A journey from XigmaNAS to OpenMediaVault in an ESXi environment

  • Part I.


    Ok, decided to start kind of a blog.


    Long story short, I started using FreeNAS back at around version 0.7.x and fell in love with the USB drive-installable system, with ZFS. Had it running on an ATOM mobo with a fairly slow cpu. 3x1.5 Tb drives in a RaidZ1 setup. I stayed with the same OS through the Nas4Free years and even today when it is called XigmaNAS - same system, although the underlying hardware was switched first to a Dell PowerEdge T20 with the same 3 drives, + 1 without redundancy, then to the current PowerEdge T130.


    Today's setup
    is an ESXi host on the bare metal, XigmaNAS is on a root-on-zfs mirrored VM, an LSI 9211-8i card passes through a 2x2Tb ZFS mirror, and a 3 Tb not-so-important data drive to the XigmaNAS VM.



    The ESXi host has one single 500Gb SSD storage for holding the VMs. (so the aforementioned root-on-zfs mirror probably only makes sense for the XigmaNAS upgrades, where you have the chance to revert to the previous install should something go awry).


    The host give home to occasional Debian, Ubuntu, Windows, FreeBSD and other VMs I use for work and home test lab.


    Pros & Cons


    Pros:

    • As much as I got familiar enough with FreeBSD, I feel that linux has a much larger user base and probably a more active development
    • With Docker Support I found so many containers to my liking, it is vastly new, broader and wider world to me than what XigmaNAS offers today. (don't mean this as a negative comment really, after all, I used it for like 8 years :thumbup: )

    Not really cons rather than my worries and learning curve milestones I guess:

    • Doesn't seem that the Proxmox kernel was something bad, but I hope ZFS gets added to the 'regular' repo, I am a bit shy to tinker with the kernel, but hope someone here reassures me not to be. Or else, maybe I don't really need ZFS?
    • Some of the Docker concepts are very new, and configuration can be a bit confusing here and there... lots to learn, but hey, I am lazy. This will get even more tricky with Portainer in OMV 5... I tried, but got lost...
    • A bit worried about installing OMV on USB - again, plugin is there, but then where do I put the docker config files? Bit confused, hope that by X-Max I will become an OMV enthusiast :rolleyes:



    Requirements for the new system:

    • ESXi on the metal can stay put. Works as expected and hosts a lot of other VMs already
    • I want to have redundancy both for OpenMediaVault and the other VMs (basically use some kind of mirror for the ESXi storage I guess, but I have not done this before...)
    • Passthrough mode for the LSI HBA dedicated to OMV - data disks will be handled by OMV
    • Redundancy for all data that I have - be it SnapRaid, or stick to ZFS and another mirror, yet to decide
    • Docker config - looking out for best practices where to put the /config files for the containers, etc
    • Probably replacing PLEX with EMBY... I experience a lot of slow network response and long buffering times when continuing an episode or a movie... with EMBY it was pretty much instantaneous from my old test box, which is a ridiculous-in-comparison N40L HP Microserver, that is 8 years old now.
    • Same goes with transmission - lacks some features, eg. delete after x days or hours of seeding, especially since on my test box with PLEX I now have a 2nd copy of everything, one is in the complete folder, one is in PLEX's media - although probably just a config issue.
    • Docker containers, Docker containers, and even more Docker containers :) Well, only the ones that I got to like really.

      • Heimdall
      • Sonarr
      • Radarr
      • Jackett
      • EMBY or Plex
      • Transmission or another torrent client
      • Pihole
      • PXE and DHCP and SFTP for booting VMs from some images...
      • Some home automation
    • Anything that comes to my mind during or after the install. or you'd recommend to have :)


    Sorry for the long post, but Techno Dad Life's videos MADE me do it!! 8)

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    About docker files and where to put them.


    Create a shared folder "docker". Then, before you do anything else with docker, set the docker base path in the OMV docker GUI to that shared folder.


    You can then create subfolder there for each docker application config as well, or if you prefer it, use yet another shared folder, perhaps "docker_cfg".


    Setting the docker base path like this allows you to effeciently run OMV from a small USB thumbdrive without worries that the docker apps will cause a lot of writes to the default docker base path, /var/lib/docker, causing the USB thumbdrive to wear out or fill up fast.


    I use Emby and like it. I run it in Docker on a tiny 2GB 32 bit ARM NAS. Both accessing files on the local 16TB hdd and on other similar NAS in the network, over nfs using autofs. Works better than OK.

  • Hi Adoby,


    Thank you for the tip. I actually realised that since I planned to install OMV in a VM that would sit on SSD vmware store, the USB issue is out of the equation. So in that regard - wouldn't it be better to use the docker_user's home folder? Although this would require that the OMV system disk is also backed up I guess...


