NAS Software

[lupi]

I'm about to upgrade my 2nd original sandy computer. Only thing I plan on using in the new machine is the non-OS drives. Was thinking about then converting what is left into NAS use. What's good software to do this and any pointers in the conversion?

 

[Mac29]

freeNAS is supposed to be the cream of the crop but they stipulate ECC ram. I'd still like to grab some of that and utilize an old AMD box for that.

 

[aigomorla]

freeNAS / NAS4FREE / UnRaid

The last one has a fee tho...
FreeNAS has very little support, unless you can find someone knowledgeable to help you, but its updated quite frequently.
Dont bother going to FreeNAS forums, they will laugh at you and tell you to RTFM unless your on full enterprise hardware with a gazillion GB of ECC ram.

 

[Mac29]

So what do you think? Openfiler? Been a while since I check that out. Agree good support is a must if you're a noob like me.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

NAS-specific OS distros are annoying. Just install a n00b-friendly Linux distro (free, no forced reboots for patches) like Mint and configure file sharing the old fashioned way.

Example: https://www.technig.com/share-files-via-linux-mint-to-windows-10/

And I'm like 85% that Disk Manager will let you create a RAID array out of your storage drives without getting into any CLI stuff.

Mint has an excellent community and lots of documentation (and when something's missing, the Ubuntu documentation/instructions will usually work for Mint, too.)

If you want to run it headless then you can also install Webmin on it for remote administration.

 

[Mac29]

That's great. Learning Mint anyway. Sounds much easier. Raid would be icing on the cake.

 

[EXCellR8]

Yea I was in the same boat with NAS but I didn't really like any of the specific OS either. Linux is great for that.

 

[lupi]

I dont need RAID for this. This units will be a jbod extension of the WD NASA enclosure I have for my media pc. It will almost exclusively be used for in home streaming.

 

[lupi]

I'm not adverse to linux, just have spent minimal time in it other than occasionally using a linux diagnostic disc to test a pc. So I'd want something that is pretty straight forward with its instruction for installation and maintenance.

 

[PingSpike]

I use unraid. I'm pretty happy with it for the most part. Its true you can just roll you own, but I don't really have time to learn everything these days. The hardware NAS units are popular and look like great products to me but I felt like unraid on junk hardware gave me some tinkering flexibility.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I use unraid. I'm pretty happy with it for the most part. Its true you can just roll you own, but I don't really have time to learn everything these days. The hardware NAS units are popular and look like great products to me but I felt like unraid on junk hardware gave me some tinkering flexibility.

I do like the way unRAID handle's drive pooling, and being able to use disks of varying sizes is a nice bonus for people doing ad hoc builds. The ZFS-based distros like FreeNAS and NAS4Free are a bit too rigid that way, IMHO.

I'm not adverse to linux, just have spent minimal time in it other than occasionally using a linux diagnostic disc to test a pc. So I'd want something that is pretty straight forward with its instruction for installation and maintenance.

I think Mint is very definitely that.

I dont need RAID for this. This units will be a jbod extension of the WD NASA enclosure I have for my media pc. It will almost exclusively be used for in home streaming.

Do you know what software you'll be running for in-home streaming? (Plex? XBMC? Those don't exist any more and have splintered into a dozen separate communities and I just totally dated myself?)

I'm running Plex on an pretty generic Ubuntu system and it works pretty well.

 

[lupi]

WMC and plex.

 

[aigomorla]

FreeNAS has Plex Jails you can install via web gui.
Infact here is a list of all the plugins you can install on FreeNAS.
FreeBSD which is FreeNAS loves lot and lots of ram.
I was told somewhere between .5-1GB of ram / TB of Data.
My FreeNAS server has 98GB of Reg ECC Ram, and effectively is running roughly 80TB of storage space on RAID-Z.

But again, its hardware is very rigid, and support on forums is meh.
But there are lots and lots of youtube videos to set it up, and you can use googlefu to do some basic debuging.

 

[mxnerd]

NethServer, not a NAS, but a server with a lot of plug-ins you might be interested.

Don't know how it deals with RAID though.

==

Well, seems adding drives is not automatic yet.

 

[PingSpike]

I do like the way unRAID handle's drive pooling, and being able to use disks of varying sizes is a nice bonus for people doing ad hoc builds. The ZFS-based distros like FreeNAS and NAS4Free are a bit too rigid that way, IMHO.

Yeah, freeNAS is to rigid and just not the right solution for my situation. Everyone will tell you your hardware is wrong. This isn't an enterprise environment in my basement! Unraid drive pooling is more like "how can we cobble together a pile of junk you have lying around and squeeze some kind of protection out of it?"

They do dual parity and encryption now. It could use some kind of file level checksumming though, but I believe there are plugins for that.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

FreeNAS has Plex Jails you can install via web gui.

Most NAS appliances do something similar. FreeBSD jails are somewhat limited, inasmuch as they are still running FreeBSD so a lot of linux stuff kinda-works but isn't supported.

And if you have a generic Linux system, installing _____ in a docker container is pretty much all the cool kids do anymore. Easy peasey, same end result.

unRAID actually has full virtualization support via an integrated version of VirtualBox. But if you want to go that route, I'd wholeheartedly recommend KVM on Linux instead.

 

[mxnerd]

Googled. SnapRiad + MergerFS.

For my own reference.

Will take a look later personally.

https://blog.linuxserver.io/2017/06/24/the-perfect-media-server-2017/

 

[PingSpike]

unRAID actually has full virtualization support via an integrated version of VirtualBox. But if you want to go that route, I'd wholeheartedly recommend KVM on Linux instead.

Slight correction here, unRAID's virtualization is all based on KVM. I'd add its also the most turn key GPU passthrough virtualization solution I've used.

 

[lupi]

Well darn, seeing one of the replies reminded me that I had an offer for windows server for about $20, but think that was through an edu account I had that recently expired.

 

[mxnerd]

Select your favorite Linux distro then install https://cockpit-project.org/ could be another option.

You can still use the desktop UI & have a nice web UI to manage the server locally or from another machine.

*******************************

Found that NethServer also have Cockpit (still Alpha statge) integrated in it's Software Center.

Called New Server Manager (Alpha)

Looks awesome!

https://community.nethserver.org/t/cockpit-preview/8201

 

[Muadib]

Here is another vote for unraid. It does NAS and so much more. Their forums are extremely helpful if you need them.

 

[Rifter]

Ubuntu is always my choice for home servers. And with ZFS makes a great NAS option.

 

[cfenton]

I use NAS4Free because their community was much nicer than FreeNAS. I think you can safely ignore all the ECC RAM stuff unless you are storing really important stuff on the server. Anecdotal, of course, but I've been running my NAS4Free server for over three years on an old Althlon 860 and 8GB of non-ECC RAM. Though, I use it as a file server, so Plex runs on another machine. If you're at all comfortable with Linux, that's probably the way to go. It will be more flexible than the NAS OS options, and the documentation will almost certainly be better if you run into a problem.

 

[rchunter]

Ive been running unraid for a few years and for the most part i like it. With version 6 it's gotten a lot better.
They have a free trial if you want to try it out.