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What to Look for in a NAS?

This week I finished setting up Arch Linux (It felt so good to nuke Windows 11 off my laptop!) and GrapheneOS for my new Pixel phone.

I am interested in getting a NAS for multiple purposes such as accessing files, hosting a small website, and to upload security camera footage to name a few.

Is there a particular brand to buy? I’m basically illiterate when it comes to networks aside from what an IP is and what DNS is. Any suggestions for books and reading material is greatly appreciated. It feels liberating to know more than I did before with tech!

DrKevorkian ,

I saved $50 and bought DS420+ instead of DS920+

Don’t do this

I’d kill to have the quad core at this point, it’s CPU limited with all my Docker apps

shrugal ,
@shrugal@lemmy.world avatar

If you decide to go down the Synology route, make sure it supports docker. Their cheaper models don’t support it, and it’s the gateway to self-hosting all the services that are not available directly from the package manager.

ST5000 ,

One thing about buying older Synology boxes is make sure the thing is 64-bit. I goofed and mine can’t run docker which limits features.

ryan659 ,

I got an Odroid HC4 last year and put Armbian on it, with 2 HDDs in RAID1 via mdraid, and can connect to it using either SMB or NFS. Works great, and since it can run Docker containers nicely I use it for pretty much all my home server needs.

stealth_cookies ,

I’m a proponent of a do it yourself NAS using FreeNAS or Unraid. I had a standalone NAS and got burned by a ransomware attack due to a vulnerability in the software for a feature I had “disabled”. There was zero way for me to know it was an issue without checking the vendor’s forums and seeing everyone else who had the same issue. Upon looking into it a bit more, it seemed like most standalone commercial NAS companies had been hit at least once.

Doing it myself means that I know how it is setup and can control what has access to the internet. As a benefit, the old computer I used performs way better than the standalone NAS and is way more stable (my old NAS “lost” docker containers multiple times). I can definitely recommend Unraid as being easy to use which has a ton of resources on their website and forums, as well as many videos on Youtube on recommended setups. It was definitely a good learning experience and overall not too difficult to do.

gronjo45 OP ,

I’m going to look into FreeNAS and Unraid. I have 2 WD 2TB HDDs that are relatively new that I’ve needed to just pop into the switch connected to my router. The whole networking scene has been a bit overwhelming having had so much of my foundational computer knowledge shifted I haven’t gotten around to it yet. I want the router set up in a different room so I can make more stuff with Ethernet possible rather than connecting wirelessly.

How does a docker container get lost? Does it have something to do with the “contiguity” of theway the block devices partition data? Does it get separated from the other blocks physically? Or is it just a software error and I’m over thinking it? Thanks for the advice!

stealth_cookies ,

Definitely do your research if you are planning on starting any NAS with 2TB HDDs. For the most part you can only really add drives of the same size to a RAID Array (e.g. with FreeNAS), and with Unraid your parity drive you start with must be the largest disk in the system. So when you run out of space you might end up cursing yourself by not starting with larger drives. I have even regretted only starting with 4TB drives in my NAS.

You are overthinking the docker issue, it was just a software issue and broke the container in a way that I either couldn’t, or don’t have the skill to recover.

gronjo45 OP ,

I’ll have to get one of those 12 or 14TB harddrives in the future so I can actually have a proper NAS. Is TrueNAS what FreeNAS is now? I see their parent company is iXSystems. I’ve heard stuff about different file systems like “ZFS” and all these other fancy 3 letter acronyms. The last time I bought software was many years ago, so would you suggest paying for their OS? Thanks for the advice, now I just need to get a better job to actually afford the toys :(

thorbot ,

I’ve spent the time building and maintaining a pi NAS and I prefer a Synology DiskStation. If you have the budget for it, you’ll get a device that’s super easy to set up, is bursting with features just waiting to be added, and there’s no maintenance on it. My NAS runs a plex (streaming video) server, an email server, file server for my local network, it does DHCP and DNS for my network, it stores my IP camera footage, it hosts a small web server, and an audio steaming server. All this functionality was gained by just clicking “install” on the package manager on DiskStation. Unless you have gobs of time to spend learning and fiddling, I’d always go with a DiskStation over a home brewed solution. I guess it boils down to your goal. is your goal to learn more and make something yourself? Or do you just want the seamless features of a consumer level NAS?

