Netgear ReadyNAS used as a webserver- Risky?

FunkyCowie · 28 Mar 2022 at 20:22

Hi,

I have a Netgear ReadyNAS and was thinking of selling it however I was looking to see what other uses I could put it to. I found this tutorial.

https://kb.netgear.com/24829/ReadyNAS-OS-6-Create-a-personal-webserver

I am currently paying out £130 a year for a VPS for the website/forum I have and that only gets me 50GB of space, single cpu and 1gb of ram. Its sufficient for the website so I wondered if I could use the ReadyNAS (with OS 6) to host the website with a phpbb forum on it but I am not sure what the risks may be to it or the rest of my home network.

Does any one have any experience of this and could share what risks there may be?

Caged · 28 Mar 2022 at 20:39

How much is the cost of electricity for keeping a ReadyNAS on 24x7? Compare that to what you can buy from somewhere like AWS:

https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/

FunkyCowie · 28 Mar 2022 at 21:13

I won't need to consider electricity cost, but under Normal use its about 55W with all drive bays full so about 506.3 kWh per year but I will likely reduce the drives to only 3 so it will be less power, and I'll keep the other three as backups in case of drive failure. I think that is then equal to or less than the AWS if I compare it to what I have now... but the NAS has 2 cores, 6GB RAM, and currently 24TB of storage.

Turn · 28 Mar 2022 at 22:09

FunkyCowie said:
I am currently paying out £130 a year for a VPS for the website/forum I have and that only gets me 50GB of space, single cpu and 1gb of ram. Its sufficient for the website so I wondered if I could use the ReadyNAS (with OS 6) to host the website with a phpbb forum on it but I am not sure what the risks may be to it or the rest of my home network.

Use OVH, they're by far the best for the price - £3.35/mo w/ VAT, 1Core, 2GB RAM, 40GB NVMe. 250Mbps unlimited traffic.
(Currently on sale I think it's usually like £4/mo, the price I stated above is with 24month commitment)
https://www.ovhcloud.com/en-gb/vps/

FunkyCowie · 29 Mar 2022 at 07:12

Thank you but I am really looking for an answer as to the security risks of using the Nas as a webserver.

visibleman · 29 Mar 2022 at 12:49

FunkyCowie said:
Thank you but I am really looking for an answer as to the security risks of using the Nas as a webserver.

A VM or Docker running the stack, where you have complete control, is one thing but with a NAS and "built-in" services it massively depends on ongoing support and how often they patch/update services. It would be OK for internal use but i personally wouldn't use the "built-in" web stack for externally hosting a site.

As others have said, there are plenty of cheap VPS hosts (Hetzner and Racknerd do some seriously cheap deals for basic VPS) out there and you could even deploy it on Oracle for free.

FunkyCowie · 29 Mar 2022 at 13:07

@visibleman Thank you for actually answering the question

There is ongoing support but updates are maybe 1-2 times a year so on a live site probably not good enough, thank you again.

Armageus · 29 Mar 2022 at 13:29

Can you run Docker or a VM on the Readynas? If so then you can at least make use of ready secured/supported configurations, rather than having to rely on Netgear to update/fix security holes.

Even if you just use it for local testing or a local backup, before pushing content to your "live" site could be worth it.

FunkyCowie · 29 Mar 2022 at 13:32

@Armageus apparently you can https://powareverb.github.io/Docker-on-ReadyNAS-OS6/

Thanks for the idea