e. the author believes that while the way the system is configured might be OK today, it won't be OK in the future.