Why NASDEV exists

NASDEV — Network Attached Storage DEVice — started as a personal engineering project and a practical way to explore systems, storage and networking technologies.

What began as a home-built server has grown into something much broader: a long-running collection of systems, experiments, projects and technical ideas.

The hardware and software have changed considerably over the years, but the basic philosophy has remained the same:

Build it, understand it, document it, and keep improving it.

NASDEV is where I record that journey.

Engineering in the real world

My interest in technology has always been strongly practical.

I'm interested in understanding how systems actually work rather than simply how they are supposed to work. That means building systems, testing them, breaking them, troubleshooting them and occasionally discovering that the documentation doesn't quite match reality.

Some of the projects documented here have been running for many years. Others are new experiments. Some involve modern technologies, while others involve older systems that are still useful, reliable or simply interesting.

That combination is intentional.

There is a lot to learn from both new technology and the systems that came before it.

What you'll find here

NASDEV covers a broad range of engineering topics, including:

Systems & Operating Systems
Solaris, system administration, operating-system internals and the practical challenges of maintaining long-lived systems.

Storage
ZFS, storage architecture, NAS systems, data protection and the evolution of the NASDEV storage platform.

Networking
Network architecture, protocols, infrastructure and the practical operation of home and small-scale networks.

RF Technologies
RF planning, propagation, spectrum, measurement, wireless technologies and the application of RF engineering to IoT and other systems.

IoT & Embedded Systems
Small systems, hardware, software and the challenges of making constrained devices actually work.

DevOps & Automation
Automation, deployment, monitoring and the tools and techniques that make systems easier to operate.

Web Development
The technologies behind NASDEV itself, including Joomla, web infrastructure and the lessons learned while building and maintaining the site.

There will also be the occasional opinion, because engineering isn't always about finding a single technically correct answer. Sometimes the interesting question is which solution makes the most sense.

A living technical record

NASDEV isn't intended to be a polished collection of perfect tutorials.

Things change.

A configuration that works today may be replaced tomorrow. A solution that seemed obvious may turn out to have a hidden problem. An old system may eventually be retired, while another project continues for years.

That's part of the story.

The goal is to document the process as well as the result — including the reasoning, mistakes, troubleshooting and decisions that happen along the way.

Hopefully the information will be useful to others working on similar problems, but it also serves another purpose: creating a permanent record of what was built and why.

Welcome

If you're interested in systems, storage, networking, RF, embedded technology or simply figuring out why something isn't working, there's probably something here you'll find useful.

Welcome to NASDEV.