NAS advice?

[Justin Dugger]

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 2:50 PM, Randy Rathbun <randyrathbun at gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree with Justin on his point about the firmware. The stuff I have seen
> so far has stunk.
>
> The first device I picked up a while ago would work fine - if only one user
> was doing one thing on it. Throw another task at it, and it would lock up.
> There was a firmware upgrade for the thing, but that would allow two tasks.
> What was the point?
>
> The next device I picked up started off just as bad. As soon as some bit
> torrent traffic started up, the device would freeze. A few weeks later this
> was fixed in firmware. Once I threw a fourth computer at it, the device
> again froze.
>
> I've pretty much had it with these devices!

Perhaps I should balance my opinion above with my DNS-323.  It's a
very nice 2 drive system that comes with several features by default.
More importantly, they left a fun_plug feature in the init scripts
that people have used to extend the device in fantastic ways.  Without
flashing the firmware, I have installed an ipkg setup into /opt. My
system is currently running ssh+screen+irssi, and has several packages
available should I desire to extend it.

Turnkey solutions have some very nice properties. They're very small,
since there's no consideration for add on cards or RAM. They're also
quiet, since they're low power. They're also fairly cheap.  Atom
motherboard+cpu combos are $100, without power, RAM or a case, while
Frys lists the DNS 323 at $130.

The point is, they can be pretty great hardware if you can homebrew
the software.

Justin