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How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

neil.computer

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Re: How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

#131

Post by mianos »

bradley13 wrote: post #22

Just yesterday I was brainstorming with ChatGPT about this. I have an ancient QNAP plus a slightly less ancient NUC running PiHole, Wireguard and other services. Both need replaced, so why not combine them? I don't know much about ZFS, but it sounds like I need to learn. Docker may have conquered the world, but I plan to stay with LXD for services. The one thing I take issue with: an appliance like this runs 24/7. It…

I run zfs as the storage pool for my incus (next lxd) services. It is the ideal fit. Here is a list:

- Instant, zero-copy container cloning from images via Copy-on-Write. If you boot a new image like the existing ones it's seconds.

- Atomic, millisecond-level instance snapshots regardless of storage size

- Block-level container migration using native 'zfs send' and 'zfs receive', very short command lines and seems to work perfectly.

- Granular dataset nesting (every instance, image, and custom volume gets its own ZFS dataset). You can see every filesystem even on the host.

- Transparent, inline data compression (LZ4/ZSTD) enabled automatically per dataset. For services that don't change much, you might as well use a compressed image to make them even smaller.

- Mirroring / Raid

- Sub-volume sharing and direct management via native ZFS administration tools. If my home directory has a build area and a million files, I can just save time and put my home, pre cooked into a new machine and not copy or even rebuild on my new machine.

- Dedup keeps blocks with the same data as a reference. This costs a lot of memory and has not saved much for me as a lot of my images are similar and already shared I think, but it's cool.

Re: How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

#132

Post by NexRebular »

bakugo wrote: post #23
tamimio wrote: post #8

Yeah no. When it comes to backups and data storage, I would rather use a proven reliable system that’s been used and tested by millions of other users, keep these hacky stuff for your hyperland set up.

> I would rather use a proven reliable system that’s been used and tested by millions of other users You're describing ZFS.

> You're describing ZFS.

..running on illumos.

Re: How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

#133

Post by nuker »

Gigachad wrote: post #116
nuker wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> combined with LUKS, TPM keys Does it work? Server can reboot and use TPM to unlock rootfs? What about /boot - encrypted and tamper proof? Resists evil maid attack? Rabbit hole, I know, but so fascinating if you solved it all :)

If you are worried about someone breaking in to your house and replacing the bootloader while leaving your drives in place I probably wouldn't use the TPM auto unlock even if in theory secure boot should be able to handle this. But in reality that will never happen and the only actual attack you need to be worried about is junkies breaking in and flogging the drives on facebook marketplace. For which, this level of s…

> junkies breaking in and flogging the drives

For this you dont need TPM. Just a LUKS key in rootfs /etc. He said TPM :)

Re: How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

#134

Post by NexRebular »

gucci-on-fleek wrote: post #27
naturalmovement wrote: post #10

[flagged]

> Running ZFS on anything but Solaris/Illumos/FreeBSD is asinine. > ZFS is a permanent second-class citizen on Linux Linux is the primary target of OpenZFS [0] [1], and has been since 2020 [2]. It may not be supported by the Linux kernel developers, but it's supported by the ZFS developers, and that's all that really matters. > I don't want to trust my data to some half-assed out-of-tree solution that may or may not…

> Linux is the primary target of OpenZFS

Which is worrying as there's a high risk of linux EEE breaking portability.

Re: How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

#135

Post by NexRebular »

nixgeek wrote: post #19
naturalmovement wrote: post #10

[flagged]

And yet TrueNAS is moving away from BSD towards … Debian!

At a $company we were planning deploying TrueNAS as our new main NAS system. Then this happened and now everything is running OmniOS.

Re: How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

#136

Post by NexRebular »

giov4 wrote: post #96
naturalmovement wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure you can migrate pools. Yet everyone is (again) lost in the details and missing the big picture, which is Linux is doing its best to rat fuck OpenZFS at every opportunity, the last of which was the elimination of write_cache_pages in 6.18 behind the GPL iron curtain a mere few months ago. I don't know about you but I don't want to build my file storage atop hacks on top of more hacks. The kernel has made it clear…

I understand and I agree from an experience point of view it felt very unstable on debian and proxmox that is debian based. I wanted to share this experience too as a warning to users investing time and money and possibly hitting instabilities that can cause raid problems and data loss. Don't know why my comment got downvoted, if I knew about this I would have handled things differently. I usually recovered the pool…

> or which one would have the most reliable zfs module state?

Can't get more reliable ZFS than on illumos. OmniOS on napp-it if you want GUI[0].

[0] https://www.napp-it.org/index_en.html

Re: How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

#138

Post by bobmcnamara »

ocd wrote: post #104
dannyw wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First: Do you have backups of your single high-capacity HDD? That's my biggest worry. What's your plan for when that HDD fails one day, as it will? The main reasons people go for ZFS and a "NAS" is checksums and data integrity protection, as well as maybe not wanting to keep their primary machine awake all the time (I personally don't). Then there are useful features like snapshots, which means I don't have to worry…

I have external parity for everything with rsync. I don't have any storage that isn't matched with external backups. Fortunately I've never seen any bitrot or had a drive fail on me since I tend to replace them before they do. And yeah, I could add in some extra HDDs for RAID, but this is more a personal choice because of how much I hate SATA. Filesystems like ext4 are because I value boring and rock solid stability…

What do you dislike about SATA?

Re: How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

#139

Post by nahuel0x »

bartvk wrote: post #37
bradley13 wrote: post #22

Just yesterday I was brainstorming with ChatGPT about this. I have an ancient QNAP plus a slightly less ancient NUC running PiHole, Wireguard and other services. Both need replaced, so why not combine them? I don't know much about ZFS, but it sounds like I need to learn. Docker may have conquered the world, but I plan to stay with LXD for services. The one thing I take issue with: an appliance like this runs 24/7. It…

It also surprised me that the author said "4 Cores, Xeon Server CPU can be had for cheap". But the specs also said ECC RAM and I don't think the N100 supports that.

[dead]

Re: How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

#140

Post by bobmcnamara »

traches wrote: post #129
beagle3 wrote: post #3

I still pay for snooty, and the reason for that is that when a disk goes bad (not if; when) I pop its tray out, replace the disk, pop the tray with the disk back in, click a couple of widgets, and that’s it. I know it will be rebuilt properly. (And I know I have to do that, because when the disk fails it beeps and lights a led near the bad disk) It’s easy to build a NAS such as the one described in this article, but…

ZFS handles drive failures more robustly than anything else. There's a reason synology uses mdadm under BTRFS instead of the built-in BTRFS RAID features, and mdadm operates at the device level. That means that to replace a drive, mdadm has to rebuild the entire drive while zfs will only rebuild what's actually in use. > Also, any guide like this that doesn’t guide you through “disk 3 failed, this is how you safely r…

The worst part of either approach is: how do I find disk number 39 out of 48.
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