[aidanjt]

Here's my NAS wishlist:

• Modular WebUI Interface.
• A simple package manager to offer new services.
• Document the WebUI API and packaging system to allow end-users to add their own services not offically supported.
• One or two USB ports would be nice to add printing services, but not hugely important.
• A few eSATA ports for external storage expansion.
• Allow 3rd party firmwares (obviously make the user aware of garentee issues by using 3rd party firmwares), foster community development around your device, nothing makes an embedded device more popular for enthusiasts than good ole fashioned openness. One only needs to take a glance at the Linksys WRT-series routers for proof of this. And embedded hardware companies benifit from recieving bug reports and patches from firmware developers. Kernel developers always loves kernel patches from professional hardware manufacturers, so they'll maintain the kernel for you so you don't need to bug wrangle with internal patchsets breaking with new kernel releases.
• More CPU and memory horsepower to allow multiple services and reasonable responsiveness, maybe use a CPU supported by the Linux cpufreq sub-system. Even silly cheap x86 CPUs can achieve this and DDR2 chips are silly cheap.
• More drive bays, 8 would be nice
• More flexible disk management, i.e. use mdadm to swap in larger disks, reassemble, and grow the array as the disks are been replaced. Pretty straight forward using the raid456 kernel module.
• More competitive pricing, right now it's cheaper to build a new NAS with PC hardware to attach 6 disks than to buy an embedded 5-bay NAS with less disks space, memory, and horse power, a bit silly really. Sure you don't get the backplanes, but they're not hugely expensive either.
• Maybe UPnP AV on-the-fly transcoding to save the hassle of manual transcoding media for dealing with multiple target clients, maybe do a deal with AMD for a condensed variant of 'AVIVO converter' circuits to mitigate the CPU usage. Although this may be costly to develop, so it wouldn't be a dealbreaker to be without this feature.
• Dropbear is a tiny SSH daemon and can make secure transmission of files over the internet really easy and let power-users dig around.
• Offical support for common network data services like OpenLDAP and Squid proxy server would be hot, most NAS devices already have MySQL support so it's clearly already an easy task.
• Dual-gigabit NIC bonding is a must.

Basically it would be great to have network-in-a-box functionality from a NAS, rather than running a fully-fledged server eating more power, even if it ends up using nearly the same amount of power, the obvious convinence and space factor from an embedded device would still win me over. I have tons more ideas about the 'perfect' NAS, as well as implimentation ideas. I'd only be too happy to discuss more of them if Tecuas is interested.