NAS vs. Home Server - What's the difference? 

After some deliberation, I've decided to cut out the part of the video criticizing LTT, der8auer and Level1Tech for "ruining the concept of a home server". Linus, Roman and Wendell are all creators that I respect and look up to. In hindsight, criticizing them for the 'sins' of their respective audiences was not fair. As creators, we're not always responsible for our audiences, and definitely shouldn't be held accountable for the few "bad apples" among our viewers who walk away with a wrong idea after watching our content. The 'criticism' on my end came from a place of frustration. A lot of negative comments under my videos are basically a person hearing something from a big tech channel, and then parroting it as an absolute truth that applies in all situations (e.g. "HDDs are dead, you should only be using SSDs). That being said, this is not something Linus, Wendell or Roman have any control over and definitely not something they should be criticized for. All three creators make absolutely clear that their 'overkill' builds are just that - overkill, and aren't meant as realistic build suggestions. So if any of the aforementioned creators watch this video (I doubt it) and wonder what's up with all the LTT bashing in the comments - now you know, and sorry about that 🙃

A server is a role given to a computer, this means anything can potentially be a server

Building small, power-efficient servers that suit the budget and use cases of an average guy is way more interesting than builds that none of us can even dream of imo

Obviously a NAS isn't a real server. I mean for a server you need a CPU, and storage, and memory, and fast networking... and it should be able to run containers or other server software... 🤔

Let's not forget that in those LTT videos, it's always emphasized that these overkill machines don't make much sense for consumers. They also have videos on repurposing your old PC as a home server, highlighting that mini PCs, SOCs, and even old office desktops are surprisingly powerful these days for server use. It's not the creators' fault; it's the audience. These are the same people who insist on needing a specific GPU tier for gaming, a certain number of HP for a car, etc... My home server runs on a 2400G, and it's fantastic-constantly underutilized.

jeff gerling voice randomly is my multiverse of madness

As an enterprise systems administrator, if it counts, I come to your channel regularly as it is the only one that offers affordable and realistic home servers. And yes, I say home servers since, by definition, a server is any computing machine that attends to a client's requests. Ignore the comments of people whose only contact with servers has been the LinusTechTips videos... and continue with those good home server videos!

You inspired me to "downgrade" my home server with a Ryzen 7 1800x and I went with the Topton N5105. I gained hardware video transcoding and my server maxes out at 50 watts instead of 150. I built a console gaming PC with the other parts so it was a win win. I personally think seeing really low cost and low power servers is cooler, tbh. I feel like I'm actually fully utilizing my server hardware instead of a bunch of power pretty much being wasted sitting idle most of the time.

That's the point of a HOME server... not an ENTERPRISE server. Great work!

Hardware heavens, Jeff Geerlings and RaidOwls voice over cameos where a brilliant move. Well done

I suppose some people may not really understand the importance of power efficiency. Especially for those of us living in Europe, there is a clear cost advantage in running newer hardware that sips power compared to enterprise gear. And with the AM4 and AM5 platforms, even running ECC memory is a reality.

If we go to source; IEEE Standard Glossary of Computer Networking Terminology says a server is "In a network, a device or computer system that is dedicated to providing specific facilities to other devices attached to the network. Contrast with: client." So by this definition any computer that can interface with other devices on the network, regardless of hardware, qualifies as a server. And if it is in a 'home' it should qualify as a home-server. But, I mean, if RU-vid commentators says it is not, who the hell IEEE think they are to disagree!!!

I think most of your audience watches your channel, just because you do those builds. Love your videos, keep it up!

Gatekeepers will always gatekeep. Usually the rattlings of the ignorant and/or the unhappy. Great video Wolfgang. Subscribed.

Your practical HOME server builds are why I like your channel. I like seeing the high end stuff too but your videos provide actual useful recommendations. If it serves, it's a server.

