Thanks to this community I’ve learned and I’m feeling inspired. I’ve loved having an NAS for the last few years, but it’s woefully under powered for what I’m using it for these days.
So I’ve ordered some basic PC parts, gonna build a basic setup using an old CPU I got lying about and try the NAS OS I saw talked about on here recently.
TrueNAS looks like a good option with only slight fears it’ll go down the well known path to the dark side like so many free options before.
In any event, I’m looking forward to adding Nextcloud and Jellyfin, to trying out Docker and generally having more control over things.
Thanks again to you all for informing and inspiring.
I’ll be back if I get questions!
Late to the party but I decided to pickup a 13th gen ASUS NUC with an i7 over a prebuilt NAS, bought a couple external hard-disk bays setup Proxmox running a headless Debian 12 VM and almost everything runs great however, mistake was using Debian 12 because the Linux kernel is pretty far out of date and does not support the CPU properly.
Open source is certainly in a great position now but there are some things it’s just not doing that I’m frankly too dumb to do myself. For example, there’s no open source answer to appleTV. The closest thing we have is androidTV and it’s just awful.
I would love to see a TV-centric desktop environment you could run on top of any typical Linux distro. Something implementing live tiles like old windows phone had, a web app that you could access with a smartphone and use to control it like a remote, single-task interface rather than a task-juggling interface we have on normal DEs, sigh. I have a vision I cannot possibly create because that would take incredible skill that I just don’t have to make and I can’t just whine that nobody is making it for me.
Meanwhile, all my Apple stuff works together in a way I generally approve of.
I need to transition away from this at some point but there aren’t always open source solutions for this.
As a TV centric distro, there is libreelec https://libreelec.tv/ You can use it to stream media from jellyfin, plex or other streaming platforms with plugins
It runs kodi that you can also use in other distros as a package
Kodi supports hdmi-cec, which allows to use your TV remote to control kodi, the hardware needs to be compatible too though (raspberry pis are compatible) There is also a mobile app, Kore, to control kodi on local network
The UX may not be as slick as androidtv/appletv but it is customizable
I’m planning to switch my Plex setup to Jellyfin on this new platform. I tried it on my NAS and it almost cooked the very meager CPU 😮
Jellyfin is HEAVY when doing trickplay scans. But outside of that, it’s really not that demanding. I’m running on an N100 right now but I’ve run it fine on stuff as weak as a rk3399.
i like TrueNas! and after trying out True Nas on bare metal for a year or two, now I run it as a VM under Proxmox.
so awesome
You’re the second person to suggest that approach. I’ll check it out before I do setup next week. Thanks!
I’ve tried TrueNAS, Rockstor, Openfiler (iSCSI), EasyNAS, and a few others and TrueNAS is easily the favorite. Running it alongside Proxmox is ideal if your server is beefy enough.
I quickly got pissed at synology and QNAP and just started making my own shit. Now when anything fails it’s my own damn fault and I can actually fix it. This sounds bad but it’s actually a much better experience. I learn a lot and have fun. I’m the guy who made all those G4 cube retrofit kits on Thingiverse. It’s been a great distraction for me over the years.
On the subject of containers, learn podman. That’s where everybody seems to be migrating to.
Thank you, I’ll add podman to the list of things to checkout. Feels good to know I’ll get to set this up however I want
There’s also Incus, but if you’ll be using your TrueNAS box to host the containers, I suggest you stick to Docker as it’s the default. If you’re building a second container box, Proxmox, Docker, Podman, and Incus are your best bets. Choose what fits your expertise and needs best.
I quickly got pissed at synology and QNAP and just started making my own shit.
It sucks, because I really like Synology’s ecosystem–but I don’t buy vendor lock-in devices. Luckly we have arc that lets you use SynologyOS on bare metal. If you get get it working with your hardware it’s badass.
Why they don’t sell home server licenses for SynologyOS is beyond my understanding. It’s a really nice little OS and is specifically designed for NAS.
You have plenty of options. I use Unraid because I bought it before it became a subscription. But I have a friend running Fedora server with Cockpit and running everything from docker containers. The options are endless. ProxMox is a great choice.
When my QNAP finally died on me, I decided to build a DIY NAS and did consider some of the NAS OSes, but I ultimately decided that I really just wanted a regular Linux server. I always find the built-in app stores limiting and end up manually running Docker commands anyways so I don’t feel like I ever take advantage of the OS features.
I just have an Arch box and several docker-compose files for my various self-hosting needs, and it’s all stored on top of a ZFS RaidZ-1. The ZFS array does monthly scrubs and sends me an email with the results. Sometimes keeping it simple is the best option, but YMMV.
Out of curiosity as an owner of a QNAP NAS, how did it go out? Any signs it was in its last legs? Now that I’ve used one, the form factor is the only thing better than most options out there when I got it.
Nowadays all QNAP, Sinology and other NAS vendors supposedly offer a lot of extra value with their cloud options, but I find them a sure way to get hacked based on the average company’s investment in security (I work in IT, it is a sad affair sometimes) combined with all the ransomware specifically targeting them due to old packages they rely on = I’ll build my next system from the ground up, even if the initial cost is higher and the result is uglier.
It was this nasty Intel clock drift bug: https://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?t=157459
Support was completely unresponsive and refused to do anything. Didn’t even acknowledge the issue AFAIK. I tried to add the resistor but my copy of the NAS didn’t expose the right pins so I couldn’t even solder them on if I wanted to. Then I tried mounting my drives into another Linux machine, at which point I realized they were using some custom version of LVM that didn’t work with standard Linux. I ended up having to buy a new QNAP NAS just to retrieve my data and then I returned it.
