Anybody have suggestions for running a personal home server NAS kinda thing?

[G+_Zachary McIlvoy]

Anybody have suggestions for running a personal home server/NAS kinda thing? I'd like it to be on one box, that I build or buy, but am open to other approaches like hosting it on a paid server somewhere. I've looked some in to Synology and ownCloud, but I'm not sure they do everything I'm looking for. This is my current list of requirements:

 

* file storage and syncing

* sync with 3rd party service (dropbox, drive, etc.)

* host publicly available files and sites

* host VMs

* stream media

* file versioning

* remote desktop management

* encryption? TFA?

* SSD support and expand-ability

* RAID or similar redundancy

* mobile app/access

* Vpn server

 

I'm not sure how best to go about this, but I've been bouncing this around in my head for a while and watching some of the other discussions on personal cloud solutions. The thing is, I don't want to run my own google docs or google calendar or anything like that which a lot of those solutions include. Thanks for the input!

[G+_Ben Reese]

I think Sandstorm promises most of that and Synology's software offers a good portion of it too.

 

My current setup is Windows Server 2016 (Tech Preview) with VMs running in Virtual Box and VMware. I've got most of that functionality currently:::

* File storage and syncing - SMB shares on Win Server

* Sync with 3rd party - Windows applications and ownCloud has a lot of support for that

* Host publicly available files and sites - Debian VM with WordPress and ownCloud. Both are sharing an SSL cert from Let's Encrypt

* Host VMs - I'm using Virtual Box and VMware

* Stream media - Plex is great for that. It's running on my host OS

* File versioning - ownCloud might have this built-in, but I haven't looked into it. Everything is backed-up to CrashPlan and they can usually do some form of point-in-time restore

* Remote desktop management - not sure exactly what you're looking for. Once I'm on the VPN, I can RDP to my server

* Encryption, 2FA - ownCloud has encryption. I'm not sure about 2FA, but I'm sure there's a 3rd party option for that

* SSD is simple

* RAID - is where I need to make a lot of improvements

* Mobile apps/access - ownCloud and OpenVPN both have mobile apps

* VPN server - running on a Debian VM

[G+_Ben Reese]

Oh, so my plan is to ditch Windows, add 3 HDDs to this case, and install XPenology (the open-sourced version of Synologys software).

[G+_Eddie Foy]

Synology does all that.

[G+_Zachary McIlvoy]

Eddie Foy that's good to hear, I had trouble confirming all of it without personal experience with synology. Do you think synology is a good way to go then? Anything I'm missing by going that route that I'm not thinking about ?

[G+_Zachary McIlvoy]

Ben Reese do you have experience with xpenology? Thoughts on it?

[G+_Eddie Foy]

Zachary McIlvoy   I have 2 Synologies here, (and pondering a third for high availability services) so I'm a bit biased.

I think the only wrench in the works is versioning.  Not sure how you want that to work, but for a client, the OS should do that for you.

Some of the packages aren't available for all of their models.  Plex transcoding has a limited set of devices (But Plex server works on all).  Docker, and a few others are also limited.  It basically comes down to processing power, they rather not offer the package to keep UX acceptable.

 

They really are servers then just a NAS.  A lot of installable packages and even some 3rd party ones.

I found them a little funky on the initial set up, but that's a one time dealio (hopefully)

[G+_Ben Reese]

I don't have any experience with XPenology yet. I plan on testing it in a VM in the next couple weeks, but my plan is to make my current machine an XPenology box when I get around to buying parts for a new one.

 

I've seen a few YouTube videos on setting it up - just can't fully recommend it without trying it myself first. I'll try to report back when the VM is going.

[G+_Larry Havenstein]

I think I need to play with XPenolgy. I needed to rebuild my 6 drive FreeNAS box anyway.

[G+_Ben Reese]

I just installed it on VirtualBox. Pretty simple. Most of the tutorials I found on YouTube are for VMware, but I like the option on VBox to boot headless. I'll definitely be playing with this more tonight!

[G+_Larry Havenstein]

I am assuming once it is installed you just hit it with a web browser like FreeNAS.

[G+_Ben Reese]

I haven't tried FreeNAS - maybe I'll throw it on a VM next. But, yes. That's how you set it up once it's installed.

 

Synology has a program you can install to find it, but I don't think it's really necessary.

[G+_Travis Hershberger]

You will not find a NAS box with the hardware required to host VMs. One or two very lightweight Docker containers, maybe. If you really want to do all of that in one box, you're much better off getting a used/off-lease server from somewhere like xByte Technologies or Stallard Technologies (www.stikc.com).

[G+_Eddie Foy]

i think he meant just storing the VMs there.

still better to just use a USB3 or thunderbolt external drive attached locally

[G+_Travis Hershberger]

Zachary McIlvoy Host VMs actually does mean you'll be hosting the VM machines on the device. The VM host. The virtual machines are referred to as guests, and if you just want to use the NAS for storage, then we'd use "VM storage" instead of "host VMs". To which I'd reply that you should keep any VM storage local if at all possible anyway, NAS is ok for that after you have the host filled with drives already.

 

Now as a backup target, NAS is great.

 

Thanks for catching that Eddie Foy.

[G+_Zachary McIlvoy]

Hey guys, thanks for clarifying on that. I was kinda hoping at first to host them when I first made that list, but later realized that wasn't at all practical on NAS specs haha. Didn't realize I left it in that list when I copied it in! I do want to mess with docker but I know synology will allow me to at least experiment with that

[G+_Eddie Foy]

some synologies support Docker.  not all.

[G+_Ben Reese]

Using real PC hardware should give a better experience if you want to run VMs on the same machine and/or backup a ton of data to some place like CrashPlan. On the other hand, buying Synology hardware supports them.

[G+_Larry Havenstein]

If you use an Intel based NAS (Synologies or Netgear) or a FreeNAS/XPenology type NAS You can set up an ISCSI volume and mount that from your ESXi/KVM/Xen host and store/run the VMS off it. The ARM based NAS boxes don't have enough umph to handle doing this but the Intel based do it well. This works well for Clustering the hosts also as you can setup ISCSI to be mounted by several vm hosts and then do vm moves across the hosts if there is a failure (VMware calls this VMotion but the majors all can do it). Definitely more than you need for home. Using a NAS raid storage with hot spares and a couple of budget hosts makes it easy to spread the load.

[G+_Travis Hershberger]

Larry Havenstein That always sounds so cool, but you can do all of that with local storage. No need for external storage and creating an IPOD that's more expensive for less functionality.

[G+_Ben Reese]

Ha. I just discovered iSCSI today and was playing with it. Added an iSCSI drive hosted on the XPenology VM and attached to a Windows Server 2008 VM. Even if it's not something used often, it's still nice having the option in a home lab.

[G+_Larry Havenstein]

It allows you to at least host the data drive on a RAID5 or better array. I am a firm believer of RAID5 with Spares or RAID6. Advanced versions of ZFS (Z2 or Z3) are good too. If you are playing with an IIS server its better to do an iSCSI D: drive and point all the IIS structure to the D:. That way you can play with the OS drive all you want to and not lose the data work.

[G+_Travis Hershberger]

Larry Havenstein https://mangolassi.it/topic/121/raid-link-blast/2