Back in 2010, I was a network manager, in a hospital. We had several servers. No one would ever try to claim that they weren't "real" servers. Any one server did one of two different sets of things. Set One was "Deliver files & control who can access those files." Set Two was "Run a database engine." One of the servers also acted as a Microsoft Domain Controller & DHCP server. Plus, we had a dedicated backup server, connected to the tape drive. That's it. None of those servers had any more than a couple of Pentium II processors. They were pretty lame, but they did the job for over 500 connected users. Mostly because almost all of the processing actually took place out on the desktop. When a user "ran a program," they were literally executing a .EXE file that was delivered to them over the network. Often, that program literally modified database files itself, using nothing but lock files to control which user was modifying which bits when. It as all very old school. And some programs accessed one of those database engines. But still, most of the processing happened at the desktop. Hell, an Apache web server does more actual work delivering a typical MySpace page than these old servers did. But.... No one would ever try to say they weren't "real" servers. Yup, gatekeeping has always been a big problem in the tech "community." I had one guy try to gatekeep me because I didn't write any PERL scripts. While I was the network manager of a hospital. I just chalk it up to insecurity problems, and ignore them.

Before the term NAS even existed it was called a file server.

Even a Raspberry Pi Zero can be a home server. As long as it's at home and serving a service. You'll get the hardware that's best for the needs. Even data centers get the machine that's the best for the job, and not the beefiest.

Long story short, server is a very broad term, it encapsulates any computer/electronic device that can serve information to another device through a network. A NAS *is* a server - that's what makes it different from just putting more drives in your computer, it's in the name, *network-attached*. Even if you use the smallest, simplest microcontroller to connect to the network, it's still a server, even if it only functions within a local network, the protocols used are exactly the same.

I really appreciate your builds and the lengths you go to properly balance efficiency and effectiveness... Keep up the good work!

You made building a home server approachable for me when I found you some years ago. Thank you, never stop.

Love the collabs in this video! I think you've done a great service to the community making this video. I don't see why a server cannot serve storage.

Thanks for bringing the problem of power efficiency on the table. People in IT do not care enough about it, however this subject will become more and more concerning in the next decades... Also, thanks to your videos, I've realized how much hardware have improved on energy efficiency. Anyway, it's very appreciable to watch your content, keep continuing building and bringing knowledge to the world :)

Love the video, for me it is fun to watch the crazy projects der 8auer and LTT are doing. When it comes to the point of researching stuff for my own homelab I always come back to your channel. Because I know you won´t forget the aspect of power efficiency and lower budget limits. The balance between power consumption and pure performance is very important to me since prices for electrical power is on an alltime high in germany. Thanks for your videos!

I am in the process of figuring out how I want to build my home server. Your channel is reasonable when it relates to what and how to build compared to the other channels you mentioned. Thats why a watch it! Keep up the good work!

Your videos were one of the first if not the first videos I ever watched when I got into home server. Being from the UK, my one and only priority is to build cheap and power efficient servers. Watching your video, I build another small server using Topton motherboard and PicoPSU and I love it and has become my full-time server. With 16 LXCs and 2 VMs (Truenas and CentOS), CPU, utilisation idles around 12%.

Your channel has been a big help for me in getting lower power use, without losing too much in performance and features. Keep doing what you're doing! :)

even if your cell phone runs an app that another user can connect to, its a server

"However, I am very petty and also happen to have a lot of free time on my hands" already you have my respect

I really enjoy your videos on smart and affordable home servers. That's basically what I want for my apartment that has no dedicated/separate tech room: a small home server that handles backups, media, and might offer processing power if you want to run some docker containers on it or compile code, while not using too much energy, putting too much heat into the room, or being too loud. You provide a lot of inspiration and ideas on what to buy and how to set it up, but I gotta admit I didn't settle for a system yet or buy it - but some day I will for sure.

Ironically this video convinced me to watch your Perfect Home Server video, I saw it in my recommended video before but I thought "nah, I'm just looking for NAS, not a server", but since some people consider it "just" a NAS, maybe it's not overkill for what I'm wanting to build.

maybe ppl have the wrong definition of what a home server really is. is a dual socket xeon v2 kit with redundant psu from ali a home server? or as mentioned LTT builds? nice that you brought up the comparison between 2023 corei3 vs 2013 xeons. i'm more with you on your power efficiency analysis and SFF wife-friendly builds and self-host/secure/backup/productivity side apps that we modest homelabers care about.

