HexOS - User Q&A on YT with NASCompares - No Local UI?

[frankle]

They addressed it straight away ... online account and install to get it going ...

 

Thoughts?

 

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

I'll come out with the spicy opinion that I don't think this is a big deal, assuming the rest of the os is fine. So many devices are now really wanting to be online nearly all the time now, I don't see many nas units spending a significant amount of time offline, so the worry that a drive failure happens when offline and is ignores for a significant period of times seems pretty unlikely to me. If they can have a better UI using external servers I'd like to see a OS try something different than whats been tried before, cause I really don't want this to be Truenas but with the buttons in different locations.

[Blue4130]

1 hour ago, frankle said:

They addressed it straight away ... online account and install to get it going ...

 

Thoughts?

 

 

 

Instant nope from me. Two things pop up in my mind.

1. HexOS goes out of business. Servers are taken down. My data is now gone despite being hosted locally? Or at the least, I can't make any setting changes/add remove replace drives...

2. hexOS web portal gets ransomwared. The hacker has controls over my data or at the least my server settings? They are able to nuke my pools.

 

Seems like a risky idea to me.

[sk8rs_dad]

I’m not the target market.  Doesn’t mean there isn’t a market though. 

[LIGISTX]

4 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

Instant nope from me. Two things pop up in my mind.

1. HexOS goes out of business. Servers are taken down. My data is now gone despite being hosted locally? Or at the least, I can't make any setting changes/add remove replace drives...

2. hexOS web portal gets ransomwared. The hacker has controls over my data or at the least my server settings? They are able to nuke my pools.

 

Seems like a risky idea to me.

I have these same concerns. 
 

I understand there is likely a target market for this software that I am not in… but I can’t imagine hosting my NAS locally and requiring it to talk to external servers for anything. 
 

But, again, I know I’m not the target market. And that’s ok   

[Pawer8]

I was really looking forward to this. Not anymore.

 

I have the same concerns. The whole point of having a nas for me is that it's local

[Smir]

18 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

Instant nope from me. Two things pop up in my mind.

1. HexOS goes out of business. Servers are taken down. My data is now gone despite being hosted locally? Or at the least, I can't make any setting changes/add remove replace drives...

2. hexOS web portal gets ransomwared. The hacker has controls over my data or at the least my server settings? They are able to nuke my pools.

 

Seems like a risky idea to me.

isn't this why Linus is so anti-cloud? what if they get sold now some random company has all his information and potentially access to all his files?

I would love to use hexos, but this is a downer for me, I don't want my NAS connected externally.

[HexOS_Jon]

Hey all,

 

Going to be creating a new blog post on this in the near future. We have heard everyone loud and clear and I even had a chat with Linus today about this. 

 

I CAN 100% CONFIRM WE WILL HAVE A LOCAL UI FOR HEXOS.

 

We are going to host it in a docker container that we will load after the initial setup (can't load containers before storage is provisioned anyway). So the user process will be to set up using deck.hexos.com and like Plex, you can continue to use it that way if you want.  However we will have the local UI available for users after initial setup.

 

Furthermore we have ways to address the security concerns users are bringing up. We don't need our cloud to have permanent, full admin API access to your servers. Lots of assumptions are getting made about that which just aren't true. The longer term access we will require in our cloud will be for monitoring, notifications, and connectivity assistance only.

 

All of the negativity on this is 100% on me for not realizing how critical this was to our audience early on. We thought most folks wouldn't care since we were just management access, not data, but there were a few big things I missed and we are going to make it right. 

[HexOS_Jon]

20 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I'll come out with the spicy opinion that I don't think this is a big deal, assuming the rest of the os is fine. So many devices are now really wanting to be online nearly all the time now, I don't see many nas units spending a significant amount of time offline, so the worry that a drive failure happens when offline and is ignores for a significant period of times seems pretty unlikely to me. If they can have a better UI using external servers I'd like to see a OS try something different than whats been tried before, cause I really don't want this to be Truenas but with the buttons in different locations.

This was our thought as well but honestly I do understand where people are coming from on this topic. We are going to make it right. 

[LIGISTX]

2 hours ago, HexOS_Jon said:

I CAN 100% CONFIRM WE WILL HAVE A LOCAL UI FOR HEXOS.

Thats great to hear.

 

2 hours ago, HexOS_Jon said:

Lots of assumptions are getting made about that which just aren't true. The longer term access we will require in our cloud will be for monitoring, notifications, and connectivity assistance only.

