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When is a dedicated computer server better than a NAS?
My understanding is that a NAS is sort of the middle between an external hard drive and a computer server. It has CPU power that an external hard drive doesn't have but it's nowhere near the power of a computer server.
It seems that NAS's are getting pretty popular and I currently use mine to act as my backup solution, my Plex Media Server, my own private cloud, VPN server, etc. I'm starting to realize that perhaps all of this might be too much for my NAS's CPU.
For example, when I access my Plex Media Server remotely, it takes all of its CPU to transcode some of my movies that I haven't had the time to re-format so that it streams optimally. Wouldn't it be better if I took an old computer and simply made it into my Plex Media Server? It'll be more powerful and transcode faster. It will also won't be responsible for doing all the other things that needs to be done like backing up, acting as a VPN server, etc.
What if I took this step even further and made one of my old computers into a VPN server. This computer will now be dedicated to encrypting and decrypting all the data that gets sent out into the internet for ALL my devices. This is something that my router could do but slowly.
I'm wondering if I'm just putting too much stock into my NAS and setup computer servers on my network instead.
What do you guys think? Any ideas?
Thanks everyone for your help!!! You guys are the best.