Ask HN: Cloud vs. Edge Computing–Why Choose a Local NAS?

I can't fill out the survey because I do not have access, so my answers are below.

Cloud vs. Edge: Why choose a local NAS over iCloud, OneDrive, etc.? Cost, privacy, performance?

Primarily privacy and control over my data. Fun to tinker with.

Use Case: What tasks would your NAS handle? Jellyfin, Frigate, backups, AI/ML?

Just storage, I can run a separate server that has all workloads.

Performance: How key is CPU power, power efficiency, or upgradability (e.g., PCIe slots)? Your LAN speed (1, 2.5, 10, 25 Gbps)?

As power efficient as possible. >10Gbps network. I don't care about additional PCIe slots. Just a small form factor with maximum drives.

Storage: Preferred drive bay count (2, 6, 8+)? NVMe cache for reads/writes? Ideal capacity (10 TB, 50 TB+)?

I'd personally say 4-6 drive bay count. Definitely drive bays, not USB and preferably software raid (I don't like hardware raid controllers when software has gotten so good)

OS: TrueNAS, Unraid, OpenMediaVault, Linux, or no preference?

No preference, why not user choice? At least Unraid is proprietary, so that would be my last choice.

Design: Appearance matter? Displayed or hidden?

It will be in a closet for me, so just small.

Budget: Ideal price (excluding drives)?

300-400 but wouldn't mind going high if the price is justified.

Pain Points: What frustrates you about NAS or cloud solutions? Killer feature to switch?

There's no real alternative for Synology but I don't want the proprietary software. Especially now that they're restricting it to Synology drives.

take a look at the aoostar wtr pro/wtr max

Thank you, these look great!

## Cloud vs Edge:

- 100% guarantee that the data I care about will still be there.

- Costs. Scaling to a few TB is already quite expensive. Some stuff i still back to the cloud, but only the most important of data (pictures of my son)

## Use Case

- Storage

- VMs/Docker/Apps: Home Assistant, Photos app (Immich, Synology Photos, etc.), and some other small stuff like that

## Performance

Running a few VMs/Docker image requires some power, but not a lot. I like that I can choose how much.

## Storage

I had for a long time a 2-bay NAS and upgraded the drives. I just built a DYI NAS and I got a Massive ATX case which supports 11-bay. Why? Because buying a drive is cheaper than replacing drives. Having an ATX case I can still run it with 2 bays, and I still have a computer case If i change my mind.

Ideal storage is a mix of HDD (WD RED, so optimized to run 24/7), SSD and NVME. Each of them is useful for something (HDD for longer term storage, as they are cheaper per gb), SSD and NVME for apps usage and caches

## OS

I was using Synology DSM, and now I went for Unraid. I'm curious to see where HexOS goes in the next few years.

## Design

I only care about noise.

## Budget

~1000 Eur

I recommend a 19" Rack (e.g. 2x 1U) with sufficient bays - i.e. 4 or more - (1) so that you can set up a RAID array [1]; and (2) also consider building one NAS for fast access (SSDs, no RAID) and another, larger NAS for protecting against longer-term data loss (HDDs, RAID6). [No, that is not called a "backup", because backups are offsite by definition!]

Synology has perhaps the best usability (my preference, I use a RS422+ on a separate network - internal only - at home and another Synology rack version at work), and QNAP has a slight price advantage (most colleagues' preference). Synology's system software logs a warning if non-synology drives are used, but this is likely just a marketing thing; what is important is that you use "enterprise class" drives for longest lifetime (I don't save on protecting my life's data).

A 19" rack needs space, but the main problem is the generated noise (lucky if you have a room in the basement). I also have several servers, some are more power-hungry than others; one is a specific low-noise, low-energy one that is quite old, but not used as a NAS at the moment.

Many people have experimented with RasPI-based NAS, but for me that does not work as I need a solid, closed case with a more powerful CPU and professional heat management.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

The biggest issue to me is one of security. You have to find a way to expose your NAS to access outside the home to make it truly as convenient as the big tech cloud services. Some vendors help do this for you (Synology with QuickConnect); otherwise you're probably thinking about always using something like Tailscale or setting up a reverse proxy on a VPS that you would have to secure, patch, and monitor.

Tailscale is wonderful for exactly this use case

Some home routers also offer built-in VPN using Wireguard. Works amazingly well with my Fritzbox, near zero setup on the router itself and very simple config on the end devices.

Cloudflare tunnels are free and give you multiple layers of protection (requiring certain auth methods, geoblocking, not needing to expose your IP, etc)

Don't you indirectly give access to Clouflare itself with their product?

If you are proxying outbound it will always be like this.

The alternative is exposing your IP to the internet and having to deal with your own proxying, AI bot scraping insanity, constant port scans and ssh probes, showing up as a target on shodan.io, etc.

If you want to make your home connection the service target for the dregs of the internet be my guess, but couldn't be me.

They are great but the free tier has restrictions like a 100mb file limit and not using it for anything like videos or music. Otherwise it would be perfect for things like Immich. As they stand they are really good for other self hosted services like a recipe manager, a bookmark manager, etc.

I believe that only takes place if you are using Gateway.

There is a fair bit of competition in this space already. I'd try to figure out where your edge is going to come from here.

And I don't think a survey is going to answer that. People want everything at lowest price.

I prefer building my own, but looking at your proposed features - lack of ECC mention stands out

When I built my DIY NAS, the most important factor was: I wanted it _silent_. No constantly spinning drives or fans. It sits in a sideboard in my living room, and I've been using a M1 Mac for years now that is completely silent in normal daily operation, so I've become a bit sensitive to any "computer noises" and wanted my continuously running hardware to be as quiet as possible.

