Commercial NAS Operating Systems - A Comprehensive Overview of Core Features
by Ganesh T S on November 14, 2016 8:30 AM ESTSetting the Stage...
As we draw the first part of our comprehensive coverage of commercial NAS operating systems to a close, it is important to touch upon one additional core aspect. The setting up of multiple users, user groups, joining domains etc., LDAP or NIS authentication etc. are very important for business NAS units, but, not so much for NAS units targeting the home market.
Since the COTS NAS operating systems are all based on Linux, adopting the standard user / group strategy is not very difficult for the vendors. ZyXEL, as expected due to their targeting of home users, has only very basic user and group settings with quota support. Western Digital goes a bit further by allowing for multiple users to be created at the same time. Asustor, QNAP, and Synology have that feature and much more too. For example, Synology even supports 2-factor authentication for certain groups. Netgear does support some advanced features like Active Directory, but there are lots of things that Netgear could learn from the aforementioned vendors.
Today's piece dealt with the core aspects of NAS operating systems - storage and how it is configured, the user interface, setting up of the desired services and shared folders, and the configuration of the network links. Even though the coverage has been very subjective, there are some clear areas for each vendor to improve.
Asustor, QNAP and Synology have the setup process nailed down to a decent extent. However, Netgear needs to make its ReadyCLOUD process more robust. Alternatively, the RAIDar program should be fixed to avoid Java requirements. Western Digital's approach is almost perfect, given that they mostly sell systems with disks pre-installed. However, it would be good if a volume is created by default when the My Cloud OS is installed. ZyXEL's approach is passable, but the slow web UI leads to an unsatisfactory UX.
On the storage and services side, Synology and QNAP turn out to very feature-rich, followed closely by Asustor. Netgear still has some catching up to do as certain aspects like advanced SMB options still require an external package to be installed.
In terms of networking features, QNAP is very much on top. While all vendors have some sort of teaming implementation, QNAP has gone beyond that and started to implement various network modes that can really take advantage of the multiple LAN ports.
Next week, we will have a follow-up article that deals with value-add features. These include media services, surveillance (DVR for IP cameras) solutions, and the public cloud (integration with Dropbox, Google Drive etc.). We will also discuss support for virtualization - in terms of being a datastore, as well as the NAS being a host for guest VMs. A look at some of the third-party applications and the usage models that they enable will round up our comprehensive coverage of NAS operating systems.
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DominionSeraph - Monday, November 14, 2016 - link
Or you could save yourself $900 by pulling a $100 desktop off craigslist. Windows is better for this, anyway. Homegroup + Teamviewer for management is just too easy.wumpus - Monday, November 14, 2016 - link
Quick check of the local craigslist implies that the buyer should indeed beware. Most "~$100 desktops" were Dells without support for more than 2 sata ports. Couldn't find any example of what the $100 server was, but strongly suspect it could handle 4 sata ports. Since most of these are Dells, check before assuming that you can simply cram a PCI-e card in to add ports (not to mention physically adding the drive).The common inclusion of "windows 7 ultimate" on boxes that were absolutely cut rate to begin with doesn't inspire me with confidence either. Of course, I'd be going the Linux (or BSD if I really wanted that ZFS goodness), but I'd check the fine print before building a windows server (not that windows isn't amazing at serving local desktops/notebooks.)
Once you've carefully checked all the specs on your "$100 craigslist special", moving up to ZFS is what, $50 for 8G RAM (don't expect many of them to have open DIMM ports, hopefully all of them take DDR3). I suspect the real cost of all this is your time first, power consumed second, and finally the cost of the system (adding the cost of a simple server to your newegg hard drive order might be well over $200, I can't imagine the time issues making up the difference with the reviewed units. You can probably keep the power consumption down and make sure all your specs fit without dealing with clueless craigslist sellers. Of course, at this point windows has to justify its expense, but if you are only familiar with windows it is likely a no-brainer (you really don't want your first experience with Linux to be managing all your data, start with something a little less critical).
BenJeremy - Monday, November 14, 2016 - link
Not sure I'd go with a $100 Dell special off CL or eBay, but a more generic system would work well enough...I bought a 8-port RAID SAS/SATA controller for $25 off of eBay (sold as "used" but the card was spotless). The only issue is case/power supply support at that point.
Running your own Linux box, you can also run a LAMP stack and any software you might use personally, such as software to fetch files for you off of Usenet, for example.
You could also add another network card, add in external storage as needed... I manage my server with WebMin and keep it in my basement (I have to make Linux feel at home).
darwinosx - Monday, April 3, 2017 - link
There are many of us here who could do that and setup configure and maintain but why should we when a NAS does it much easier and far less maintenance. Especially with an OS like Synolgoys that has many easy to install and configure packages.rtho782 - Monday, November 14, 2016 - link
HP microservers are often down to about £170 new, given that we pay VAT and our currency is now worthless, I imagine they are about the same in $.One of those and either Windows or Linux seems a much better bet.
Linux gives you zfs, and Windows will do tiered storage spaces (although you need to do the config on a Windows Server trial, it then works on consumer OSes, and ReFS is pretty good.)
wumpus - Monday, November 14, 2016 - link
ZFS on Linux is a lawsuit waiting to happen. Oracle's law department (otherwise known as 99% of Oracle) is waiting for the best time to strike (probably when Red Hat includes it, which they won't do because of lawsuits. So it isn't as bad as it looks). In practice, this almost certainly means that your support disappears, not your data. But do you really want to copy all your data when this happens?But if Oracle wanted it part of Linux they would GPL ZFS. ZFS+BSD is legally Solaris, so no problem. But this is the same company spent billions to fight google over the Java API, so don't expect them to go down without a fight.
buxe2quec - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
Oracle released ZFS as CDDL. They cannot take it back, it has been developed further on the basis of that CDDL code. However no need to wait for linux/Redhat, since FreeBSD or OmniOS are already mature systems that have performant implementations of ZFS (technically, on illumos it's native).coder111 - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
Yes, and CDDL is incompatible with GPL, it was explicitly designed to be so.So ZFS is fine for your personal use as you are not distributing software, you are just using it. Copyright law only applies to software distribution.
But if any Linux distribution were to ship Linux+ZFS, THAT is a lawsuit waiting to happen, as they DO distribute software.
TheWrongChristian - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
But it'll be the Linux side doing the suing, not the ZFS/Oracle side. Including ZFS in Ubuntu isn't against the ZFS CDDL (IINAL, not legal advice etc.) Do you realistically see Linus (or others) suing Canonical?tuxRoller - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link
What, WHY would the Linux side do the suing?The reason people say oracle might sue is because they (or sun) designed cddl to be incompatible with gpl (in a very particular way which relates to the idea of "copyright holders"), and, given that, and Oracle being somewhat litigious, there is a very understandable reluctance to properly include zfs into the kernel (as something other than a module, btw, since this has its own problems when it comes to system integration).
https://www.fsf.org/licensing/zfs-and-linux
Gpl is all about DERIVED works and that's how it propagates, and that is how companies can get around the vital nature of it---they write their proprietary modules then very thin shims which they gpl. ZFS, in particular, has long included a fairly big abstraction called the Solaris Porting Layer which is what allows it to run across different kernels but in a very non-ideal way.