Mini NASes marry NVMe to Intel's efficient chip

1. bee_rider ◴[04 Jul 25 16:35 UTC] No.44465917[source]▶

Should a mini-NAS be considered a new type of thing with a new design goal? He seems to be describing about a desktop worth of storage (6TB), but always available on the network and less power consuming than a desktop.

This seems useful. But it seems quite different from his previous (80TB) NAS.

What is the idle power draw of an SSD anyway? I guess they usually have a volatile ram cache of some sort built in (is that right?) so it must not be zero…

replies(5): >>44466358 #>>44466430 #>>44466672 #>>44466764 #>>44467174 #

2. transpute ◴[04 Jul 25 17:27 UTC] No.44466358[source]▶

>>44465917 (TP) #

> Should a mini-NAS be considered a new type of thing with a new design goal?

  - Warm storage between mobile/tablet and cold NAS
  - Sidecar server of functions disabled on other OSes
  - Personal context cache for LLMs and agents

3. layer8 ◴[04 Jul 25 17:40 UTC] No.44466430[source]▶

>>44465917 (TP) #

HDD-based NASes are used for all kinds of storage amounts, from as low as 4TB to hundreds of TB. The SSD NASes aren’t really much different in use case, just limited in storage amount by available (and affordable) drive capacities, while needing less space, being quieter, but having a higher cost per TB.

4. CharlesW ◴[04 Jul 25 18:08 UTC] No.44466672[source]▶

>>44465917 (TP) #

> Should a mini-NAS be considered a new type of thing with a new design goal?

Small/portable low-power SSD-based NASs have been commercialized since 2016 or so. Some people call them "NASbooks", although I don't think that term ever gained critical MAS (little joke there).

Examples: https://www.qnap.com/en/product/tbs-464, https://www.qnap.com/en/product/tbs-h574tx, https://www.asustor.com/en/product?p_id=80

5. privatelypublic ◴[04 Jul 25 18:20 UTC] No.44466764[source]▶

>>44465917 (TP) #

With APSD the idle draw of a SSD is in the range of low tens of milliwatts.

6. jeffbee ◴[04 Jul 25 19:25 UTC] No.44467174[source]▶

>>44465917 (TP) #

> less power consuming than a desktop

Not really seeing that in these minis. Either the devices under test haven't been optimized for low power, or their Linux installs have non-optimal configs for low power. My NUC 12 draws less than 4W, measured at the wall, when operating without an attached display and with Wi-Fi but no wired network link. All three of the boxes in the review use at least twice as much power at idle.