Working with IT as I have for 25 years, combined with my digital perfectionism and love for gadgets, obviously creates a need to have a very versatile and powerful home IT solution - right?. For the last 20 years that has been solved by having an actual server on my attic or in a cupboard somewhere. A server was the only way to make sure I had all the features, performance and flexibility I needed. During the last 15 years, I went from one to seven servers (using Virtual Machines) to create the perfect solution.

This included:

• A Windows Domain Controller
• An Exchange Mailserver
• A File and Web server
• A PLEX Media Server
• A pfSense Firewall
• A Virtual Desktop VM for remote access desktop work
• A Backup server to create local and remote backups of all of the above. 

My entire family uses iPhones and iPads for media consumption and DVR access, and we have several PC's for work/school/photo needs, so fileservices beyond basic cloudservices is very much needed in my house.

"A server was the only way to make sure I had all the features, performance and flexibility I needed"

But lately I have been in a "simplify my life" process, where I have focused on removing all the things that is "nice to have" but use my time and energy in management and support. Inevitably that also included the big and power hungry server on my attic and it's million services and complicated VM setup. So to start simplifying, I started moving my Mail service and Websites to a cloud solution, and eventually did a "make or break" list of home services I needed no matter what. Since my current server was getting old, I also wanted to evaluate if cutting enough services could allow me to replace it with something much smaller. A secondary but almost equally important objective, was to cut power consumption CONSIDERABLY in the process.

I used to have a HP ML110G7 Server with an Eaton 1000VA networked UPS in front, that combined used 88 Watts at the socket in idle mode, and about 96 watts on the average 24 hours a day. It provided me with 500Gb SSD and 9Tb diskspace after Raid - most of which was used for VM's, templates, backups and such.

The "make or break" list was eventually boiled down to the following need:

• 3 Tb harddrive (slow) diskspace that can do spindown/powersave when not used
• 240Gb SSD (Fast) diskspace for always on services and logging
• The ability to run PLEX Media Server including my home DVR solution
• The ability to run a pfSense Firewall solution
• Builtin snapshot service for quick Ransomware recoverability
• Diskspace should be expandable by replacing "on the fly" with bigger disks.

Optimally I would just get an appliance(s) solution that would take as little time as possible to setup and maintain. After a lot of research on features, performance, maintenance need and power consumption, I elected to go with a simple QNAP NAS solution instead of a new server. This little box solves all of my "make and break" needs in a simple appliance that uses very little power. The NAS itself obviously provides the needed fileservice, and using the included APP store, i could install a PLEX Media Server instance on it that can do DVR using my HD Homerun Expand Network Tuner. The box has two network interfaces, so by using the Virtualisation Station APP, I run a pfSense Firewall as a virtual machine on the NAS using one of the network interfaces as uplink to my ISP Fiber box (300/300Mbps).

"This little box solves all of my "make and break" needs in a simple appliance that uses very little power"

The beautiful part is that this QNAP NAS is equipped with a J3455 Quadcore CPU and 8Gb RAM that has power enough, to realtime transcode Full HD media and liveTV to iPhone/iPad consumption using CPU only (No hardware assist). PLEX Media Server will support hardware assist soon (currently in beta), and then it can handle all kinds of realtime transcoding with a much higher destination quality and resolution, but for now it can cope with our iDevice needs. Also, the hardware allows for running a proper virtual pfSense firewall that can handle my 300/300mbit Internet access.

This little box combined with an APC 750VA smart UPS uses only 21 watts at the socket in idle mode, and about 24 watts on average. This translates into a ~200$ power savings a year - not bad :-)

I reused two 240Gb SSD's from my server to create an always on mirrored disk, that contains the pfSense Firewall VM, my PLEX Media server and the users Home folders. That way my mirror of two reused 3Tb Harddisks does not need to spin due to continuous access, and they can power down unless we are using media, or I'm editing photo's - All of which is located on the harddrives.

"This little box combined with an APC 750VA smart UPS uses only 21 watts at the socket in idle mode"

The final issue is backup, and that is also handled very very smoothly by using an APP that synchronizes all of my data (encrypted) to the cloud. You can read more about my backup thoughts, setup and it's impact on my photo workflow in the "Using a NAS to secure my photo workflow" article by clicking here. 

With that I hope you can see why a NAS today really is a very mature homesolution - maybe you even need one yourself?

PS: I'll post a review of my Qnap TS-453B NAS soon.