Help a Newbie - Considering OMV, need recommendations / opinions

  • Hello,


    Please let me know if this is the right sub thread for this.


    I am a newbie to NAS and Linux world and need some opinions/recommendations.


    I have a few laptops and desktops at home and want to set up a basic NAS / server at home for backup purposes. The initial thought is to use it as a backup storage NAS and go from there. I want to store my media collections and also backup documents and files I have on my laptop.


    I am a total beginner related to Linux, but am technically inclined - I can solder, build PC's and such. We have a pfsense router at home that I set up.


    So, with that said, I looked at a few NAS OS's out there and OMV looks to be the most easy to use and to set up for home use. So, I wanted to ask some questions to you guys.


    So far, I have:
    Spare Dell Optiplex i3-3220 MT with 4 gig RAM with Intel NIC
    Spare 2.5 HDD with 250gb for use as OS drive
    Buying one 2TB HDD for storage
    All clients are PC except for one old Mac Laptop.
    Pfsense router on a used Dell Optiplex Core2Duo.




    My questions are:



    1. I don't want RAID. Am using 1 drive as storage. (I don't want complications with all that RAID stuff). I just want to buy another 2TB as a backup. Can I put it in the same Optiplex NAS case and make it so that OMV will backup into it from the main Drive every night or just a couple times a day? Or, do you recommend an external backup solution?


    2. If external backup is preferred, do I get an external enclosure for the 2TB drive? If so, what kind of software solution do I use? I can not do things such as putting a Raspberry Pi controlled external drives at someone's house to do BittorrentSync backups all day. It's just not possible for me. And I am not so sure about CrashPlan service.


    3. For the main storage, do I mount it as one single drive? How do people setup their drives? Do you partition the drive to different drives for each type of files (i.e. music, movies, documents, etc.)? Or, do you put multiple drives and mount each as one type of folder? I am asking because am not familiar with Linux file setup. I want to mainly store music, some movies, and documents.


    4. How do I make so that my laptops and desktops backup into the NAS every night? We really don't have a lot of data like some people do. Do I have to install some kind of client software on each?


    5. Do I have to use Samba so that each PC clients can see the files on NAS? Or, does OMV automatically allows PC clients to see the storage files / folders / documents.


    6. In the future, I might want to use OwnCloud for remote access. Do you recommend it? I know it may introduce some issues such as hackers and whatnot due to opening the server to internet (port and all). What are your thoughts? I may never do it but am curious. I must say I am not an expert in Network and Security. I read some people recommend SSH or VPN. Would that introduce major complexity to the setup? If too complicated, I may forgo doing OwnCloud. Only reason I considered it is due to my inclination to NOT trust Dropbox or equivalent for my phone taken photos and such.


    7. Does Docker work like hypervisor? I am reading about it and still don't understand it. Can some explain to me?


    8. I don't want ZFS, too complicated - am not an IT person. What is a good file setup that's just simpler and make it easy to add new drives as time goes by without re-configuring all the drives again.


    I would really appreciate any help on these questions.

  • hi, newnator :)



    #1. you don't need raid, however if you want an up-time you might want to have it.
    also some protection for data in addition to backup. luckily there is a bunch of options out there that allow you to have all the benefits of raid but enable you to add that later. case in point OMV has a snapRaid plugin that you can install any time and add the protection later as you needed.


    I can only assume that you can ,probably, setup an rsync script cron job that will do what you want.
    there is a plugin for that too, maybe some one here who knows more about it will chime in later.


    #2. as related to #1, you can simply get an external USB drive mounted it and do the same with rsync.
    the only reason to have external storage is to protect data when main nas is destroyed.


    #3. DO NOT PARTITION the data drive! it is an old school type of thing. there is simply no need to do that. just create a folder for each data type you want/need. you can create a separate share for each folder to manage the access individually.


    later , if you will get additional drives , you can simply pool them together using unionfilesystem plugin


    #4. not sure about that, but I am thinking you will need some kind of backup software on each client, that you than point to your NAS and shared folder.


    #5. if your PC is windows, use samba if it MAC or Linux you can also use NFS



    #6 and #7 . don't know much


    #8. forget about ZFS, as I mentioned before you can use SnapRaid + MergerFs to get the same effect and much easier to use.


