Summary
- A NAS serves as networked storage that’s accessible from multiple computers, and can even be used to run services in your homelab.
- You don’t need high-end hardware to run a NAS, old desktops work well with the right operating system.
- Every homelab should have a NAS for many reasons that extend far beyond just providing a place to house files.
No homelab is finished without a solid storage setup. This can be done in any number of ways, but my favorite is with a dedicated NAS. As such, I don’t think any homelab is truly complete (or even started) without a NAS. Here’s why.
What Is a NAS?
If you’ve never heard of a NAS before, let’s start by breaking down what a NAS is. NAS stands for network attached storage. In its simplest form, a NAS is a hard drive that you can access from your home network. Having a hard drive that can be accessed from your network means you can move files to and from that drive anywhere in your house without having to be physically plugged into it.
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What Is a NAS (Network Attached Storage)?
A NAS is useful for sharing a pool of storage between multiple computers or users on your local network.
This can be achieved by plugging an external hard drive into your Wi-Fi router’s USB port. It can also be done with a dedicated NAS server.
A NAS server is, typically, a dedicated computer that serves the sole purpose of hosting your network-attached storage devices. There are pre-built systems for this, like those from Synology or Ugreen. But, you can also build your own NAS using an old desktop or even retired enterprise-grade server equipment.
If you choose to run a home-built NAS server, then you’ll want to pick a storage-focused operating system for it to run. Typically, most people choose either Unraid or TrueNAS Scale when building their own system. These two operating systems are similar, but very different.
What All Can You Do With a NAS?
After that intro to what a NAS is, you might think that all a NAS is good for is storing files. You’d be partially right.
While a NAS’s primary function is storing files, it can do so much more. Depending on the operating system you choose and the hardware you have, there’s a good chance your NAS will also be able to run Docker services and possibly even handle virtual machines too.
The extent of what your NAS can do really depends on the power it has. If you’re using a Raspberry Pi 3B, for instance, to make a single USB hard drive available on your network, then you won’t have a lot of processing overhead. Be that as it may, you’ll still be able to run some lightweight services in addition to handling file transfers on an older Raspberry Pi, but I wouldn’t do much more than that.
However, if you repurpose an old desktop, or pick up some old enterprise-grade hardware off eBay, then the sky’s the limit for what your NAS can do.
For the last three or so years, I’ve run a single NAS in my homelab. That server has 70TB of available storage, 64GB of DDR3 ECC RAM, and two older Intel Xeon processors that combined have 12 cores and 24 threads. It’s overkill for a storage server, but it was cheap on eBay and gave me 12 drive bays to fill, which is how I ended up having 70TB of available storage.
Given the resources I have on that server, I was able to run 26 Docker containers, as well as a virtual machine. All the while, it handled my file storage, functioned as my Plex media server, ran as my Minecraft server, and even hosted some of my public web services. The server never broke a sweat. I always had plenty of available RAM, and I rarely saw the CPUs spike in utilization unless there was a very specific processor-heavy task running. But, at the end of the day, that’s what this server was designed to do. It’s a retired enterprise-grade server, after all.
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You Should Learn Docker Before Buying a NAS (Here’s How)
Docker can turn your NAS into your own cloud that can host your own apps and automate your home.
All that to say, a NAS is much more than just a storage system. It can be your storage server, but also your Minecraft server, media server, web host, smart home hub, virtual machine host, and much more. If you can think it, then it can very likely do it with the right NAS operating system.
You Don’t Need High-End Hardware to Run a NAS
With everything I’ve talked about so far, you might be thinking that you need ultra-high-end hardware to run a NAS, like my big rack-mount system. You don’t. While I do have a massive server, the processors in my system launched in 2014. The server itself was released in September 2013. That makes the system over 11 years old now. However, it still runs amazingly. I have two other servers in my rack that I use. Both of those servers came out in October 2014, which makes them over 10 years old at this point.
Prior to having the rack-mounted hardware that I do now, I used an old desktop of mine that I had retired when I upgraded to a new gaming system. Similarly, a friend of mine uses his old i7-4790K gaming PC that he recently upgraded from. That processor also came out in 2014. I’ve also seen people use desktops from the early 2010s or even late 2000s to function as a NAS. You can actually get away with some pretty bare-bones hardware when setting up your storage server.
The moral of the story is, you don’t need the 6GHz i9-14900K processor, 128GB of DDR5 RAM, and an RTX 5090 to run your NAS. While that would give you a lot of processing power, for sure, it’s just not necessary.
If you’re just starting out with a homelab, then check Facebook Marketplace for a used desktop someone is selling for $100 or less and use that. So long as it has a semi-modern processor and at least 8GB of RAM, you will have plenty of horsepower to run a NAS.
I’d say, if you can get an i5 processor that’s around 10 years old or newer with 8GB or more of RAM, then you’ll have more than enough power to run a NAS as well as some additional services. A NAS like that should easily run Plex, a few smaller Minecraft servers, some web services, Home Assistant, and more. It’s relatively easy to find desktops like that cheap, and you might even have one lying around at home.
The main drawback of using consumer-grade desktops instead of a rack-mounted server as a NAS is that you’ll only have a handful of SATA ports for drives. The average desktop has somewhere between four and six SATA ports, typically. Still, you could just pick up an LSI HBA (host bus adapter) with some SAS to SATA cables and enjoy plugging in as many hard drives as you could want, all for around $35 extra.
Once you have an old desktop and a few hard drives, that’s all you need to run a solid NAS.
Every Homelab Needs at Least One NAS
Whether you’re just getting started building out your homelab, or you’ve been homelabbing for some time, everyone in this hobby needs a NAS. They’re a multipurpose piece of equipment that can handle so many tasks in your homelab, all within one single case.
Personally, while I started with just one NAS, I now run two storage servers in my homelab. One is the 70TB storage array I already mentioned, which functions as my primary media server storage. The other is a 27TB server for my photography and videography storage, as well as my network video recorder, VM backups, document storage, and more. The second NAS was a recent addition as I begin to get back into landscape photography more. I wanted to cancel my Google Drive subscription where I was storing over a decade of my photos, and bring everything local. So, instead of adding storage to my desktop, I got another NAS for cheap on the second-hand market.
I picked my new server up from Reddit’s r/homelabsales, which is a place that I would suggest you check frequently if you’re getting into building out a homelab. The server came with 96GB of RAM and 10 3TB drives, all for $300. I was even able to work out a trade with the other person, so it didn’t cost me any money out of pocket, and I got a new server out of the deal.
Just know that my homelab didn’t start out like this. My first NAS was a Synology DS416+ nearly a decade ago. I upgraded to a DS416Play from there, and eventually, moved to a more powerful setup like I have today.
Synology 2 Bay NAS DiskStation DS220+
Synology’s DS220+ is one of the best NAS devices around, and perfect for most anyone’s needs. It’s good for archiving data, can be used with Plex, and is relatively inexpensive.
Really, where you start off in your NAS journey doesn’t matter. Your first storage system could just be an old laptop with its internal hard drive accessible over the network. It could be a Raspberry Pi or a full-blown system like I have. Just, whatever stage you’re in, make sure your homelab has a NAS. You’ll thank me later.
