I bought into the ecosystem while taking my networking cert classes back in 2017. They were much cheaper than Cisco gear for business-grade networking, and overall I’ve been happy with them.

Their security offerings are locally managed, and you can make local accounts, but I just bought a NAS from them and I had to sign in with my ubiquiti account first before I could make a local account, and it seems the cloud account has some privileges that you can’t give to local super admins.

So now I’m having second thoughts. I figure since it’s enterprise-grade stuff they can’t really make it cloud-dependent like you see on the consumer side since a lot of companies need air-gapped networks. On the other hand, on those occasions that I didn’t have internet access and hadn’t yet made a local-only account, I was locked out, so…

Regarding the NAS specifically, I use a TruNAS system at work and it works well enough on a rack server, but since it uses ZFS I don’t know it would be good for home use. What alternatives are there?

Are there any truly FOSS networking options? I figure especially on the switching side you need purpose-built hardware, right? There aren’t generic motherboards with 48 network ports you can buy.

I like my Unifi setup, I’m just scared of a rug pull.

  • talkingpumpkin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    22·
    2 days ago

    A NAS is just a computer and TrueNAS is just Linux (ok, TrueNAS CORE is Bsd).

    You can run zfs on any machine: they recommend loads of RAM for optimal performance, which you don’t need at home (or at work, unless your job is running a data center).

    You can choose from a number of FOSS NAS-specific operating systems, plus all linux distros (since you post here, I’d assume you either can or aim to administer a home sever?)… why would you go with a proprietary OS?

    There are several FOSS operating systems for network equipment too (keyword “NOS”), but as far as I’m aware none that work on small soho/edge switches. OpenWrt runs both my router (mikrotik) and WAPs (tplink), but the two 8-port switches I have at home (also tplink) run their proprietary firmware.

    • early_riser@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      31·
      2 days ago

      why would you go with a proprietary OS?

      I’m happy with my Unifi network and security setup, especially the single pain of glass. I had assumed the NAS would integrate with that system, but it doesn’t seem to.

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
      3·
      1 day ago

      You can run OpenWRT on switches without issue. Linux and thus openwrt support hardware switches so Openwrt really just manages the config.

      Also I personally really like Truenas as it simplifies management.