I agree, lots of folks pulled out pitchforks immediately. I was personally somewhat less worried about the security side, like you said, there are solutions that would be secure for our data and access to our data, but the idea you would lose control of your own company if and when it went public or ownership stakes change, and suddenly the new owners kill the software and the cloud connected way to access our servers goes with it. You can plan to roll out a local webUI solution in that event, but not having it from the start means it could end up not happening which is what folks rightfully were worried about. 
 

I’m glad you are taking a second look at this and reevaluating. Again, I know personally I am not the target market, but I also know a lot of folks who are would be very weary of a cloud access and cloud management system for their local hardware. IMO, having the option of either would be great. As an example, Ubiquity has the ability to control their gear from the cloud, but you can also be fully local. 
 

Just my .02. 

[Pawer8]

9 hours ago, HexOS_Jon said:

Hey all,

 

Going to be creating a new blog post on this in the near future. We have heard everyone loud and clear and I even had a chat with Linus today about this. 

 

I CAN 100% CONFIRM WE WILL HAVE A LOCAL UI FOR HEXOS.

 

We are going to host it in a docker container that we will load after the initial setup (can't load containers before storage is provisioned anyway). So the user process will be to set up using deck.hexos.com and like Plex, you can continue to use it that way if you want.  However we will have the local UI available for users after initial setup.

 

Furthermore we have ways to address the security concerns users are bringing up. We don't need our cloud to have permanent, full admin API access to your servers. Lots of assumptions are getting made about that which just aren't true. The longer term access we will require in our cloud will be for monitoring, notifications, and connectivity assistance only.

 

All of the negativity on this is 100% on me for not realizing how critical this was to our audience early on. We thought most folks wouldn't care since we were just management access, not data, but there were a few big things I missed and we are going to make it right. 

That's good to hear but I still have one concern. What happens if hexos disappears? Would that mean you can keep using it but can't create a new Nas with it because deck hexos.com is down? What happens if you bought a lifetime license?

[LIGISTX]

1 hour ago, Pawer8 said:

That's good to hear but I still have one concern. What happens if hexos disappears? Would that mean you can keep using it but can't create a new Nas with it because deck hexos.com is down? What happens if you bought a lifetime license?

I’d argue… the data is held on a ZFS array. You’d just import the array into any number of options (truenas, unraid, almost any flavor of “Linux”….). 

[Blue4130]

11 hours ago, HexOS_Jon said:

This was our thought as well but honestly I do understand where people are coming from on this topic. We are going to make it right. 

Thanks for taking the feedback to heart. That does make me feel more comfortable knowing that the company is actually taking feedback seriously. Rare these days to actually feel heard by companies. Look forward to following along with what you guys do.

[Pawer8]

1 hour ago, LIGISTX said:

I’d argue… the data is held on a ZFS array. You’d just import the array into any number of options (truenas, unraid, almost any flavor of “Linux”….). 

My question was what if you buy it for a lifetime and then the setup process is broken because the site is down? Will there be a backup UI even if simpler so it can all be done locally?

[HexOS_Jon]

10 hours ago, Pawer8 said:

What happens if hexos disappears? Would that mean you can keep using it but can't create a new Nas with it because deck hexos.com is down? What happens if you bought a lifetime license?

Great question.  We have contingency plans to address that scenario.  We are bringing a lot of friends and family to this platform.  It would be pretty morally reprehensible if we went belly up and just left them all high and dry.

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Thanks for taking the feedback to heart. That does make me feel more comfortable knowing that the company is actually taking feedback seriously. Rare these days to actually feel heard by companies. Look forward to following along with what you guys do.

Of course!!  We feel that too and really want to bring something better to the market that expands the availability of these kinds of solutions to less IT-savvy techies. 

 

[Bersella AI]

BTW there were also concerns similarly about local service availability with some new players like Ugreen, Zspace and Hikvision in Chinese communities. Notably, Zspace NASes have been reported to require on-line registration, and to block any offline access once the official online services becomes unavailable.

I indeed grabbed such a light-weight NAS from Lenovo, which requires online services to work with, but comes with plenty of out-of-the-box features benefiting my parents, tech noods. We use it to back up photos from cellphones on the fly, at home or anywhere; I then copy them to my custom TrueNAS setup -- it supports basic local access via Samba and WebDAV. Yes, the balance between on-line services and local access should be considered carefully in NAS system design.