I've had several COTS type NAS'... all of them have had some sort of limiting factor and the value vs. hardware and capabilities were just never there for me. I went through hell with Synology and their "approved" memory and now drives... that was the final nail in the coffin for me.
Just last fall I went for broke (literally) and bought a 45 Drives Storinator AV15. Zero regrets, it runs Ubuntu and ZFS, and if it breaks I keep both pieces and can customize it all I want with any off the shelf parts I see fit. Was it cheap? Hell no... (and I'm still paying for it) .. but I was tired of messing with all these Turnkey NAS' so I decided this was the path forward.
If I had it to do over again (and wish it was an option at the time) I would have opted for their new Homelab server instead. What I have is overkill, but it was the best path forward for my needs.
I've had several COTS type NAS'... all of them have had some sort of limiting factor and the value vs. hardware and capabilities were just never there for me. I went through hell with Synology and their "approved" memory and now drives... that was the final nail in the coffin for me.
Just last fall I went for broke (literally) and bought a 45 Drives Storinator AV15. Zero regrets, it runs Ubuntu and ZFS, and if it breaks I keep both pieces and can customize it all I want with any off the shelf parts I see fit. Was it cheap? Hell no... (and I'm still paying for it) .. but I was tired of messing with all these Turnkey NAS' so I decided this was the path forward.
If I had it to do over again (and wish it was an option at the time) I would have opted for their new Homelab server instead. What I have is overkill, but it was the best path forward for my needs.