I’ve been researching NAS and am figuring out how one can play into my current home setup. There’s a lot I don’t know even after researching. Best I explain to clear things up.
Currently, I have a home server running NextCloud, accessible only via my LAN network. It’s run along with a VPN on a Raspberry Pi 4B running Ubuntu Server. The data is on two 512 GiB external SSD drives. One drive is primary & the other is backup of the primary drive via rsync each day.
I’m looking at a NAS for more backups (Ex. 1 day, 3 days, & 1 week at least) since I have sensitive data on the drives. I want to feel more secure about my home setup with the ability to rollback changes if I mess up something. I also want the NAS to be able to run more services other than just NextCloud eventually, like Grocy/KitchenOwl, etc.
I have some more questions about NAS given my info:
- Do I have to use a special NAS-specific OS to make use of the NAS hardware? Like to do snapshots and stuff?
- Kinda related: what if I install something like Debian/Ubuntu on it? Can I still use the NAS hardware in the same way?
I looked into some solutions like TrueNAS and Synology. I prefer an OS that’s free software so I have control over what I’m doing and not held hostage if they want to increase prices, force upgrades, enshittify things, etc.
I found TrueNas scale to be what fits my needs but I tried unraid (trial) and open media vault first. Also not this is not my first rodeo as I’ve done “from scratch” Ubuntu, and bsd.
I just built a server from older parts off eBay. An i7 2600, Asus p8z77, a Silverstone c382 nas case, 32gb of 1333, a pny P600 video card and a 9200+8i hba card. Then I used TrueNas on an SSD and another SSD for docker containers and cache.
4k Plex streaming no issues, system is fast and the only issue I had was the old Asus boards don’t use pwm fan control.
Open Media vault just confused the heck out of me, I ran it for a few months and donated money to the team for their effort but it was too restricting for my needs. It was definitely a capable nas os but it didn’t feel like it fit my style which is more hands on.
TrueNas has snapshots and replication. I run 4 12tb disks for my live data, striped raid 1’s. Then I have two more 12tb’s in a raid 1 for my replication read only. It’s not enough space if I filled my live drives but I havent needed more yet for the backup. And I can always expand my backup set.
I also have a qnap tr004 das with some random drives in a hardware raid 5. That’s my third copy I do every so often.
The funny part is I didn’t want to pay for a Synology but ended up spending more on parts. However it’s incredibly powerful for what it does so I’m using that as my “happy little mistake”. It’s going to last a long time and run as many services that I could possibly want as a home user.
Great setup, thanks for sharing! Do you use this also for storing files like text, photos, etc?
Yep! Scanned documents and backups of photos, personal stuff and the families stuff. I host a few game servers too I guess for friends. Running great and more than enough power for everything I do, and I have as much redundancy as I can afford.