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Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

mtlynch.io

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Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#101

Post by ulnarkressty »

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #91

My conclusion from this was that the Synology is actually excellent value, and a newer one would likely have been superior on all dimensions (including time spent).

Right, apart from the entertainment/hobby value I'm not sure I understand these guides. It might be cheaper to build but in the end what you pay for is the software and not spending your time to configure it.

At some point I wanted to go the TrueNAS / FreeNAS / OwnCloud etc. route but after seeing the pages upon pages of troubleshooting and lost data horror stories I stuck with a commercial solution.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#102

Post by kalleboo »

Jhsto wrote: post #62
Tomdarkness wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really sure the comparison is valid. TrueNAS uses Samba to provide SMB network shares.

I see, so I assume the upside is that it's a time saver. Thanks! I personally wen't with samba on Linux and with btrfs. I was wondering if there's something non-obvious in TrueNAS that I'm missing out on. And to my account, I think my upsides are that: - ability to choose the kernel - no need for SSD for base OS since running off of RAM is rather easy on Linux - samba can run in a container thus a bit more control se…

There are two flavors of TrueNAS - Core and Scale. Core is basically a FreeBSD distro and Scale is basically a Linux distro. They're both a base OS with the typical packages anyone would need for a NAS, with sane defaults + a user-friendly web-based management system.

The upsides are that it's plug-and-play for anyone who doesn't want to research all the options available and figure out the various pitfalls on their own.

> no need for SSD for base OS since running off of RAM is rather easy on Linux

I don't understand this sentence. You're running off a RAM disk with no boot drive? What if you have a power outage?

> samba can run in a container thus a bit more control security-wise

Core supports FreeBSD jails and Scale supports Docker so you could run samba in a container on either if you're willing to do set it up yourself.

> server may run something else as well

As before, both have jail/container functionality. I haven't used Scale myself but Core comes with a bunch of "click to install" jail options for stuff like Plex, ZoneMinder, etc. Our machine also runs a Windows VM (ew) and a Wordpress install in a Jail

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#103

Post by jazzythom »

the_only_law wrote: post #76
jazzythom wrote: post #73

Quoted post unavailable.

> who needs to store 32tb of data? People hosting large private media libraries, I assume. Think people eschew music/movie streaming services and instead download FLACs/videos and stream those over their local network.

No post body was provided.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#104

Post by mmastrac »

tenken wrote: post #66
eminence32 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have personally been saved by ZFS snapshots (multiple times!) because sometimes I do dumb things, like running: rm -rf tmp * Instead of: rm -rf tmp*

I never do "rm prefix " in a dir. I always do "rm ./aDir/prefix " for example. This assures I'm not globbing outside a directory (or just a directory) and tries to help assure I'm not shooting my own foot. Yea, i love up 1 directory before I delete anything.

> i love up 1 directory

It took me a minute, but I assume this should be "move up". This seems like a good habit.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#105

Post by mtlynch »

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #29

I've gone the TrueNAS route, but I'm running it on a QNAP TS-451. I'm running TrueNAS off of a USB stick hanging off the back, so I didn't have do to anything with the hardware and reverting back to QTS is just a matter of setting the boot order in the BIOS. I really like seeing other people's builds, but I know that building my own computer isn't something I want to do. I was happy to see the comparison between the…

Thanks for reading!

>I've gone the TrueNAS route, but I'm running it on a QNAP TS-451. I'm running TrueNAS off of a USB stick hanging off the back

Oh, I didn't realize that QNAP allows that. Synology makes it pretty hard to boot any other OS, and I assumed the other vendors were similar. I'll keep that in mind for my next build because I do have fun building servers, but I also really appreciate systems like Synology and QNAP where the hardware and case is optimized for the NAS use-case.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#106

Post by mtlynch »

planb wrote: post #22

Thanks for including energy usage in the article. I carry USB-C SSDs around the house for backups and storage of archived files. Of course this is a bit of a hassle and I played with the idea of either buying or building a NAS. My current standby consumption for all computer stuff (access points, router, switches, a dozen or so microcontrollers and various SmartHome stuff, but not TVs, running computers or gaming con…

Thanks for reading!

Yeah, I've never thought much about power consumption, but I've done a few write-ups of previous builds, and I received a lot of questions about power draw, so I decided to measure it on this one. I was surprised at how much power the system consumed, and it will be something I think about more up-front on future builds.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#107

Post by [deleted] »

sandreas wrote: post #72

Building your own NAS Server by hand may be a nice project, but if you would like to get something up and running quickly, you should consider prebuild servers like Dell T* series or HP Microserver. It is real server hardware, supporting ECC RAM and by far less work to build, often providing (semi-)professional remote management. If you plan to build a budget NAS and enough room is not a problem, I personally would r…

[deleted]

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#108

Post by jazzythom »

jazzythom wrote: post #103
the_only_law wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who needs to store 32tb of data? People hosting large private media libraries, I assume. Think people eschew music/movie streaming services and instead download FLACs/videos and stream those over their local network.

Quoted post unavailable.

No post body was provided.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#109

Post by mtlynch »

DeathArrow wrote: post #82

I just use pCloud mounted as a network drive and throw everything I am not currently working on on it. With 10Gbps I have at home, it works wonders. Plus, the storage is unlimited. Plus, it is more resistant to failures and disaster than anything home made. Plus, I don't have to store and take care of another noisy box in my home.

Nice, that's a cool setup!

What area of the world do you live where you get 10 Gbps to the Internet? Can you reliably get 10 Gbps transfers to pCloud?

I got 1 Gbps fiber in the last year, but it's more like 700-800 Mbps in practice. I consider myself lucky to even get that, as my experience before that has always been 100-200 Mbps even on a "1 Gbps" plan. I'm super jealous of people who get a full 10 Gbps Internet connection.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#110

Post by magicalhippo »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #84
magicalhippo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know about CephFS, but performance was abysmal compared to ZFS for a home server. On a single box with 4-8 drives I didn't come close to saturating a 10G link, which ZFS managed just fine. It was also very complex to manage compare to ZFS, with many different layers to consider. I'm sure it shines in a data center, for which it has been designed. But unless something radical has changed in the last year, it's not f…

The cephfs per-machine redundancy mode is usually the preferred configuration. i.e. usually avoids cramming everything into a single point of failure, buying specialty SAS cards, and poking at live raid arrays to do maintenance. Seen too many people's TrueNAS/FreeNAS installs glitch up over the years to trust the zfs community edition as a sane production choice. ZFS certainly has improved, but Oracle is not generall…

I've never run TrueNAS/FreeNAS in proper production, but I have run it at home for over a decade and never lost data, despite generally running on old hardware, multiple drive failures, motherboards dying and power outages/lightning strikes.

Overall been very little fuzz for my home NAS system.

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