Run R scripts on a NAS Synology ds214

Question

Does anyone have a suggestion if it would be possible to run R scripts on a Synology DS214 NAS? If yes, further information or links would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

The underlying OS on the Diskstation is Linux-based, so in principle it may be possible, but I highly doubt it will be in practice. First of all, you'd need to compile R for the Marvell Armada XP CPU, which is part of the ARM family of CPUs. To compile R on this chip you'll need all the related software described in the R Administration & Installation manual upon which R depends.

Finally, a DiskStation is not at all designed to crunch numbers. Even if you do manage to overcome the potentially unsurmountable problems of being able to compile the software you need on the DS214, the execution of code isn't going to be, well, snappy. Also, the 512MB on-board RAM will make all but small data analysis jobs impossible or impossibly slow.