What do you have, what do you recommend, and why?
Asking as I’ve got a lot of spare components lying around that I’m planning on turning into a NAS. If it doesn’t work out I’ll buy a pre-built enclosure and reuse the drives.
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I think as a turn-key solution, the prebuilt enclosures are fine. I have a two-bay Synology that works well. If you’ve already got components though, DIY is probably going to give you a lot more granular control. I’m planning on building out a home server rack including a TrueNAS VM or something similar.
+1 for running TrueNAS in a VM, I’ve got one running in Proxmox. Make sure to enable hardware passthrough so TrueNAS has direct access to your drives!
Syno 920+ for me
Same. Having all their custom software available and just one click away is amazing, and with Docker you can install everything else just like a regular server. It’s the best of both worlds imo.
I’ll third that. I got a lemmy server up and running on mine too which was fun. I opted for a cloud solution though in the end.
Adding my 2c - I think it depends on if you want something that just works out of the box, or if you want to tinker and play with a DIY solution. I have a Synology DS220+ that just works, is easy to manage, has loads of apps etc. I also have a Raspberry Pi with Openmediavault installed and 3 SSDs attached which required a bit of setup, is more complex to get things working, also has apps (plugins) but is more of a project.
I replaced an old prebuilt Windows Home Server with a custom built server running unraid about…7 years ago. unraid has been rock solid for me. Great product. Very scalable for the home user.
Highly recommend unraid and it’s well worth the one time license fee.
Understand that this is a rabbit hole where you’ll hear a million opinions. If you’re just starting out, I’d recommend keeping it simple. It’s been a while since I looked at what’s new, but I’d look at truenas scale or unraid first.
I personally use truenas core (based on freebsd) but truenas scale (based on debian) opens up more options like docker that might be useful in the future.
I recommend sticking to hardware you already own until you run into something that you can’t do. Then you’ll have a better idea of what to look for and how everything works.
Thanks, the flexibility and closed source (I assume) of turn key solutions puts me off them. I’ve already got a raspberry pi running a few containers and I work with docker and Linux in my day job so I know a decent amount. The form factor of the turnkey solutions is the big draw for me at the moment to them as I’ve just got a spare ATX mid size tower handy. Would ideally replace with smaller case but then I’d need a smaller motherboard and that’s just raising costs for starting out. Potential upgrade path anyway.
I have a node 304 case with an itx board and I wish I’d have gone with something bigger with more expansion slots. Some sata ports died on me so I installed an hba card to give me more. That means I can’t add a 10g nic or a video card for hardware acceleration or…you get the idea. Ideally spend less money now and experiment, then in the future you’ll hopefully learn what suits your needs.
I used the cpu/motherboard/ram/psu from a desktop I’d since upgraded, slapped it into a 4u rackmount case I got cheap on Ebay (it looks awful - I think it was previously used in a lab - but it’s solid af), bought a nice big cooler and some noctua fans so it’d run quiet, added an HBA card, 4x shucked 14tb drives and a coupla 1tb m.2s, slapped Unraid on it, and was up and running with an awesome nas for really not that much money. Totally worth it, that thing is awesome.
I will admit it doesn’t look as swanky as a synology, but it was far cheaper, is a lot more capable of non-nas stuff, and every part is standard and upgradeable.
I picked up an old Dell Optiplex tower and slapped 4 cheap 4 TB drives in it. Setup as RAID 5 I got 12 TB of “redundant” storage for cheap! Perfect spot to keep all the p0rn torrents.
But I used OpenMediaVault for that deployment. It’s been OK… but I kinda feel that I am missing out on some of the more active developments of other distributions.
Despite that, I would absolutely suggest grabbing an old office computer and throwing some drives into it for a home NAS.
It’s the power usage and physical space that puts me off those kind of solutions. Of course, that varies a lot based on your living circumstances (location, whether you own a house, etc).
Depends on how you intend to maintain it. I started out with a Synology NAS. When that started to give out the ghost I built own so that I could have better control over the software and hardware. It’s now a NAS of Theseus - all the parts (even the OS) have been replaced over time, but it’s still the same “unit”.
The hardest part was deciding on a case. I started with a small form factor as a preference. Nowadays I just pick what gives me good airflow and ease in replacing parts.
Personally, I use a “scratch built” machine to act as a file server/media server. Someone was going to recycle it at the office, so I added some hard drives and put it in a larger case.
It really comes down to two things in my mind: what can you afford and how deep do you want to follow the rabbit hole?
If you want something quick and easy, sure go for the premade. Nothing wrong with that.
If you want to use it as a learning tool, and add other services, then I think a home spun server is the way to go.
Just my 2 cents.
Definitely try re-using what you have already. Just keep in mind that a NAS usually runs 24/7 and old gaming PC parts are usually quite power hungry, so it might cost a lot in terms of electricity.
Yeah this is definitely a downside to using spare gear over purposeful purchases. I think it makes sense to use what I have and optimise later. I’ve got an old intel i5 and mobo I’m planning on using for the NAS. Need to find another use for my old Ryzen 5 2600X.
I was going to say this too. It’s fun to have a project to do and to recycle old parts but something custom built for being a NAS will most likely be less power hungry and be less effort to maintain.
I had considered running a DIY for years, and eventually just caved and bought a Synology 1522+ NAS. It lets me run my Plex server and Matrix server, and it just handles all the config and updates for me easily.
The decision was that I wanted to backup my hobbies, not have backup BE my hobby.
To clarify, running Plex is easy; running Matrix is very NOT easy… But being a NAS was the easiest part, by far. Stick the drives in, turn on, follow the short manual that came with it to configure, and let it do its thing.
I like technology quite a lot and in general I’m not afraid to “get my hands dirty.” I host my own instance of a few things, like homeassistant. That said, there’s really something to be said about the simplicity of a prebuilt. I have a synology that was as simple as can be and I kind of love that.
I’ve been just using hard drives in my server computer running on my old gaming computer.
I recently switched my core os from linuxmint to opensuse tumbleweed. Ultimately the core os doesn’t matter much, it’s mostly personal interface differences. All my apps run on docker using docker-compose. I use caddy as my reverse proxy and letsencrypt certs.
I’ve heard VERY good things about synology. Their software has a unique raid mode and an easy platform to host apps and such. But they’re kinda expensive…
I use Opensuse on my stuff too. I do bare metal though, because I’m old and this newfangled docker stuff frightens and confuses me.
The docker compose file lets me define all the variables in one file and link the configs to a folder next to the compose file. It lets me reinstall my core os, copy the Dockers folder, and bring them back up. All self contained.
I like my synology because its relatively simple to setup and manage. And some of the apps are really nice (like Active Backup for Business). But even things like LUNs and iscsi is easy.
I’m using a 12 year old Xeon based Dell workstation as a file server and PiHole. It’s quiet, reliable, and has a RAID controller built into the motherboard. Before I got my current server I was using a couple Raspberry Pis, which was more work to maintain and less reliable.
The only reason I’m using this machine at all though is because I got it for free. I definitely recommend taking the path of least resistance in terms of cost and availability if you’re not going to be putting super heavy loads on your server.