I really appreciate your approach to energy efficient servers, a lot of the US-based audience don’t understand the costs of running old enterprise hardware. I’ve been guilty of building on decommissioned enterprise, but I have shifted to building less power-hungry and quieter machines. One thing I would love to see from you is building these types of machines on rack-mount cases (specifically interested in a small rack that you could keep inside your office, with networking hear + a few servers, maybe more interested if they fit in a networking rack which is less deep)

I've finally finished building my home server with your help and I just want to thank you again for the content you produce, I got to learn a lot from this and have fun while doing it :)

Lol.. love the group of RU-vidrs you tapped to read comments. Hardware Haven? Jeff Geerling? Well done!! I don't care for gatekeepers either.. I mean, Isn't a NAS a specialized and scaled file 'SERVER'? When was that 'service' eliminated as a 'service' provided by servers? And seriously, I'd immediately terminate the services of a contractor who tried to sell me on a dual processor Epyc server to provide email and file storage to an office of 4 real estate agents. Now, it might be seriously cool to have one sitting in my basement running nothing but Jellyfin, piHole and in instance of TruNAS.. but it would absolutely be overkill. Until I can afford that kind of power draw on a daily basis though, I'll stick with my i3-4130 idling at 19 watts.. and I'll keep calling it a Server.

Very, very cool that you got your YT content creator friends to do the voice over for the 'comments' 😁😁😁 I thought you had some really amazing voice-changer AI tweaked to do that for you. But, no, those voices were real. Super cool !! (BTW, I am still hoping you'll make a video about a Intel N100 server-build)

Great video! I spend a lot of time recently on reddit (those are words I'm not sure I should be proud of) trying to explain to first time homelabbers that they don't need to spend $2K on new AMD Ryzen multithread monsters to stream their movies and offload photos and videos from their smartphones. That they can start with a prebuilt NAS and/or a second hand enterprise mini pc for $100 from ebay. It's an uphill battle sometimes because the people you describe that absolutely believe that a prebuilt NAS is completely useless for anything BUT serving files, keep writing walls of text on how they should build out their first rackserver in excrutiating detail... I am about to move my 18 docker containers that I run on my NAS (with a weak 4c CPU and 8GB of ram) to said six, seven year old enterprise mini pc. And I expect that to be a big upgrade that will hold me over for the next few years. Now I might add addtional mini pc's to build a cluster of them. But that is a whole other thing.

I use a very similar definition as you on my channel. For me, a home server has to have virtualization at least. My server is also an old thin client PC, btw.

Those power-efficient home server builds of yours are precisely why I keep visiting your channel. You've got excellent content ideas, presentation and I appreciate your videos!

It's so scary to recognize every signle youtuber voice in the vid without seeing any source

I actually agree with wolfgang, the difference between the 2 in a homelab environment has become defunct since you can run either on just about anything these days, technically speaking you'd be hard pressed to distinguish the difference even in an enterprise environment since in my career almost 25 years ive seen repurposed thin clients being used in the field, hell i run a shucked, repurposed mobile workstation (laptop) in an aftermarket 1U rack mount case running ubuntu server and its currently responsible for 1 part of my self hosted services

Great video. I own a synology and it’s plenty powerful to run all the services I need including ad block, plex, home bridge, and few other docker containers. It works flawlessly and never had an issue with performance. I got excited about getting a decommissioned enterprise server but didn’t because I wasn’t sure what else i would do with it except maybe sleep knowing I got one.

It's all a matter of semantics. To an IT purist, a machine that serves anything, whether it be files, services or whatever, to a 'client' piece of software or hardware, then it qualifies as a server. Within that scope, every NAS is a server, no matter how low or high the hardware specs are.

5:02 I will also debate the notion that a "real home server" needs to run VMs. A home server is a machine that _serves_ some amount of services that is located in your home. Nothing more, nothing less. My lowly Raspberry Pi 4 is being used as a home server, with every service running as a Docker container. Is it the most capable server? No. Is it as scalable as a more complex and expensive solution? Also no. Does it serve my current needs? Absolutely it does.

I use 4th gen intel NUCs (4 machines) as my home servers. Those work great have multiple services on them, including Proxmox as hypervisor. I fully support the idea, that servers could be low budget and low power and somewhat low end hw

this is very informative, thanks! I have no clue what to do next so time to binge some of your videos and learn!