Bell ,

This is the best easiest solution. I set one up for a client years ago and it just runs and does as asked. You can’t really tinker but just about everything you can think of is there so you don’t need to.

gronjo45 OP ,

I’ve been wading through the past 2 months of messages because I was far too incompetent at systems management (and hardware) to even pose the question correctly.

Ideally, I’d like my NAS to have a VLAN’d off way of sectioning my security camera footage and my website so I don’t get locked out of it somehow. I heard that I need to somehow create a topology that involves a WAP, Switch, the physical chassis with the NAS in it, and the actual modem/router into the wall. I want to have a streaming server for music/video, a Hugo website, an email server, and a file system where I can store projects just in case I need to access them somewhere other than my home.

I’ve also heard others suggest some of the larger drives for the RAID array, and I’ve seen various things suggested such as Thomas Krenn’s “mdraid”, which requires a “Hardware RAID controller” which makes me wonder what this thing actually is. I need to do more research into it, but I’m just a little stumped on how the drives fit together (physically and logically). Thanks for the help!

Molecular0079 , (edited )

Whatever you do, don’t buy a QNAP. I have no idea whether Synology is similar, but I am having a hell of a time recovering data off my dead QNAP TS-453 Pro because they make it almost impossible to repair without specialized tooling and the on-disk format is using a custom version of LVM that’s incompatible with standard Linux. The reason why it died was because of a manufacturing defect in the onboard Intel J1900 chip that QNAP knew about, didn’t do a recall for, and refused to provide proper support for. The disks themselves are fine, I am just forced to buy another QNAP just to access the data. After this experience, I swore off using turnkey NAS boxes. If your data is stored in a proprietary box that’s unrepairable and using a disk format that’s non-standard, that data is not safe.

Now I have a self-built DIY NAS that I’ve setup with Arch Linux and OpenZFS and I am pretty happy with the results. Sure, going SSD over HDD is an expensive choice, but given that I had to replace each hard drive in my QNAP 2-3 times each over the span of 7 years, I think the cost balances out and the extra performance is sooo worth it (80MB/s vs 700-1000MB/s).

FlameGrilledTanuki ,

Exact same thing happened to me. Last time I’ll buy qnap.

Molecular0079 ,

Sucks that this also happened to you. How did you end up recovering your data?

FlameGrilledTanuki ,

The same way. I had to buy a compatible qnap replacement.

gronjo45 OP ,

Yikes! I’m going to have to watch out for that. I don’t know if I can just jerry-rig together some HDDs into one of the RAID X configurations, but I think I want to get some that are quite a bit larger than 2TB given the amount of things I’d like to do with my NAS (File server, email server, personal website, etc). I’ll do some more research, thanks for the help!

tj ,

"I finished setting up Arch Linux" 😎

Thustrak ,

My recommendation before you set up your website and cameras to be accessed from outside your network (internet facing), VLAN them off. If your cameras or website become compromised, they will be isolated from the rest of your home network.

kostel_thecreed ,

I would recommend making your own NAS instead of buying a Synology or something similar. Check out !selfhosted. Hardware will cost a bit, but it’s far more worth it.

An extremely good resource to begin learning the server environment would be esc.sh/projects/devops-from-scratch/. He has youtube videos that are really well done, I would strongly encourage you to watch atleast the first few videos as they cover topics that you will need to learn, such as : networking, explaining how linux works, etc.

After watching a couple of his guides and learning from them, I would recommend starting a basic server using an old computer or the likes that hosts a couple of apps you will be using. Nothing important like a password manager, file storage, etc, just yet; simply the basics so you get a better understanding of using linux as a server. My recommendations of stuff to try out:

  • Installing PiHole using docker / docker-compose
  • Installing Wordpress using docker / docker-compose
  • Setting up a Wireguard server (there are also docker images, such as wg-easy) so you can connect to your home network from wherever, and use whatever services you are hosting (important if you wish to use your future NAS while not at home)
  • Installing Nginx Proxy Manager and learning how to reverse proxy your services to a hostname

After that I would recommend you transition to Proxmox as your OS, learn from there, and then start hosting file managers/file storage (Network Attached Storage part), zoneminder/frigate for the camera system, etc. Patience is key with this type of learning.