After that, I swore off proprietary NASes. If I can’t easily retrieve data from perfectly good drives, it is an absolute no go.
I have feeling I may find myself here in time, as I develop this setup more.
If you’re familiar with Linux, I highly recommend it. The flexibility is just great and you can setup whatever dashboards / management tools you need. No need to tie yourself to a specific solution IMHO.
If you’re going with Docker containers, a lot of the NAS OSes just hold you back because they don’t support all the options that Docker offers. You’ll be fighting the system if you need to do any advanced Docker configuration.
Thank you!
I’m not familiar, yet. My background is MS OS but going back as far as CLIs so I’m confident I’ll learn fast.
When you end up having a mini homelab look into komo.do for container orchestration over the overkill options like kubernetes or portainer
I prefer dockge for putting all of my compositions in one place.
And being able to manage multiple hosts in one UI is the absolute tits. There are a few features I miss from portainer but none strong enough to pull me back. And no bs SaaS licensing and costs…
So what’s the threshold for ‘mini’ vs ‘you need to stop’…? Number of hosts, or number of containers, or number of public services, or…
Not sure, currently have 8 nodes and 40 apps running
Consider that a new power efficient CPU may be cheaper by consuming less electricity over a few years!
I hadn’t considered that! Thank you.
I’m hoping the OS, as it’s designed for this, is going to be helpful in getting the right balance with power usage.
To put this into perspective for you, if your NAS sits at idle for 90% of the time (probably true) and an older CPU is 50w (kinda high, but maybe) and a newer CPU is 15w, over an entire year it will save you around 305.76 kWh. Average price per kWh in the USA is 12.89¢. So over a year a new CPU can reasonably save you around $39.41. So it’s not nothing, but it’s nothing crazy, but lower idle wattage = lower temp = components last longer, which is the real savings.
If an older CPU is only gonna last you 5 years, when a new might last 10, you’re going to save almost $400 in energy and generally a CPU today is going to be cheaper than a CPU in 10 years (probably). So it makes sense to spend an extra $200 on a newer CPU and still net a $200 savings over 10 years vs the older CPU.
You can calculate it !
Take your power usage and compute the cost over a year.
I will soon add a SSD because i finally moved from a RAID 1 to RAID 5 (so more HDDs), it consume more electricity.
I can measure how much power it draw because the server is on a smart plug. I calculated an additional 20-30€ a year of electricity, adding a SSD for read/write cache would allow the HDDs to stop spinning, make things faster and will be cost effective over a few years.This is why I’m using a refurbished mini PC as my home server. Lower wattage for constant uptime at home. Also very quiet.
If you are concerned about TruNAS, go look at Xigmanas. This is the original FreeNAS project before iX acquired the name.
Much appreciated!
Welcome! I personally run proxmox as my host os then virtualize a truenas core VM and have my docker setup in another lxc. A bit more complex than just straight up truenas but its saves me before. I’d recommend looking into it
Thanks! That sounds like one of those things that’s a hassle to setup and appreciated in the long run
Its honestly not too bad as a starting point but its definitely harder than just installing truenas. Reason I’d suggest it is that it gives you more flexibility in the long term.
If you want less complexity, something like yunohost or CasaOS can be great too
I have so many things to try and discover!
Thanks, I’ve made a note of your suggestions, 👍
Its certainly a rabbit hole. If you ever need help shoot me a message. I’m happy to chat about this stuff.
You’re a good soul!
Expect to be ostracised here but if your drives are “junk” (some have SMR), I got better parity performance with Windows Storage Spaces (WSS) than with Unraid. Recoverability and compatibility with old junk hardware was very good too, whereas the bits I had lying around gave me Linux driver conflicts. Trying to install ZFS on Linux gave me a headache, and I then realised I couldn’t expand the array easily when I found other cheap crappy drives to add. WSS doesn’t care, it just keeps trucking.
As for a licence, the old “upgrade from the windows 7 enterprise key that got leaked” trick did it for me. Never paid for it.
I found that I needed to spend more on components with better driver support to have a working NAS on Linux. Windows isn’t open source, but for me it was the cheapest total cost option, and you can still run your containers in it.
I reckon maybe performance is worse on write for WSS? I paid for a PrimoCache licence to fix that though, and now my SSD gets used for initial writes and slowly spools over to the array as the array is able to calculate parity and write with my 10 year old CPU.
“Microsoft is an evil company, basically the enemy of free software, but here is why you should use their product…”
Booooo
This is self-hosted, not foss. Also I didn’t say they were evil? All morality is relative
What’s the self hosted guide to security when opening up ports to the public ?
Use tailscale for host nodes, use tailscale docker container in a compose stack with an app that you sidecar to. That way that app is on your tailnet as if it is its own computer. Use tailscale serve for reverse proxying support of the apps. Then, setup a vps node (I use linodes $5 node) with tailscale and configure that to be your DMZ into your tailnet.
For DMZ, use Caddy, UFW, and fail2ban. Also take advantage of ACLs in the Tailscale admin console to only have the VPS able to route traffic to specific apps you want to expose. My current project is to work in Authelia into this setup so a user logs into one exposed app and is able to traverse to other exposed apps through header / token authentication.
Oh also, segment the tailnet using different authentication keys. Each host node should have its own key, all the apps on a host node should have a shared key, and all public facing clients should have a common shared key. That way in case of compromise you can revoke the affected keys without bringing down your network.
deploy to dmz
filtered by fw
host based isolation
zerotrust
etc
