Models are spread across 2, 4, 6, and 8 bay SATA drive devices as well as a 4 slot M2.
CPU’s range from intel N100 (4 core, 4 thread) upto 12th gen I5.
Max memory ranges from 16Gb to 64Gb
The specs are fine for a NAS and a few lightweight containers.
Overall, I like the look of these (similar to Synolgy in terms of styling). In general, I like the other UGreen products I have bought.
At this point I have not been willing to pre-order one from their kickstarter. There is no consensus that unraid/truenas/ or other 3rd party OS will run or be supported. My main concern would be support for the RAID controller and which NIC chipset is being used. I also have concern about lack of ECC support
UGreen is running this initial product run as a kickstarter. To me, this is a crazy idea for an established company. So far, they have over $5 million pledged and almost 11,000 backers. (It also appears only US and German residents can participate)
I watched this video the other day that mentions you can install other OS with some bios tweaks.
Don’t think its supported officially by any means, but currently firmware seems to accept 3rd party installs.
edit: according to the video, it seems like ugreen as mentioned this is a feature, and that hardware warranty would be supported, provided the 3rd party OS didn’t cause the hardware error
The trouble with NAS appliances from Ugreen, Qnap, Synology, or whomever is that the RAID implementation and hardware are proprietary. You are locked into buying a second identical unit for backups, or a replacement unit matching the original one in order to regain access to your data If/when the motherboard fails. That might be new from the manufacturer or used off of eBay, but backwards compatibility of a newer unit isn’t guaranteed in the future.
I would much rather stick to ZFS on an mITX motherboard in a SFF backplane case. Unless deploying a very targeted solution like the storage for IP surveillance cameras.
I also do not like these locked down proprietary operating systems. I am curious about the installation of an alternative OS on the UGreen hardware. Since they’re using intel chips ( and especially on the i-86 boards), I was hopeful that the RAID controller card would work with a different, customer installed OS. I’m guessing the NIC will probably be some Marvell chipset and not Intel. Non-intel NIC is enough to keep me away.
I am familiar with vulnerabilities in the QNAP systems, but to be fair, Lenovo, Supermicro and Intel also sold systems with known vulnerabilities in lighttpd that efeected BMC’s that were never patched. Intel systems were still being sold last year.
Overall, I am skeptical and unwilling to purchase an 8 bay server from them because of incompatible hardware for an alternate OS, but apparent build quality and price point ($650 for the 8 bay) are tempting.
I am sure there are a number of system out there where the solution is not maintained or not kept up-to-date or undetected.
In my early days of homelab-ing, I would seek out systems like “Drobo” (5 drives) and its subsequent product “DroboPro” (eight drives). Unfortunately I found out the via a bad experience how these manufactures are not always advanced on the support side to help repair when the system starts to fail. For the 6 years I had “spinning rust” within my DroboPro, I was happy with its performance. Unfortunately when the unit failed (or the drives started to fail ), the overall system started to fail. The rebuilding of a drive would take too long before another drive would fail (even when I had double parity enabled).
For myself I would question about the unit’s cost. There has to be something within the parts or the materials to offer the product at the price.
One my past employers, HP, had a similar thought when it comes to introducing new product (for the enterprise space). If the product did not make the expected returns after the first or second quarter (from its launch), then the efforts are abandon. Usually the thinking is that it is easier to give a refund because the unit is with x dollars and any liability will not exceed the cost original cost the customer paid.
It is truly sad how companies look at their products as disposable.
As of February 8, 2024, the Drobo website at www.drobo.com is no longer accessible.
Other footnotes
StorCentric filed for bankruptcy
" In June 2022, StorCentric filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.[7] After failing to find a buyer or reorganize the company, it shifted to Chapter 7 bankruptcy in April 2023.[8] "
Drobo aside (since they are dead), I think the real draw to these devices such as the Synology’s and QNAP’s is the easy of use factor. Someone without a large amount of systems experience can, in a few clicks, setup a software raid with parity and have access to a fairly decent amount of simply installed applications.
I cant speak for the QNAP devices, but I have a syno and its running their “proprietary” SHR, which is just a fancy wrapper for mdraid and lvm, so one could pull the drives and get access to them on another machine, but why bother.
UGreen jumping into this space is interesting for sure, and I do like the look of their units. Hopefully some more competition in this space will be good for all the product lines.
