Premade NAS Expensive Why?

[Jeffspears]

Cough*

NASes dont actually use hardware controllers but software, I guess so they could get more control over dropping HDDs from the raid, so TLER in enterprise level HDDs arent actually used.

 

[NP Complete]

I don't know why some people are so hostile to pre-built NAS's.

YES - a DIY solution with FreeNAS/FreeBSD/Linux/Solaris/WHS server is more full featured, and more expandable.

YES - a DIY solution is cheaper and a comparable pre-built NAS

BUT - when a DIY breaks, even if the parts are under warranty, it's MY TIME that is spent diagnosign the failure, setting up the RMA, and replacing the part.

And it's yet more time for me to set up my own NAS. Yes, modern NAS OS's (and others) are easy to setup. However, there are still a bunch of configuration choices to make, and some eduction necessary on my part because I'm not familiar with every OS and every file sharing option out there.

The question isn't over what's better speced, or even over data recovery. The question users need to ask themselves is how much do they value their time? Saying a DIY is "better" than a synology (or similar pre-built NAS), completely misses this point, which may or may not be important to the person making the decision. And this is an extremely important question to many people: it's why business's choose to buy incredibly expensive and warrantied systems, and it's one of the reasons Apple is "winning" in the consumer space (due to a percieved "ease of use" and the "it just works").

I realize that this question probably isn't as important to the majority of the users of this forum, but I think it's still worth pointing out when people ask "what should I buy" and they don't appear to be a sysadmin.

 

[taltamir]

I don't know why some people are so hostile to pre-built NAS's.

Who are people?

YES - a DIY solution with FreeNAS/FreeBSD/Linux/Solaris/WHS server is more full featured, and more expandable.

YES - a DIY solution is cheaper and a comparable pre-built NAS

BUT - when a DIY breaks, even if the parts are under warranty, it's MY TIME that is spent diagnosign the failure, setting up the RMA, and replacing the part.

When a premade (edit: with disks) breaks its your time to RMA it, wait weeks for a replacement to come back, restore from backsups, and lose a few days of data (since last backup). If you are a business, your operations are potentially crippled and you must do a lot of things with paper, then reenter it all when the system is repaired. Realistically a business will hire a local tech firm to repair it on the spot, which will ironically void the warranty. The loss of which is preferable to the alternative. In fact I have occasionally been that tech to fix such a thing for a business, voiding their warranty at their direction in order to get it fixed that same day so they could actually get work done and not lose all their customers for failing to deliver.

When a DIY breaks you diagnose and repair it with a part from a local store the same day. Then RMA the part that broke (if it is even worth it; a lot of businesses simply throw it in the trash) and weeks later when you get the replacement for it, sell it online (most likely for a home user). You have less then 1 day of downtime, you don't lose any data.

A prebuilt only makes sense if you are a home user who lacks the technical skill.
What makes sense for a rich home user or a business is to have a local company that can come in the same day to service a NAS they built for you or outsourced the building of aka prebuilt (more expensive, saves time and effort). Or to have a DIY (less expensive, more time and effort).
A small business that buys a prebuilt from dell yet doesn't have anyone local to service the day it breaks and restore it is mismanaged.

 

[KentState]

I don't get the hostility either. Paying $700 vs $300 for a diskless systems isn't a big enough gap to matter. I also haven't found many elegant ways to have 15 disks in an enclosure that is barely audible. In the end, the disk is the most failure prone and expensive parts to deal with in my experience.

 

[Pandamonium]

If you're buying a NAS for data backup, you're buying the wrong product. That goes for consumers and businesses. A NAS is strictly for centralized data storage and sharing. Sure, RAID 1 can limit downtime in the event of a single disk failure, but it RAID 1 is insufficient to protect data.

If a DIY breaks, I diagnose and repair when I:
1) find the time to fiddle around with it
2) get around to ordering a part
3) bother to put the replacement part in and troubleshoot
I often have other, more pressing, things going on. I would prefer that "troubleshoot my DIY server/NAS" remain off my to-do list.

I'll be the first to admit that I have next to no skills in Unix/Linux/BSD. Hell I'm probably rusty with Windows. But I have the wherewithal to research my problems and figure out solutions on my own. I am the resident "tech guy" who used to have an up-to-date skillset. A NAS appliance makes sense for people like me.

It also makes sense to a lot of small businesses who only want data sharing. If my small business would sink or swim based on my data availability and uptime, then I would have zero problems buying two NAS units and use one of them with RAID 1. And on top of that, I'd pay for a Carbonite-like service for actual backup. My spare unit would only help my uptime. The off-site backup is for, well, backup.

I personally own a Synology DS209. And in the next year or so, I personally plan to replace it with a HP Microserver running something along the lines of OpenSolaris/OpenIndiana/NexentaStor for ZFS. But if a company releases a ZFS-capable NAS at a reasonable price (Ie: not ZenaVault), I wouldn't hesitate to buy their appliance and not bother being my own SysAdmin.

In short, not every Synology/QNAP/Thecus customer is a "home user who lacks technical skill"

When a premade (edit: with disks) breaks its your time to RMA it, wait weeks for a replacement to come back, restore from backsups, and lose a few days of data (since last backup). If you are a business, your operations are potentially crippled and you must do a lot of things with paper, then reenter it all when the system is repaired.

[...]

When a DIY breaks you diagnose and repair it with a part from a local store the same day. Then RMA the part that broke (if it is even worth it; a lot of businesses simply throw it in the trash) and weeks later when you get the replacement for it, sell it online (most likely for a home user). You have less then 1 day of downtime, you don't lose any data.

A prebuilt only makes sense if you are a home user who lacks the technical skill.

[...]

 

[Jeffspears]

Unless I am mistaken all files are still accessibile when a raid is degraded, raid 5 and and 6 included.

 

[Jeffspears]

degraded raids are still functional and accessable

 

[taltamir]

Unless I am mistaken all files are still accessibile when a raid is degraded, raid 5 and and 6 included.

who are you talking to and in what context?