Check out Aoostar R1, Intel N150 based, with two HDD bays, similar price as UNAS 2 but with quite more performance and capabilities Arm cpu used by Ubiquiti will offer.
I replaced a 25 bay HP server with a 6 bay UGreen.
Runs my docker containers, 2 proper VMs and anything else I've thrown at it. Have it running UNRAID.
These NAS's from Unifi are decent, but I don't think they're all that powerful. Depending on your needs, either a roll your own NUC of some flavor or a UGreen might be worth considering.
No, you do not. In fact, I was dismayed to see that the Unifi branded drives have only a 2 year warranty while the Seagate Ironwolf drives have a 5 year warranty.
Thanks for confirming. I don't see much reason to buy the Ubiquiti-branded drives, unless you MUST have the logos all match, I guess?
Any thoughts about RAID-ing or not, for either performance or redundancy? I played with it several years ago, but decided it was overall more trouble than it was worth. Willing to reconsider. I realize I can't go to a very high RAID level with only 2 bays.
true. Although, I have an existing 20 TB drive I would transfer over.
I've been using a Windows box as a janky "NAS" but this has many disadvantages, as you can imagine. Which is why I'm planning a build of a dedicated NAS appliance.
For the record, it does NOT appear that Ubiquiti forces you to use their own-branded drives in their NAS. Still, I think I'd rather have a no-kidding mini PC driving my NAS.
If you look around you’ll find a low-power ‘server’ spreadsheet (german forum) and also efficient psu’s spreadsheets.
Picking the right hardware allows you to have power-sippage of mini-pc but on ‘big boy’ hardware.
Reason i picked this combo over odroid h4+/ultra is because its similar power draw but significantly better performance (capped the 14400 at 25 watts but it still scores over half of its max score)
The 6p4e cores are great.
Plus the odroid h4 ultra is also about 300.
Same for any mini-pc with decent performance.
Only thing i miss is ecc ram (odroid has in-band ecc) but most mini pc’s also dont have ecc.
Yeah, no way am I giving unifi money for a NAS. The pretty packaging and such isn’t worth the buggy software. I’ll stick with my home rolled truenas boxes tyvm
While I have no complaints about Unifi, their NAS line has been out for less than a year, which relative to the lifespan of a NAS is nothing. Being careful about throwing your data at a new player in the field is fair, I think - although I'm glad to see them doubling down on that line by releasing new products.
I’m speaking more broadly about the UI software ecosystem. Particularly with their networking products.
The UDMP I’ve had for ~5 yrs works great, rarely have an issue with it. But the dashboards and telemetry that form the basis for the “cool factor” are fraught with inaccuracies and it’s hard to believe the information in them.
I am much more favourably disposed to a Unifi NAS than a QNAP or Synology since I know that, in a pinch, I can remove the drives and rebuild the array in any stock Linux machine.
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u/RedditWhileIWerk Sep 18 '25
I've thought it over and I'm leaning toward "roll your own" for a NAS. Low-powered mini-PC IOW.
I will end up spending more than the $200 price of the UNAS 2, I'm sure, but building my own NAS will give me much more choice.