    SnapRaid allows you to add a RAID type of protection for the data on multiple drives that you can add/remove any time at will.
    MergerFS (part of unionFileSystem plugin ) let you create a pool of mutiple drives and present them as a single volume to the system. than you can use that with your shares setup as needed.


    that is what I am building right now on my server.

    omv 3.0.56 erasmus | 64 bit | 4.7 backport kernel
    SM-SC846(24 bay)| H8DME-2 |2x AMD Opteron Hex Core 2431 @ 2.4Ghz |49GB RAM
    PSU: Silencer 760 Watt ATX Power Supply
    IPMI |3xSAT2-MV8 PCI-X |4 NIC : 2x Realteck + 1 Intel Pro Dual port PCI-e card
    OS on 2×120 SSD in RAID-1 |
    DATA: 3x3T| 4x2T | 2x1T

  • 1. If you want your second drive mirrored, then you might as well use RAID1. Otherwise, you can use rsync to run a backup of your main drive every night.


    2. You typically mount your drive as a single partition, and you create "shared folders" for various usages.


    4. You can use SyncThing. You could also use OwnCloud/NextCloud to sync, but it's a bit more involved.


    5. You can use SMB/CIFS, which is pretty easy to set up. The shared folders will show up on your Windows network.


    6. Yes, but it's a bit tedious to set up (NextCloud seems to be taking over where OwnCloud left off). You will want to set up an SSL connection too, which is also quite complicated.


    7. Docker is a bit like a virtual machine setup, but instead of running a VM with an entire OS image, you run "container" instances, where each container runs a single isolated application with only the necessary environment hooks. It's much lighter than a VM environment, but you can only run Linux apps. It's well suited to web applications.


    8. Use ext4.


  • Thanks you both for your item by answers. They are very helpful.


    I think I will go with the ext4 file system and not use RAID but use RSync to backup the main drive. I know that there are many plugs for OMV which is a good thing.


    I heard a lot about SnapRaid and think it will be a very good viable option.


    I many not go OwnCloud route due to complexity of SSL/VPN and and all that.


    Docker sounds like interesting. I will have to look more into it.


    Thanks again.

  • Good luck, keep in mind though, snapraid is not real-time protection. So you might loose data between syncs.


    As for docker, I could never figure out how to use it properly .
    I prefere a full VM route. Omv have a virtualbox plug-in too.



    Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk

    omv 3.0.56 erasmus | 64 bit | 4.7 backport kernel
    SM-SC846(24 bay)| H8DME-2 |2x AMD Opteron Hex Core 2431 @ 2.4Ghz |49GB RAM
    PSU: Silencer 760 Watt ATX Power Supply
    IPMI |3xSAT2-MV8 PCI-X |4 NIC : 2x Realteck + 1 Intel Pro Dual port PCI-e card
    OS on 2×120 SSD in RAID-1 |
    DATA: 3x3T| 4x2T | 2x1T


  • That's good to know. Thanks!

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Snapraid is not backup though. If you have rsync or rsnapshot running hourly, most people won't lose any data.

    omv 7.0.4-2 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.5 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.10 | compose 7.1.2 | k8s 7.0-6 | cputemp 7.0 | mergerfs 7.0.3


    omv-extras.org plugins source code and issue tracker - github


    Please try ctrl-shift-R and read this before posting a question.

    Please put your OMV system details in your signature.
    Please don't PM for support... Too many PMs!

  • yes, sorry didn't mentioned that, but I was replying from my phone and not like to type a lot on int lately, too slow :) need a refresh.

    omv 3.0.56 erasmus | 64 bit | 4.7 backport kernel
    SM-SC846(24 bay)| H8DME-2 |2x AMD Opteron Hex Core 2431 @ 2.4Ghz |49GB RAM
    PSU: Silencer 760 Watt ATX Power Supply
    IPMI |3xSAT2-MV8 PCI-X |4 NIC : 2x Realteck + 1 Intel Pro Dual port PCI-e card
    OS on 2×120 SSD in RAID-1 |
    DATA: 3x3T| 4x2T | 2x1T

  • Thanks for this discussion. I found it helpful for planning my first NAS too.
    I also want to have an external drive that is a mirror of my data (security camera footage) in case my NAS is stolen or the house burns down. The external drive will be hidden where thieves and fires can't get it.


    I looked at Syncthing and it seems a bit complex for keeping a simple mirror. Would lsyncd work well do you think?
    In my case I want a current copy of the data in case the main NAS is destroyed or removed. If a file is deleted from the NAS it should be deleted from the external drive too.


    Thanks.

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