Switch underlying system to a distro with long-term support?

I've been building a home server to use as NAS and for a couple small workloads that run inside VMs. I've been trying virtually any NAS operating system, from FreeNAS to Windows Server, passing through a bunch of other options, eventually landing on OMV.

OMV looked great. It has basically every single feature I was looking for (with the exception of an easy way to integrate with ActiveDirectory/LDAP...), and I like how it's basically just an add-on to a plain Linux install, without taking possession of too many things on the underlying system.

However, I believe OMV has a terrible flaw: it's based on Debian. I have nothing wrong with Debian per se, and I can understand why a lot of people love it (it's one of the most "open" Linux distros around). However, maybe because I work in IT and thus I deal with enterprise IT people daily, I couldn't think using a Debian-based system in production, for the same reason why enterprise sysadmins don't: it doesn't have a proper support.
We all know Debian is community-driven, which is one of the biggest strength of the distro, but also its biggest problem. For example, now that Debian 8 has been released, Debian 7 is already "out of production", with support (and patches!) offered only by volunteers without any guarantee. Compare that with Ubuntu, where LTS releases get updates for 5 years, or RHEL/CentOS that gets maintained for 10 years!

I understand that the goal of OMV is to be agile and have frequent releases. However, once I'm done setting up my NAS, I don't want to be doing weekly maintenance to update the entire OS - or risk having an unmaintained platform. For example, if I were to install OMV 2 now, in a few weeks I'd have to update it to OMV 3, which is based on Debian 8: this means updating the NAS software AND the underlying OS too, and I must make sure that everything runs smoothly. If I don't update, not only I won't be getting new releases of OMV, but I will also be stuck on Debian 7 (which won't be supported for much longer).

So, my request: can you consider switching to a distro like Ubuntu LTS or CentOS, that offer support/updates for at least 5 years?

Thanks for the detailed answers, it's even more than I was expecting. I didn't mean to offer a critique, but rather a carefully-thought advice.

Yes, I've realized OMV is targeted at hobbyists from the start - and that's fine to me. Eventually, this is for my home, which is quite like a hobby to me. However, that doesn't mean that the information stored in the NAS is very critical to me. Of course, I do have backups (off-site), but even then the DR process is long and costly (if not in terms of $, in terms of time for sure).

My idea is that, sooner or later, when users start adopting OMV in some production environment, even if for their home, they will want something as stable as possible, and as simple to maintain as possible. I don't mind installing patches, even 2-3 times a month ("weekly" was probably exaggerated from me: you're right) - but I don't want to having to face big updates in which the OS and the application go through major changes too often. As I said before, Debian is a very good and stable OS (and I've used in production myself), but it lacks any long-term support (especially once a version becomes "oldstable") - Ubuntu itself is better there: even if it's not too different from Debian, it does have a LTS policy. And it's that support policy that makes a big difference: it doesn't matter to me if it's Linux, I would never leave it un-patched. I see it daily in my job (by the way, I said that "I work with enterprise IT", not that I'm a sysadmin - I actually am a cloud architect and sell to IT people): certain software must be updated constantly, sometimes even on day 0 (and I'm thinking of OSS too, for example WordPress).

One day or another you may want to grow OMV outside of the hobbyists circle. It may not necessarily become a product for enterprises (I honestly hope it doesn't!), but maybe for prosumers or small businesses... It's quite easy to see that happening (as it happened millions of times), and I don't see anything wrong with that. But unless you have a clearer support/maintenance policy, I don't see any sysadmin risking their job on this (not even in a 5-persons startup), and I don't see any serious consumer doing it either. It doesn't have to be paid enterprise support, but something that guarantees that I can have at least OS patches for a decent amount of time (like CentOS, or - sigh! - Ubuntu).

Before building my own NAS, I've been using Synology for a few years, and I loved the fact that they regularly released security updates and patches, and installing them was easy and I wasn't too worried as they were shipping a tested product (hopefully, at least).

PS: Yes, I did get LDAP to work with OMV at the end - just, it wasn't as easy as it is with other NAS software, like FreeNAS.

Ok, thanks for your point of view

Zitat von Denne

Still running OMV 0.5 without any problems for (I think) more than two years now. Never change a running system <img src="http://forums.openmediavault.org/wcf/images/smilies/wink.png" alt=";)" />

I respectfully disagree. If you don't install at least security updates, you're at high risk - and that even if your NAS is not directly attached to the Internet...

Zitat von tekkb

I think this is something definitely out of our control. Volker loves Debian and OMV is his baby. I am just thankful we have OMV. <img src="http://forums.openmediavault.org/wcf/images/smilies/smile.png" alt=":)" />

Yeah I can see there's not a lot of openness in this area, just looking at the tone of the answers above I seriously think it's a shame, I think OMV itself is great software and it's architected very well - but it will never be able to go past the "hobbyists" with an OS like Debian that has basically zero support. Despite a few stories of businesses doing that, the vast majority I've worked with doesn't trust anything but RHEL or Ubuntu where they can get proper business support.

You exactly got my point. Netgear, WD, etc are offering commercial support on top of their customized Debian distro, they release patches and updates, etc. OMV doesn't offer support (aside from the community forum), and it's based on an OS that isn't supported either. I was hoping at least we could switch to an OS that offers more support.

That's definitely a good point. At least giving options... The next release of Ubuntu will be LTS and will have systemd, and I'll be happy to work on Ubuntu support (and maybe CentOS/RHEL too?)

But please promise me that my pull request won't be rejected right away.