[ale] DIY NAS vs Boxed NAS?

[agcarver+ale at acarver.net (Alex Carver)]

A fun revelation: I went to FreeNAS's website to look at the software
and apparently iXsystems sells a "home" server ready to go.  So they're
yet another boxed NAS source in addition to being the OS of choice for
DIY.  A hybrid of the two options.  The case is nice, though, and has
activity/status indicators for each drive, which seems to be something
hard to find with ordinary cases.  They're using a fanless motherboard
so there's at least a little noise reduction.  Looks like possibly an
Atom as they're quoting only 17 Watts TDP and 80 Watts total when
populated with eight drives.  The empty four bay is $1k and the eight
bay is $1,350.