I am here exactly for thencontent you do. Building simple, cheap and most importantly low power home servers. Thanks for the effort!

I heard JeffGeerling's voice and immediately recognize it

Totally agree that any simple machine can be used as a home lab server so long it gets the job done. My home server, a 4-core, 4GB RAM mini PC 🔥😂, has been reliably providing answers to my queries for almost four years. Running various Docker containers, including my website, Jellyfin, and numerous other services, it operates flawlessly. However, I've recently upgraded to another mini PC featuring a Ryzen 9 processor with 8 cores, 16 threads, and 64GB of RAM. I intend to utilize this system for at least a decade 😂😂."

I think most of your audience watches your channel, just because you do those builds. Love your videos, keep the high efficiency low power home servers coming!

I followed your Topton based build and loving it. Thanks!!!

I've come across and watched a few videos of yours in the past. I just watched this whole video and because of your tact & class and handling of this situation, you've got a subscriber for life. I have a pretty decent 11th gen Intel build, I also have a 6-year-old q-nep, and a latte panda that I'm trying to consolidate everything into more efficient home server build. Server build. The qnap works, but there's a few more advanced things that I want to do that I feel like the software limits me. So I'm in the process of learning how to build out the latte panda as an unrated server. I'll go back through your videos and see if there's anything I could utilize. Keep up the great work!

Perfect video. Love your builds, please keep doing what you're doing!

Fantastic video Wolfgang!! Hope you will always have more free time in your hands! Have a great Christmas holiday man!

I ran a two home servers in Atom 330 motherboards for many years. The cost of the board with CPU and memory was much cheaper than the power use over a year of the dual Athlon motherboards I'd been given with a 48U rack I have in my office. They rain email, DNS, DHCP, internal chat and network monitoring as well as file sharing. Definitely servers. I often use retired desktop motherboards for my home servers as I don't need the grunt and power use of enterprise kit, and swapping out a failed part is quick, easy and cheap, particularly with Linux being happy to cope with the chipset changes. Even spun up a Linux install on an old Digital Pentium desktop back in the day to run Bind to cover for an RS6000 while waiting for the hardware to be repaired. Nobody noticed a thing.

thank you wolfgang for taking the time to answer the most basic of questions. i find when you ask "experts" basic questions(as you stated) they just brush them off. i can't learn anything if info is gatekept and them being on there high horse with non helping attitude doesn't help either. looking forward to more of your stuff.

My server is old ITX board with AMD E350 paired with 4GB of RAM and 8TB HDD. I'm running 7 docker containers on it and OMV bare metal. I haven't had any single problem in past few years and it serves me just fine. People usually go way overkill on their servers, I've ran RPi 4 few years ago as NAS with few docker containers and it worked just fine. It was cheap and barely used any power. Your builds are way more interesting to me than LTT or any other RU-vidrs builds because people usually don't care about power efficiency or noise, they just build normal PC and stick bunch of HDDs in it without optimizing anything.

One of the best videos on the subject of home servers with a lot of truth in it. Thank you.

Really enjoyed the video and the voiceover cameos at the beginning.

What the internet lacks of is non-boasting low dollar practical computer/server builds that you present. I emphasise the word PRACTICAL, as most of us (unlike rich LTT) do need to consider the costs of setting up and running NAS/home servers. Well done Wolfgang! Keep making your videos!

Well said. I agree. I have an old C2550 since 2015 and an N5105 for my server.

Any that servs is a "server" if people want to be petty. A toaster running Pi-hole is a server. It doesn't have to be some crazy mainframe filling rooms in a dedicated space. I'll prefer anything energy efficient that is quiet, over headaches from my power bill

Now that's the way to defend practical, high efficiency, low-power consumption, home lab construction. I appreciate your videos for exactly that reason. Kudos on the Tech-tube celebrity comment voice-overs as well. Happy holidays and i look forward to more of your great content in 2024!

Thanks for the video Wolfgang 👍

Exactly. The hardware needed to do the job(s), low energy usage, and preferably a small form case. You got it!

Dude... you had me at 'very petty and happen to have a lot of time on my hands'. Oh, and nice work getting Raid Owl to read at least one of the comments!!

