An energy-saving NAS can be set up on the basis of an inexpensive thin client. We show how to get up to 200 TB of storage in the small cans.
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20 Min.
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The T620 PLUS thin client from HP, expanded by a 4-way M.2 controller from DeLock, together with FreeBSD or one of the many free NAS distributions, results in a small, energy-saving NAS.
(Image: Michael Plura)
Minimalist PCs in the form of thin clients hardly affect the electricity bill, have sufficient performance and are currently available in large numbers and cheaply as leasing returns. This makes them ideal for building a NAS.
The alternatives all have weaknesses: Inexpensive consumer NAS are too weak and completely overloaded with software, an old PC as a NAS requires too much power and the Raspi NAS is simply too lame and the selection of software is too limited. A Thin NAS has only one catch: Installing enough data storage is not easy.
We show how you can still accommodate enough data storage in a thin client. We present three possible solutions for this: a minimal NAS with an operating system and data storage on one drive, a Frankenstein NAS with a self-made mount for two external drives, and a real thin NAS with a PCIe controller for four M.2 modules .