For the hardware part it’s all up to you: amt. of storage, amt. of ram, how big the chasis will be, power-efficiency, motherboard with features you want (ex. more pcie for 2.5gbps network card), cpu depending on how much processing power you need, … You will need to do your research on this, but I recommend getting a NAS after you understand how docker and the works function, and to tailor to your needs.

If you have any questions let me know, hopefully you can understand what I was trying to say, not the best at conveying this type of information lol.

TopRamenBinLaden ,

I just wanted to say thank you for the well thought out comment as someone looking to roll my own NAS.

kostel_thecreed ,

Of course! This type of info would have greatly helped me out when I started, and saved me money and time.

dalingrin ,

I’m all for self hosting but I just recently moved from a self hosted NAS to a dedicated small Synology box and I like it. I still self host several services but now I can do that on a laptop that sips power vs my large tower enclosure. I also bought a dedicated MikroTik router rather than self hosting pfsense or Untangle. Despite now having 3 machines instead of one, in aggregate, it still uses less power than my tower server. The laptop provides its own battery backup and now my router and NAS only use a small amount of energy so I can get a UPS that’ll last much longer. I also like the separation so rebooting one device doesn’t take everything down, etc.

I’m not saying one approach is right or wrong, just throwing out a different point of view.

All the services you point are great. Proxmox is a must imo.

kostel_thecreed ,

Yeah power consumption is a big worry I have, specially with the cost of electricity rising. I still have 2 main servers (1 as a router and 1 as a NAS) and I’ve been working on a new build for my nas which focuses on power-efficiency, something which continues to fascinate me. Currently I am down to 38 watts idle for the new machine (compared to 120+ on my NAS rack) and I’m still trying to find ways to optimize it; hardest part is finding a good balance between power consumption and stability, fuck me it’s hard to do it properly.

rustyricotta ,

Thanks for the great info. I plan to make myself a NAS soon. Saving this comment.

farcaller ,

On one side of the spectrum you have the likes of Synology: you pay premium for the software that does what it says in a nice compact enclosure. Good documentation, easy UI, potentially limiting flexibility.

On the other side, you can make a linux box and declare it a NAS. Run whatever storage you want with whatever filesystem. Any enclosure and form factor you can imagine. Infinitely scalable, but also you’re absolutely on your own in configuring and managing it.

I’d suggest figuring a budget first, and then figuring how much of a hands-on approach you want to have.

travysh ,

I ran a Synology setup that ultimately I replaced with Unraid. I love the flexibility that Unraid provides, but Synology’s software really is top notch. I’ve pieced together various docker images with Unraid to make something comparable functionality wise, but no where near as integrated or seamless

dragontamer ,

Traditionally, a NAS just used iSCSI to look like a hard drive connected over Ethernet cables. This is the bread and butter of the whole NAS thing.

Website hosting, and other features (Samba, NFS, or other storage methods) are optional… Different ways of doing things.

Whatever you do, stick with one methodology. Focusing just on iSCSI should help you simplify your setup and specs.

SAMBA / Windows shares are an alternative, popular approach. It works too but it’s different network stuff. If you are a Windows trained IT guy, you might find this path easier.

I guess there are S3 clones or self hosted cloud techs too. But they’re all just different ways to attach hard drives to a network. There are pros / cons to each, but you’ll only learn the pros/cons by doing it yourself and playing with it.

MrGiblets ,

One thing people often overlook is size. You’ll probably want something that’s Lil.

kamen ,

Add some more specific requirements, e.g. budget, OEM vs DIY, storage space you expect to need, number of drive slots you want. Generally try to overshoot a bit when buying because a NAS is a relatively long lived device.

gronjo45 OP ,

So now that I’m a little farther along in my tech adventures, I’ve found myself staring at the two 2TB WD 6Gbps HDDs that I got from Best Buy awhile back. I didn’t know if I needed to buy a chassis for them (I probably do, I’ll do some more research, just been trying to get back to a mountain of comments) I’m just not really sure what else I’d be using a NAS for besides streaming movies and accessing my work projects from a Dropbox-esque in-home solution

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