I currently have a 10-year old off-the-shelf NAS (Synology) that needs replacing soon. I haven’t done much with it other than the simple things I mention later, so I still consider myself a novice when it comes to NAS, servers, and networking in general, but I’ve been reading a bit lately (which lead my to this sub). For a replacement I’m wondering whether to get another Synology, use an open source NAS/server OS, or just use a Windows PC. Windows is by far the OS I’m most comfortable with so I’m drawn to the final option. However, I regularly see articles and forum posts which frown upon the use Windows for NAS/server purposes even for simple home-use needs, although I can’t remember reading a good explanation of why. I’d be grateful for some explanations as to why Windows (desktop version) is a poor choice as an OS for a simple home NAS/server.
Some observations from me (please critique if any issues in my thinking):
- I initially assumed it was because Windows likely causes a high idle power consumption as its a large OS. But I recently measured the idle power consumption of a celeron-based mini PC running Windows and found it to be only 5W, which is lower than my Synology NAS when idle. It seems to me that any further power consumption savings that might be achieved by a smaller OS, or a more modern Synology, would be pretty negligible in terms of running costs.
- I can see a significant downside of Windows for DIY builds is the cost of Windows license. I wonder is this accounts for most of the critique of Windows? If I went the Windows route I wouldn’t do a DIY build. I would start with a PC which had a Windows OEM licence.
- My needs are very simple (although I think probably represent a majority of home user needs). I need device which is accessible 24/7 on my home network and 1) can provide SMB files shares, 2) act as a target for backing up other devices on home network, 3) run cloud backup software (to back itself up to an off-site backup location) and, 4) run a media server (such as Plex), 5) provide 1-drive redundancy via RAID or a RAID-like solution (such as Windows Storage Spaces). It seems to me Windows is fine for this and people who frown upon Windows for NAS/server usage probably have more advanced needs.
Never been a better time to try Linux. Ubuntu is pretty easy to get started with (download and setup a bootable USB, stick it and go) and ChatGPT is extremely good about walking you through any questions. You don’t even need to ask highly technical questions, just tell it your goal and your system.
“I just installed Ubuntu 22.04 on my computer and want to SSH into it from a Windows computer on my network, how do I do that?”
“I want to download a file from my Ubuntu command line, how do I do that?”
“I want to setup a share that both Windows and Linux computers can access over my network, how do I do that?”
“I have a github action runner provided by github that includes a run.sh file that needs to run constantly. I want to setup as a background service on my Ubuntu Linux computer so it will always be running as long as the computer is on, how can I do that?”
It will spit out every command line you need in what order, contents of a .service file, tell you how to monitor it, and so on. You can ask it what each line does, what the parameters mean, etc. It’s like having a mid-level sys admin at your fingertips. It will interpret any errors you get, and tell you how to fix them.
Perfect? Maybe not, but its close for a remarkable variety of tasks. It may be, and I’m not joking, 20 times more productive and time efficient than Google searches, reading stackoverflow posts, reading documentations/man pages and trying to decipher what you really need out of any of those sources.
I’m sure some are too paranoid to ask ChatGPT certain things for privacy reasons, and I would anonymize anything you paste in, probably just be a bit mindful of anything involving permissions (you can also ask what security risks exist doing something). Just normal ChatGP3.5 (free) is extremely knowledgeable about Linux CLI and administration along with common packages and apps you’d want to use.
For server:
docker is linux in a jailed namespace (network, filesystem, process tree, etc jail)
Docker hosted on linux is efficient.
Docket hosted on anything else less so.For me, #1 is license costs. I’ve taken home some servers which would require me to buy 4+ windows server licenses because 16 physical cores is a number for entry-level servers at this point. For the cost of those licenses, I could almost buy a new server with a similar amount of cores every single year.
Second, the brand new filesystem, ReFS, (which needs licenses), has just about caught up to what ZFS had in 2005. The biggest omission is that 2005 ZFS could be your root filesystem. This is less important on *nix systems where your root can be tiny, but windows insists on storing tons of stuff on C, which still needs to be NTFS. ZFS also has 22 years of production testing and still has lots of development.