As someone who is looking into the low end budget low energy area, chances are I need both a Server and a NAS, so the fact your videos offer the best of both is exactly what I want!

I absolutely love the collaboration with all the other great RU-vid content creators! It's great to see everyone support each other, including the content creators! Another great video and I hope to see more little colabs like this!

I really like your presentations, even though I'm just starting to learn about servers and NAS related tech. My only goal is to build & maintain my own Home Lab/VLAN/Server/NAS type of system to store security cam video, backups of my home theater library, some home automation and common office networking, all behind a VPN and firewall that can stop ads, tracking, data collection without any cloud services and a minimal amount of Wi-Fi as well as the amount of battery back-up needed to maintain this system for 10 hours of power failure. Needless to say, I have a lot to learn. Just getting to the point of knowing what features to incorporate took a while, but worth the effort to begin catching up with what's available.

I was running my home server on a Core 2 Quad for about two years, through 2021-2022, worked wonderfully. Others came to me with electricity usage concerns, so I got convinced into moving it all to a 2011 macbook with a dead GPU, no display, no CD drive, etc. That solution's been a bit more limited in capacity,moved from a 1tb drive to a 750 but it's worked and is still what I'm using today. I did recently pick up a complete 6700K and 32GB ram system for free, I plan on getting a NAS style enclosure to replace its case, filling it out with 2tb SSDs in a RAID5, and setting up my next server setup around that. To be honest, it's wildly overkill, a 6700K on a home server that mostly just runs a NextCloud instance, but I got it, I got nothing else for it, so to server use it goes.

Totally agree. A QNAP or Synology is all you really need for a home network.

I really had a laugh when I heard Jeffs voice on one of the comments.I downsized my i3 machine in the past weeks and now use a n100 mini pc for most homeserver actions. The 4K transcoding on the GPU works also great and with so little wattage which is crazy.

Man ur server builds are great! All of ur vids are and thought me alot thanks for that i got here in the Netherlands my masters degree thanks largely to ur vids

Thanks for the clarification!

You actually made a real point here Wolfgang. My homelab actually has 2 parts: one running the stuff I need at home and which is 24/7 on (storage server, router, very small machine having enough juice to run a DC and a minecraft server based on a very old Core i5 I recovered from a thrown away machine. The thing has a solid 32Gb of RAM. It litterally runs my home on a day to day basis and when it fails, a lot of things go south in the house. But it never did so far. And the day it does, I have some old laptop laying around with a bit less of memory (Minecraft server consumes most, but that is not critical). The only thing I gotta do is connecting the 2 hard drives holding the VM's to it and I am up and running again. Besides of that I got this kind of almost enterprise level machine I built myself based on server grade components: Xeon scalable, 256Gb of RAM, SDD's provide the storage for the VM's. But the thing is: i only spin it up when I need to test a specific infrastructure for work or for studying purposes. Meaning: it is off for most of the time (it has BMC/IPMI on the motherboard, so I can spin it up when I need it. Takes less than 5 min to boot and bring online all of the VMs on it. And even on that machine I made a sin when I hear most of the youtubers: it runs on HyperV for crying out loud.... (did make this choice as it is almost zero maintenance and combined with Microsoft VMM, building a new VM is basically a couple of clicks.) This is the kind of machine a LOT of people think you need to have at home. But they forget that this kind of machines is used to host large database servers, hold VM's for software development and capable of compile large portions of source code in a minimum of time. FOr studying purposes e.g. I need to be able to run Sharepoint server, SCCM, WSUS (yes, I am a MS guy). But guess you all get the point: this is for stuff about 99% of the people do not need at all... So why throw thousands of dollars or Euros in it if you just use it to host a plex server, some photos and 3 or 4 VMs. My take: if you have something between 500 and 1000 euros you can build ALL of the homeserver you need with a ridiculous amount of RAM and redundant storage and a decent processor... Me personally, if I friends ask me to build a homeserver for them (happened a couple of times) this channel is my go to place, and also the NAS Compares channel when it comes to storage {SDDs and HDDs)

The intro is pure gold.

