Comments on: The Jurassic Park Effect

By: Shane

Shane — Thu, 17 Jan 2019 15:59:57 +0000

I appreciate the article and understand what you are saying. I do have file servers on real operating systems at present. However, I have a case in which I simply need two chunks of simple storage and less time getting them running.

I have a backup software that runs throughout the day getting delta block snapshots and I having lost a CentOS 7 RAID 5 and then RAID6 as the storage had thought of throwing a NAS device at two locations connected by fiber and putting the backup software on a third machine so it writes to both in a redundant fashion. The only purpose of these two boxes would be storage space for this one backup system and time saved of getting things up and running. In this scenario, where it is not a filesystem and not the only backup strategy in place, would you recommend 2 hardware NAS boxes for simply saving time?

By: Steven

Steven — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 16:16:06 +0000

Thanks for sharing those thoughts. Now I suddenly understand why I’m always doubtfull about picking the right solution to “solve a problem” or fullfill this kind of “needs”.

Even with a NAS solution bought from a vendor (like Qnap, Netgear, Synology) I’m always wondering the “what if the hardware breaks down, disks still readable in newer hardware”?

For that reason I also looked into FreeNAS and others, but still doubting about those solutions. This article surtenly makes me think about this again and might get me to go an entirely other direction (FreeBSD for example).

By: Vyacheslav

Vyacheslav — Sun, 03 Jul 2016 13:39:42 +0000

Anything that FreeNAS can do, FreeBSD an do.
I assume there should be “can do”.

Great article. Thank you.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 31 Jul 2015 16:49:37 +0000

I thoroughly enjoyed reading that. Thanks.

By: CR

CR — Thu, 30 Jul 2015 22:21:40 +0000

A further developement of this trend for NAS OSes is having a NAS OS running on very restrictive and underpowered hardware, like a Raspbery Pie running a file server and maybe a media streamer library and duties of that ilk to boot. I find this ultimately absurd, suffering from the all the restrictions of the worst capabilities of hardware and software combined.

By: Kevin Kerrigan

Kevin Kerrigan — Mon, 27 Jul 2015 19:07:52 +0000

because BACON!

By: ddwcarter

ddwcarter — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 14:21:28 +0000

Great write up. I love how you tied in the Jurassic Park effect motif with the actual topic. This was something I had never realized about NAS OSes. It was viewing insightful and has a very Spock-like (logical) approach to justifying what you THINK you need. It really speaks to me because a pet peeve of mine is people doing something just because they can, disregarding whether they SHOULD. For example, frying candy bars and putting bacon sundaes. You CAN do it, but WHY?