In practice this meant: a passively cooled Intel N100 SoC, a Corsair PSU that shuts down its fan under a certain power threshold (iirc 35W-ish), and SSD-only main storage. I did include a system fan (low-RPM 120mm Noctua) that is actively controlled based on various system temps (stays off 99% of the time), and two HDDs that sit in standby spindown and only spin up for snapshot backups once every three days deep at night.

Very happy with this system so far. It houses my data dump, backups for all my systems (replicated as snapshots to the HDDs), hosts HomeAssistant/Z2M, and hosts a local-only Gitea that keeps up-to-date clones of all my Github and Gitlab repos.

Anything I host that's available on the public Internet, I don't do from home - that's all on various VPS' or AWS. To access my local stuff remotely, I can always VPN in to my home network.

What is your backup strategy? What would happen if your NAS breaks?

Multi-layered.

- Important stuff primarily lives in commercial cloud storage. All of that is also mirrored on the NAS.

- Everything from the NAS SSDs is dumped to the HDDs every 3 days. Both use MergeFS, so if any one drive dies (or both SSDs, or both HDDs), I can replace it and still have a copy of everything.

The entire NAS is also occasionally dumped to an external HDD that's stored at my parents' place. So basically, if the NAS breaks catastrophically, I am at risk of losing some recent stuff that hasn't been dumped there yet, but nothing of actual importance.

> But what are the real trade-offs of edge vs. cloud?

Maintenance - having to fix a networking issue when the kids want to watch their cartoons and you're halfway making dinner. Or when you're away for the weekend and your partner can't connect to the photo server.

When you pay for an online service you're also paying for someone to fix things for you.

True, when it breaks. It's annoying. Netflix has its own issues as well.

My small setup with 1gbps internet tunneled via cloudflare is super handy to be honest. Jellyfin, Frigate works with over 2 months of uptime without issue so far.

Cloud vs. Edge: Why choose a local NAS over iCloud, OneDrive, etc.? Cost, privacy, performance?

Cost, privacy, sometimes performance, mostly because I can run it the way I want it to, so control

Use Case: What tasks would your NAS handle? Jellyfin, Frigate, backups, AI/ML?

My current NAS does all of it, jellyfin, home assistant, backups, LLMs, all the docker apps, etc.

Performance: How key is CPU power, power efficiency, or upgradability (e.g., PCIe slots)? Your LAN speed (1, 2.5, 10, 25 Gbps)?

I have multiple minipcs, 7840HS, N150, etc. NAS is a 5825U. Don't care about pcie slots, can always get an egpu dock if I want later and the 780M is "good enough" for LLMs especially since vram is no longer the limiter with GTT (can do ~112GB VRAM on a 7840/8845HS w/ 128GB RAM if one wants to, but t/s is slow)

LAN speed is just gigabit. If I wanted to upgrade I could get a 2.5gbe managed switch but I just don't currently see the need to. Keeping it simple where I can.

Storage: Preferred drive bay count (2, 6, 8+)? NVMe cache for reads/writes? Ideal capacity (10 TB, 50 TB+)?

4-6

no nvme cache needed, but nvme storage pool used for current NAS.

capacity doesn't matter, can buy/shuck/get used enterprise drives myself.

OS: TrueNAS, Unraid, OpenMediaVault, Linux, or no preference? TrueNAS because ZFS. Or give me a ceph option.

Design: Appearance matter? Displayed or hidden? I don't like trashcan look, synology form factor is nice/aesthetic.

Budget: Ideal price (excluding drives)?

$300-500

Pain Points: What frustrates you about NAS or cloud solutions? Killer feature to switch?

NAS: coil whine, poor QC, no PCIe slot (or it costs way too much)

cloud: subscription hell

switch: already use self-hosted minipcs/NAS.

Your thoughts will build a better NAS. Would you back this on Kickstarter? Thanks!

No, for multiple reasons:

unless you have something unique to bring to the table that aoostar/ugreen/etc. have not brought to the table yet, and

don't do a kickstarter, it has historically been full of scams (such as storaxa if you look them up). Put it on a platform that guarantees a product for money such as a shopify storefront, etc.

Thanks for your feedback. I will explore alternative to kickstarter as well.

Cloud vs. Edge: Cost and performance.

Use Case: Mainly storage but probably also jellyfin, and some ligher apps. Not really AI.

Performance: How key is CPU power, power efficiency, or upgradability (e.g., PCIe slots)?

For me power efficiency and noise would be important. Of course a better CPU is nice.

Your LAN speed (1, 2.5, 10, 25 Gbps)?

10Gbps at least.

Storage: Preferred drive bay count (2, 6, 8+)? NVMe cache for reads/writes? Ideal capacity (10 TB, 50 TB+)?

6 bays + nvme ofr cache.

OS: TrueNAS, Unraid, OpenMediaVault, Linux, or no preference?

Not sure

Design: Appearance matter? Displayed or hidden?

Doesnt matter that much but smaller better.

Budget: Ideal price (excluding drives)?

600 usd

Pain Points: What frustrates you about NAS or cloud solutions? Killer feature to switch?

Would be pretty cool to easily be able to expand bays. Lets say you got 4 bays. And you can then buy some case that connects to the main unit and lets you add additional storage.

Thank you for your answer. Additional drives can be connected via USB. There are 4/5 bay case SATA to USB, some models come with RAID controller as well.

But wont that be super slow?

There are already hundreds of small NAS devices out there, so that is going to be a very, very tough market to address. I follow the entry-level segment as part of industrial device consulting for small companies, and I find two or three a week…

Right now, my fave is this: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2024/12/26/2330 - closely followed by a multi-NVMe device with an N150.

Very different hardware, different use cases, etc.

> edge computing — running your own hardware locally

Is that what edge computing means? Whenever I've heard it described, it always sounded like the same concept as CDNs but for compute.