So here’s a kind of comment that I
see a lot under my home server builds “I’d consider what you built
to be a NAS, not a server” “Not to level of a real home server, we
can at best describe it as a NAS, but okay” “Seems like you built a Network Attached Storage, which is not a server and does
not render server functionality.” “This is not a home server, this is a nas, Video title should be how to
build a nas not a home server” “But he keeps referring to NAS.
Which is NOT a server build. So I don't even trust this guy if he can't
even understand what he is building…” Now, most YouTubers would just read those
comments, say “okay”, and go on about their day. Or maybe even not read them at all. However, I am very petty and happen to
have a lot of free time on my hands. So today, we’re gonna talk about the
difference between a home server and a NAS, And maybe have a broader conversation about
hardware gatekeeping in the home server community. First, let’s talk about a NAS. NAS stands for “network attached storage”, and if we just go off of that definition
alone, without any prior knowledge, it sounds like a bunch of hard drives in a
box with an Ethernet port attached to them. Which, in the earlier days of consumer
NASes, that’s kind of what it was. The NAS boxes from companies like Zyxel, D-Link and Linksys ran on very low-cost
and low-performance embedded ARM chips, and had just enough juice to serve files from
a couple of hard drives over the network. And this is basically what a
NAS is, in it’s purest form. It stores the files, it
attaches them to the network. That’s it. That’s all it does. But obviously, modern NASes are very different
from the ARM-based boxes of mid 2000s. As time went on, people realized that having RAID
for redundancy would actually be pretty nice. And while we’re at it, it would be nice if my NAS could maybe do something
other than just serving files Such as, maybe serving media. Synchronizing my local backups with cloud storage. Collecting footage from surveillance cameras Automatically organizing my vacation photos And so on. The point I’m trying to get to is, if you look at
some modern NAS appliances from Synology and QNAP, they don’t strictly qualify as a NAS either. They come with powerful x86
CPUs, upgradable RAM, PCIe slots, and even let you run Docker
containers and virtual machines Basically turning them into
full fledged home servers. And if the commercial NAS appliances are
kind of limited in terms of software, there is no doubt that a DIY PC
with similar specs will be more than capable of any home server
use case you could throw at it. But let’s also go back to the YouTube
comments that I presented earlier. If you look at some of them, “NAS” is
often used almost as a derogatory term, Like “this is not a real home
server, this is a NAS at most”. And I think that this still indicates
that outdated view of what a NAS is A dumb hard drive box that has just enough brains
to serve the files, and maybe play some movies. A real home server should be beefy
enough to run multiple virutal machines, do RAID, transcode media on the fly, and
do all these other cool things, right? Well, the thing is, in the past decade, computer hardware has become more powerful,
more power efficient, and less expensive. All at the same time. Let’s look at a “real” big boy server
from 2013. A Dell PowerEdge R720xd. It’s a dual socket rackmount server
that comes with two Intel Xeons E5-2650. Using old decommisioned enterprise gear
in a homelab is a big thing, right? And I’m pretty sure if I showed you
guys one of these on my channel, there would be no doubt that that, now
THAT’s what you call a real server. Here’s an uncomfortable truth though. If we look at the cheapest
current i3 processor, i3-13100, we’ll see that it runs LAPS around that Xeon,
scoring almost two times as much in PassMark. Which means that you can easily replace one of
these dual socket dinosaurs with just one wimpy i3 At a fraction of cost and at around
the tenth of a power consumption. And I know that for some of you
guys, this is pretty obvious. Like yeah, modern CPUs are faster than
10-year-old CPUs, what else is new? But I think that a lot of people understimate
just how much faster computer hardware has become, and just how beefy of a machine they
really need for their home server needs. Another type of comment that I often
get under my home server builds is “pff, this build has a Pentium CPU? Yeah, pass” I’m currently running a setup that is even
less performant than my last home server build An Intel Pentium G4600. And mind you, that’s a 5 year old dual-core CPU The system is currently running
a dozen of Docker containers, in addition to serving files
over the 10 gig connection. And I think it’s fair to say that even this low-performance machine
still does more than just store files. I use it to generate invoices,
download and stream media, scan my paper documents, and it
also hosts my password manager. And looking at the load
average, at the very least, I could run 12 more services on
it with no issues whatsoever. “But Wolfgang, it doesn’t run any
VMs, so it’s not a real home server!” True, but you know what does run VMs? This little machine based on
an even weaker Celeron J4125. It currently runs Proxmox with
an OpenWRT VM and a few CTs It basically handles the Internet
routing for my entire network, my home automation setup, and
all of my monitoring needs. And guess what? The average load of that machine
is also consistently below 1. And once again, both of these
machines run on years old technology. An i3-13100 would wipe the
floor with both G4600 and J4125. But even these two machines are more
than enough for my home server needs. And as I just showed you, I don’t
just use them to store files either. So, does that mean that no one should have beefy
64 core Threadripper machines in their homelab? Of course not. There are definitely people who
actually do need all that horse power, And even if you like having beefy enterprise gear
in your rack closet with no reason whatsoever But I think that there should
be a place on Youtube for home server builds that don’t break the bank. Builds that don’t utilize outdated
power gobbling enterprise hardware And that might not have 300
PCIe lanes and ECC support, but will still be more than
capable enough for most people, without taking half the room
and sounding like a jet engine. And that’s what I’m going for with my builds. And for the purpose of clarity, and as long
as they do more than just storing files I will keep calling them home server builds. And if you feel like these machines
lack performance, or features? Well, there are still plenty
of channels on Youtube that are dedicated to overkill monster server builds. For me though? I think I’m gonna keep building modest power
efficient home servers with bulk storage, which I’m going to use to transcode media,
run my virtual machines and docker containers. And if you’d like to see these
kinds of builds in the future? Smash that subscribe button, I guess. Don’t worry, I still do impractical and
stupid builds once in a while as well. That’s gonna be it for this video, I hope you guys enjoyed it, and as
usual, I’d like to thank my Patrons.
