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RE: To NAS or not to NAS

Posted by soundchekk (A) on November 15, 2014 at 01:49:49

In Reply to: To NAS or not to NAS posted by mschneider on November 13, 2014 at 17:19:04:

Never use a NAS!!! -- At least non of these commercial blackboxes.

These devices are blackboxes. Inflexible. Software/firmware is poorly maintained.
The handling of these commercial NAS systems I consider unacceptable.

If you try to transcode videos or pictures the typical NAS will usually fail. Your choice of software/applications is pretty poor.


It's pretty easy to build your own DIY-"NAS", or you better call it Server, based on a machine that 100% fulfills your performance and software needs.

There are numerous distributions out there, which offer file networksharing (Samba/Cifs/NFs), UPNP/DLNA, Squeezeserver and some even Sonos, Airplay ..... -- even free of charge.
Usually these servers offer more and more up2date apps than you'd find on a commercial NAS.

E.g. Vortexbox would be a pretty save bet.

I've been running a VideoServer based on Serviio DLNA/UPNP application. Each of my TVs needs different transcoding of HiRes video Files.
Transcoding HiresVideo on-the-fly requires quite some HorsePower.
You can't do that with a low muscle system, such as a commercial NAS, Arm board etc.

Even slideshows with RAW images that needs to be transcoded will require quite some horsepower.

Note:
On my server (Intel/Haswell) with GB ethernet onboard, I've noticed networking performance improvements when introducing an IBM PCI-E networking adapter (around 30$ for a two-port!! device). So. Even if
you use the onboard GB interface, it doesn't mean that it'll run smooth.


However. If you want to do audio streaming and a bit of filesharing only
e.g. my Cubitruck does a great job at below 100$. That includes DSD and Hires streaming as well as 192khz resampling (if that's required). It comes with GB etherent and 2GigRam. Not many Arm boards around that can compete. However. They talk about GB LAN in the specs and manage to handle <600MBit only.


When it comes to wireless: Wireless sucks!!!! All the important clients in the network are hardwired.

Good luck.




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