Still looking for a usable NAS for Ubuntu 23.04

[Karl Auer]

On Sun, 2023-08-06 at 13:48 +0100, Chris Green wrote:
> Exactly!  Jay, tell us what backup software you want to run on Ubuntu
> that you want the NAS to work with.  Without knowing that it's well
> nigh impossible to answer your question.

True - but only if your needs are niche.

Pretty much every purpose-built NAS out there is basically a Linux box
itself anyway. I'm sure there are many exceptions people will now tell
me about :-)

They all have some kind of storage management (the disks and RAID),
some kind of volume management (how storage is spread distributed
across the storage) and some kind of file system management (how the
volumes appear to NAS clients). And they all generally have some kind
of user-friendly web interface plastered over the top of it all to let
you configure and monitor it.

They pretty much all offer at least Windows shares, AFP and NFS. Many
offer some more sophisticated possibilities, like iSCSI. Then they have
some kind of user and permissions management, so you can control who
can access what on your NAS.

I have been very happy with Synology. The tech support is OK, the
devices last well and are reliable, they have lots of features, the
interface is pretty easy to use, and they support a good set of plugins
and extensions. They support standard RAID formats, not just their own
proprietary one (which itself is pretty good). They have models all the
way to down to "single-disk RAID":

   https://www.synology.com/en-au/products

Aficionados of other brands will probably chime in too. Almost any
brand-name NAS will do whatever you want, especially if what you want
is just file storage.

Regards, K.

PS: A NAS is not a backup, or not on its own. It can be part of a
backup strategy, but if it is your only "backup" you are headed for
pain in direct proportion to the amount of data you store on it.
Remember: Good backup is frequent, comprehensive, versioned, physically
distributed, heterogeneous, and tested. Ideally it is also automated.

PPS: If you have buy a NAS and don't put it on a reliable power supply
(i.e., a UPS) then you have wasted your money and should have bought a
cheap external USB drive.

-- 
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Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer