The topic My NAS does more than store files, and most people are barely using theirs is currently the subject of lively discussion — readers and analysts are keeping a close eye on developments.
This is taking place in a dynamic environment: companies’ decisions and competitors’ reactions can quickly change the picture.
Ask the hardcore tinkering community about the best Network Attached Storage practices, and you’re bound to have some veterans claiming a NAS should be treated as a storage machine, not an experimentation node. Truth be told, I agree with them wholeheartedly, but I’d tweak that statement to replace storage “machine” with storage “server.”
Despite their somewhat weak computing prowess, a NAS can do a lot more than just store PC files and run automated backup workflows. Now, I wouldn’t recommend going all out with your home lab experiments on your NAS, because that’s a recipe for disaster (and yes, I speak from experience). But when it comes to running essential services 24/7, especially ones that need ample storage provisions, you can put your NAS to good use as a self-hosting workstation.
Considering that my NAS not only serves as a central file-sharing server, but also remains responsible for local snapshot tasks and 3-2-1 backup pipelines, I leave it running around the clock. But even with the all-powerful ZFS leaving a massive footprint on the RAM, I still have a few GBs that go unutilized on the storage rig. The same holds true for its CPU resources and storage pools, with the former barely seeing 50% usage even in peak file-transfer tasks.
Couple these facts with the benefits of switching from the cloud to FOSS tools, and you’ll see why I prefer self-hosting certain apps on my NAS instead of buying yet another server node. Containers are light enough to host most FOSS tools without taxing my NAS or hogging its bandwidth in the slightest, and I get to utilize its spare TBs of free storage space. For instance, I use Calibre-Web to manage my ebook collection, and it barely occupies any resources (besides the drive space) on my NAS. Likewise, I prefer hosting RomM on my NAS to organize my RomM, while Paperless-ngx houses the documents I’ve grown to despise after becoming an adult.
Even Jellyfin, which requires GPU acceleration for transcoding tasks, pairs well with my NAS, as I can just pass the integrated graphics to my NAS and get solid performance when running a couple of 4K streams simultaneously. I’ve also configured Nextcloud (and its add-on apps) on my NAS, and it doubles as a centralized productivity hub together with Grist and Blinko. Before I grabbed an N100 server for dirt cheap rates, I even used my NAS to host Pulse, Homepage, Nginx Proxy Manager, Authentik, and a bunch of other mission-critical home lab services that I’d never run on an experimental server node.
It might be time to grab some new hardware if you keep running into these snags
Switching gears to FOSS tools that are a bit too demanding for a mere NAS, I often use network shares (specifically SMB) to put the excess storage space on my backup machine to good use. Immich, for example, needs a dedicated GPU for machine learning tasks, which is why I’ve deployed it as an LXC on my Proxmox workstation. But since I don’t have TBs of free space on my PVE node, I’ve hooked it up to SMB shares on my NAS. The same applies to the Frigate LXC that uses the same GPU (yet another perk of containers) for motion detection, but sends all the footage to my NAS. Heck, I’ve even deployed a Proxmox Backup Server instance as a virtual machine on my offsite NAS, so I don’t need to deploy two machines in my family’s home just to sync my TrueNAS and PBS snapshots.
While we’re on the subject of VMs, let me add that I don’t consider my NAS just another experimentation rig for my DIY projects. Since it houses everything from backups and archival media to essential container data, the last thing I’d want is for a botched project to render it unusable and force me to spend days recovering my precious files. Similarly, I don’t overload my NAS workstation with more virtual guests than it can handle, as allocating too many storage resources to VMs can cause my storage server to crawl at a snail’s pace.
That said, using my NAS just for simple file-syncing and backup tasks, while claiming I should keep separate servers for essential containers, would be just as wasteful. After all, modern NAS units are more capable than they may initially appear, and it’s possible to host a handful of disk-heavy containers on budget-friendly storage rigs (or even custom ones assembled from outdated hardware) without affecting typical backup operations.