Tom Browder wrote: > All I want is a small PC able to host multiple drives for redundant > storage. Can a typical NAS appliance be used for that?
There's no such thing as typical, here. If the *only* thing you want is a networked filesystem, most NAS boxes are adequate for that: after all, that's what the manufacturer intends them to be used for. The problem with NAS boxes is that the manufacturer not only doesn't want to support other use cases, the manufacturer doesn't expect to run arbitrary software - only their own. So they feel free to put in their own proprietary everything. Debian can run on some NAS boxes directly, with more or less effort. https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/QNAP https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Synology Some Synology models support running virtual machines on the NAS. https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/feature/virtual_machine_manager That's pretty flexible, but they tend to be relatively expensive and low on RAM... and while the disks are upgradable, the RAM frequently is not. -dsr-