I am new to OMV and have been doing to reading about the system as I'm looking to build a home “mainly NAS” server but with some other services running but I have some questions which I am hoping someone on the forum would be kind enough to help with?
As background currently I have 2 raspberrypi's, an LG NAS appliance and an ITX desktop which I am looking to move to 1 always on box, thinking of an fanless 3150 CPU based ITX and currently reusing the NAS 1GB drives (will probably upgrade at a later date).
The NAS provides remote file access via Samba shares and DNLA server. The RPI's provide the following Nginx with PHP, MYSQL DB, NTP, Print and Scan server, Owncloud, MRTG/RRDtool SNMP monitoring and graphing, syslog server, TFTP, Asterisk (simple command line set-up), Current Cost meter data collection and graphing (Python scripts). The desktop is just a basic Linux Mint set-up for basic browsing and used as a scanning front end/light office duties, this could remain separate if needed but would be nice due to space to have a 1 box solution with a GUI desktop installed – not a normal server set-up I know but...
My question are:
- The 3150 CPU board I believe is 64 bit so which OVM version do I need as there appears to i386 and amd64 version, but the CPU would be Intel not AMD and I assume the i386 would be 32 bit?
- The alternative would be to download Debian and then install OMV as per a number of forum and other posts on the web, this would give me the desktop GUI up front but is there any downsides?
- Regardless of the install method i.e. native ISO or Debian with OMV installed, OMV will effectively do the file server element but I need to add the other services, I know some can be installed via plug-in's but can I still APT-GET the service applications in Debian? For example the Asterisk plug-in seem to be the full version with the Asterisk GUI, where I use a cut down APT installed version without GUI which I would prefer, also there seems to be some things not covered by plug-in's e.g. Saned for scan server, MRTG, etc.
- If I can use APT is it better to use the native OMV ISO or Debian with OMV installed or would there be no difference? It's Debian either way so I am assuming no difference unless I am missing something...
- Some websites point to the OMV being VLAN capable, I know the the underlying Debian is. The current Asterisk set-up is on a separate Voice VLAN as such there would be 2 VLAN's to the Debian network set-up, however OMV (and everything else other than Asterisk) would just be using the main VLAN only. Would OMV be happy with this set-up i.e. the application itself would just be on one VLAN but the box would have 2 VLAN's to it?
- Raid 1 set-up – I have a separate backup disk but with re-using the NAS drives I am thinking of installing 1 then populating with data (like to have 2 copies at all times) then installing the second drive and converting to raid 1. Would the raid 1 set-up remove the data/reformat the original installed drive? If so is there any way to “pre” set-up raid 1 with just one drive installed initially so when the second drive is installed the system rebuilds the raid 1 as if a drive had been replaced? Kind of configure raid 1 and install all the hardware (drives) later...
- Are the storage drives available to the underlying Debian OS, thinking as an example that if I install nginx on the system drive could have have the web root directory (var/www) mounted as a folder on the storage drive or would it need to be also on the system drive, as the later would possible need a larger system drive. As the OMV GUI seems to control the storage drives and raid, I am not sure if the mounts are within OMV "the application" or within Debian and hence accessible to the OS directly with the OMV GUI just administering the back-end OS set-up?
- Only as a side question as many may have a similar set-up of a low power ITX + 2 OMV “spinning” storage drives (raid 1) + SSD system drive, with in my case a 220W PSU powering it all. What sort of power consumption do you get? As the box will be on 24/7 and I think it will be pretty low in general from my “theory” working out and various web posts I have read but wondering if anyone has any real world experience… As if needed thinking of moving to a more efficient and quieter 150W Pico power supply with power block.
Many Thanks in advance for any help or insight provided...