I have a DS220+, which frankly I love, but I’m looking to replace it soon. It only has 2 drives, Synology is pulling some fuckery with needing their branded drives and I’m staying on the 6.x firmware given what I’ve seen/heard with 7.x

All that being said, I’m trying to find something that is:

  • At least 4 bays
  • Small form factor (it shouldn’t be much bigger than the drives it’s holding)
  • Capable of running Docker
  • Capable of backing up to an S3 bucket
  • Capable of backing up Windows Clients
  • Habe a decent GUI (I can do CLI, but frankly, don’t want to)

I was thinking potentially QNAP, but didn’t know what else is out there. I really do like Synology and would have looked at one of their models but their vendor lock in move ticked me off. Maybe finding a used 420 or 920?

  • webghost0101@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    4·
    3 days ago

    Maybe i miss some perspective here because i never had the spare money to consider a storebought nass. The convenience never sounded like it was worth being locked down to its software.

    My server is “just a pc”

    I got a case with external drive slots (it also needed to fit a gpu), but i suppose external drive cases also exist that can connect to a micro computer build.

    The software is proxmox, which imo is amazing. Its virtualisation and backup software and performs really well and has a proper gui.

    I have numerous lxc (linux container that is not a full vm) that each run their own docker with a single service. I can ssh into those from my main system or visit the terminal and other panels in the proxmox gui. Many services host a gui to my network and i could probably make it so cli is minimal but i personally am comfortable with that so…

    I also run a few full vms on it, including some windows desktops.

    You could probably also host actual Nass software this way.

    All of these work well next to eachother and share resources. Snapshots and backups of individual systems or data can be made with ease.

    If it doesn’t fit your usecases you can get the off the shelf ones i guess but for others interested here, maybe this helps.

    • Daniel Quinn@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      What exactly is an external drive case? Are you just talking about a USB enclosure for a single drive or something that can somehow hold multiple drives and interface over something more stable than USB?

      • webghost0101@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        The technical term seems to be a JBOD bay. (Just a Bunch Of Disks)

        Basic ones are probably usb, ideally you have something that has a SFF port. Modern ones might also have thunderbolt.

        Finding a micropc that supports SFF out of the box might be a challenge but some do support pci express cards.

        Apparently there also exists something like Oculink which is pci over cable but i know even less about that one.

        EDIT: if you look for “Nas enclosure 4bay” you actually do find plenty of options (Jonsbro N3 per example) that allow you to build it all in one unit with a mini-itx board. A nas pretty much just is a pc with special software so this would be what i recommend.