Last week a member of one of the NSLU2 mailing lists noticed that the NSLU2’s were gone from his local Staples. He spoke with the store manager and found out that they had been discontinued and remaining Staples inventory is being returned to the distributor. I looked around and sure enough everyone on the net is either out of stock or clearing them out as a discontinued item (without discounting it by much).
If you were considering getting this wonderful embedded Linux server I wouldn’t recommend it anymore. This is too bad since the Slug is an exceptionally versatile little server that only uses the power of a nightlight. I’ve been using two Slug’s on my home network one as a DNS/DHCP/NTP server and the other as a development web server for about a year and a half. The savings in electricity over standard PC server boxes has been incredible. I have not found any other device even remotely the same in terms of features, low price, low power consumption and ease of hacking it. 😦
Paul Hutchinson's Blog 
Paul,
Why do you say not get it? I’ve set one up with the upgraded software for my parents to have network storage and backup. I’ve been planning on getting one and now that they are discontinued with no replacement, I may get 2.
LikeLike
Thanks for asking.
If you’re happy with it as a NAS go for it, you can easily move to another brand of NAS later without a problem. Buying a spare Slug is also a good plan.
I tried a Slug as a NAS device when I first got mine and found the performance too low for my needs. (I was replacing a full size Linux file server, I ended up with a D-Link DSM-G600 to get the file serving performance I needed).
While I couldn’t use the Slug as a file server, the versatility and tiny 7 Watt power consumption made the Slug ideal for the non-file serving tasks on my network (web/dns/dhcp/ntp/WINS). My 2 Slugs replaced a full size Linux server saving me 386 watts of power consumption (decent amount of $$ saved in a 24/7 operation).
It takes a rather large investment of time to properly setup the the Slug (or any server) for the functions I use it for on my network. Because of this I always try to use hardware platforms that can be easily repaired/replaced without having to go through the setup all over again.
Since there will likely not be any more Slugs around to buy in the near future, I wouldn’t want someone to loose their investment of labor when the hardware dies and can’t be replaced. This is why I don’t recommend it for new installations that will be used/configured like mine.
LikeLike