It’s crazy that people even dare to call you untrustworthy … Everytime I watch a video from you, I enjoy how well researched, thought-through and well-argued the conent is. Thank you for all the inspiration, shared knowledge, fun and the work you put into this. Dont think about those who always find something to complain about. Keep doing your thing :)

I really like your builds. For me I've went with a used mini-pc from afb, when it was on sale. It's a bit overkill for the stuff I do, but it's always nice to have some spare performance. Most people also don't have the space for a rack etc.

I 100% relate to the "I'm very petty and have a lot of free time on my hands" comment! I love the channel, perspective, and ideas, keep the great work going! Thank you!

To back-up your point, here is a direct quote from Cisco's Networking Basics online course that I've been going through. Those people in the comments could clearly benefit from taking this course. "Servers are hosts that have software installed which enable them to provide information ... to other hosts on the network." And just to get those people questioning their realities, here's another quote from Cisco: "It is also possible for one computer to run both client and server software at the same time.".

Thanks for sticking to basics, old tech, checking your actual CPU load & what works to get the job done. Plus, good to explain what a NAS is. If one is serious about it, yes, it's a different machine, just for handling storage that reconstructs data when drives fail & you replace them. The other stuff on too is extra services that are "nice". I'm looking to do a project for general home build that automatically backs up my devices with no fuss

luv it I always keep coming back to your channel

can'T wait to see your next NAS+ build! ;)

Thank you for your work.

i didn't noticed the voices until the red owl spoke 😂😂😂😂

I love this. Back in the 2000's i worked a lot with network administration. One place I worked ran with large Dell and Compaq servers costing thousands and thousands of dollars. What did all those servers do? They provided network drives to the company that owned it.... lots and lots and lots of harddrives attached and pretty much notning else. Would anyone say that those machines, running Windows NT and Windows 2000 Server weren't servers? Nope. A server is a computer or system that provides resources, data, services, or programs to other computers over a network.... and that's it. Great video!

I have always found the topic of networking/servers to be daunting, this video really inspired me to start learning about it to be honest.

I really like your Videos Wolfgang. TNX a lot! As usual, great information.

really good explanation of these two machines. I also like the minimalist hardware idea!!!

Good and informative video. I like that you answered the comments with a sense of humor.

I think some people might have confused servers with enterprise hardware. A server is just a computer that provides one or more services. It can take the form of a RPi, mini PC, desktop PC, laptop PC, or rack-mount enterprise hardware.

Completely on par with you. A sever is something or someone who do a service. A public employee is a server. Any hardware that serves something to other machines or itself is a server. For example when you install Appserve or just MySQL in your laptop, now your laptop is a server. About the hardware, people should be wise enough to see what you are trying to achieve here. Power efficiency, low noise and even room temperature friendiness is a must in a real home server. Nowadays people think that the only way to have a server at home is to buy the best decomissioned enterprise computer money you can buy and place it at home. Doing that usually backfires like when you buy a used but ready to fly Cessna and now you are trying to park that thing in your parking space at the building where you live. When you see channels like L1, STH or even LTT, the presenter does not pay the multiple associated bills from his pocket. Those are full blown bussineses that happens to do YT content creation and gained an audience strong enough to pay those high prices of electric service, dedicated channel internet services, offices and employees.

as an Software developer I feel a bit of anger when people forget what a term means and where it comes from. Server from to serve is a role/task description. I have refered to a lot as a server (because thats what they did) from phones streaming music to others in the room for sillent discos to rack mount pc's(more presise description of what people think of as a server)

Enjoyed the celebrity voices! If any of your guests are curious as to whether it was worth their effort; while I recognized Raid Owl, Jeff Geerling and Colten (HH) right; I was unaware of "f4mi" and "alexktz" until the credits rolled, and have now subscribed to both. Thanks and a Merry Christmas to all!

Awesome video! Keep them coming

why are all of my favorite RU-vidrs in the intro

"Network Associated Storage" Thank you, that was all I wanted explained

Jesus christ... There is always gonna be that little collection of "Actually..."-people that live in a basement, never go outside and lives in a bubble. Good informational video like always Wolfgang. Keep up the great work.

Excellent channel and great view point expressed here.

Я тоже сначала использовал дома сервер на 2х 2643v3, затем перешел на 10600к с урезанным теплопакетом в 30вт в пике. А сейчас вообще перешел на g5420 в сервере на даче и для моих нужд он идеально подходит