Third, I want to use containers, and windows uses a Linux VM to do that, so why not skip the middle man?
The only real issue is reliability. Server versions are made to maintain as much uptime as possible, Windows Server updates don’t always require a restart (except Patch Tuesdays), whereas the desktop version almost always does and will do so without any warning. If you’re using it for home use, does that matter? Probably less so, considering downtime doesn’t cost you money it saves it if anything. Plenty of mom and pop offices use off the shelf desktop PCs as “servers” cause it’s more cost efficient.
Are you going to use hardware RAID or do you have some specific software RAID server in mind (like unRAID)?
What got me interested in home-labbing was to be able to play with software RAID with a bunch of disks, NAS for home use and backing up, and some media serving.
In the end, what scratched my itch was the robustness of TrueNAS Scale (and ZFS itself) and it’s user interface. I just love it.
But it does take some tinkering (and learning Linux) to get it working. But I wanted to remember some Linux and now it runs by itself.
Windows Desktop OS has the huge downside of forced updates these days. And they will just reboot, no matter if you want or not.
Server version is fine, you often even get it for free when you are a student for lab purposes, but it has way more overhead than Linux. 8GB is bare minimum for a Windows server, probably even more these days. If you run some services or even exchange / sql server, you need way more. A minimal Ubuntu runs fine on 512MB and Ubuntu is already quite high in memory usage compared to others. You can get away with even less of a footprint.
It’s actually fine.
Just make sure you enable and disable the right services on it and enjoy
As most people said, I would go for something like TrueNAS, Proxmox or the best - Unraid that do cost a bit but will not break the bank - https://unraid.net/pricing
My typical post to these questions is that I run the following without issue:
Windows 11 Pro for Workstations
Drivepool + Scanner + Snapraid is what controls my storage, which is currently something like 26x 20tb drives.
Windows uses the NTFS File system and TrueNAS uses the OpenZFS file system which is superior to NTFS for storing your data. I’d do some reading on the OpenZFS file system to check out the benefits over NTFS. Running TrueNAS is really easy, you can check it out on Youtube, (installation and configuration videos). The book FreeBSD Mastery:ZFS (Michael W Lucas, Allan Jude) is also a good read on everything ZFS.
Thanks. A few others have mentioned file system benefits of going non-Windows, although I’m not exactly clear what they are and some people mentioned something other than zfs (will need to re-read the replies to remember what). Will look into it though.
Copy on Write or COW comes to mind right away.
The COW mode of operation brings some significant advantages. Since old data is not overwritten, recovery from crashes and power failures should be more straightforward; if a transaction has not completed, the previous state of the data (and metadata) will be where it always was. So, among other things, a COW filesystem does not need to implement a separate journal to provide crash resistance.
Just found this, looks like some good info…https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/05/zfs-101-understanding-zfs-storage-and-performance/3/
Most of popular apps are cross platform and at least have windows variants or at least have some great replacements, so it’s hard to miss something (with few exceptions). Of course licensing violation it the thingg… but using server without gui can save a lot of resources and give a great experience of learning powershell (and how bad regular command like life in windows is…)
Because of gatekeeping and snobbery.
I love it when Linux dudes say “Linus uses less resources than windows” but have some dual cpu monster space heater server from 10 years ago that sounds like a vacuum cleaner. Your consuming NATRUAL resources bro lol. That said I totally use Linux visualized and on a few Pi’s But windows will always be my go to. Not because it’s better. It’s what I know waaaaaay n anything else.
Run what you know best in your crucial machines. Play around sand boxed area on non crucial hardware.
These are my personal reasons. I stress personal because everyone is different.
- it doesn’t do what I tell it to do, but what Microsoft thinks I should want
- difficult to automate (I’ve been told this has been getting better, but I’m still not convinced)
- if things don’t work as I expect, I can’t look at the source code
In most cases I’m much less frustrated by using non-Windows alternatives in infrastructure. For example when I build Windows binaries, I use wine on linux.
windows is a trash server os for use by people who should know better. pick a flavor of linux, or Open/Net/FreeBSD it’ll do a better job of serving your data.
ok ok, that was a little harsh, some of them do know and choose to take the wrong path.