    I found the option just now: it defaults to /var/lib/docker if unset).


    BTW,

    • XigmaNAS config files for Transmission and PLEX are also on a data drive, I guess I am just inexperienced with OMV yet.
    • Creating a folder under sharedfolders for docker doesn't mean I HAVE to share that 'further' via SMB to clients - so there
    • One question though: wouldn't I be better off putting the /srv/disk-by-id...etc path in the docker config? That will be an always valid location even if shared folder configs aren't working well for some reason...
    • Offizieller Beitrag

    You asked about USB and where to put docker stuff...


    If you don't run OMV with the rootfs on flash memory there are only two reason to change the docker base path: To avoid filling up the rootfs and to simplify backups by separating frequently changing data from (mostly) static config.


    But if you in addition run OMV in a VM I assume that you snapshot the VM before you do anything. Any changes or updates. And if something should break, you just roll back the previous working config. So no need to worry. Just do whatever you think is the easiest.


    If there ever is problems with shared folders config, or anything else in OMV, just roll back.


    Surely this is one of the main reasons why you want to run OMV in a VM? Not having to trouble shoot to avoid a restore or reinstall. Just roll back.

  • Oh, long time no see... Did not have much time and constantly trying to get myself familiar with OMV version 5.xx.


    So far I am finding it more and more tricky, but I hope it's only due to lack of time to get more experienced.


    Got version 5.x on a rPt model 4B 4 Gig RAM.

    • No Proxmox kernel on this one (at least could not find any)
    • Due to this I might be completely out of luck for a simple ZFS mirror
    • USB drives can't do any other raid - unless you use a USB enclosure
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    • Portainer - I am way too dumb for this. I could install some very good containers in OMV 4 with Techo Dad's videos, but can't figure out on the new system
    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Oh, long time no see... Did not have much time and constantly trying to get myself familiar with OMV version 5.xx.


    So far I am finding it more and more tricky, but I hope it's only due to lack of time to get more experienced.


    Got version 5.x on a rPt model 4B 4 Gig RAM.

    • No Proxmox kernel on this one (at least could not find any)
    • Due to this I might be completely out of luck for a simple ZFS mirror
    • USB drives can't do any other raid - unless you use a USB enclosure
      Externer Inhalt www.youtube.com
      Inhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.
      Durch die Aktivierung der externen Inhalte erklären Sie sich damit einverstanden, dass personenbezogene Daten an Drittplattformen übermittelt werden. Mehr Informationen dazu haben wir in unserer Datenschutzerklärung zur Verfügung gestellt.
    • Portainer - I am way too dumb for this. I could install some very good containers in OMV 4 with Techo Dad's videos, but can't figure out on the new system

    I'm not a huge fan of the toy computers unless for very specific uses, and not for "every day" use (I use an HC2 for a remote backup). Build a real server would be my first suggestion. USB Raid is a terrible idea, that is why that "feature" was removed, because it caused nothing but problems.


    I honestly can't understand how anyone who has spent time w/ the plugin on OMV 4, can't figure out Portainer. With very few exceptions, they are virtually identical, it's just looking in different places to accomplish the same thing. Most of the time I suspect it's more a lack of motivation to change, than it is an inability to learn Portainer.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Most of the time I suspect it's more a lack of motivation to change, than it is an inability to learn Portainer.

    Sad but true, but with macom ’s docker compose tutorials I don’t know why everybody doesn’t go that route.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Sad but true, but with macom ’s docker compose tutorials I don’t know why everybody doesn’t go that route.

    I agree. docker compose/stacks is very easy once you get the hang of it. I have so many compose files backed up I can have my server back up from nothing in no time flat.


    Portainer is nice for management and monitoring, but using docker compose is easier for initial installation, IMO.

  • 2 months ago I learned Docker and nothing made Docker more understandable than using docker from the shell. Portainer hide away far too much and compose, while nice, changed too much syntax to match/meet YAML rationality.


    With the above said, the first tutorial I used was macom's compose tutorial from which I switched to the official docs. I couldn't imagine starting with Portainer... that would be frustrating (to learn, it always seem better to go down rather than up).

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    I made the transition from docker plug-in (OMV4) to Portainer (OMV5) and then to docker-compose with macom ’s Nextcloud Guide. Portainer was a steep climb but one day I sat down with two server pages - one running 4 and one running 5 - on the screen and went down the page section by section and mapped out on a sheet of paper which docker section corresponded with which Portainer section. Docker-compose was like falling off a log with the Guide from macom .

    System Backup Typo alert: Under the Linux section the command should be sudo umount /dev/sda1 NOT sudo unmount /dev/sda1

    Backup Data Disk to Backup Disk on Same Machine: In a Scheduled Job:rsync -av --delete /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-f8814ed9-9a5c-4e1c-8830-426968c20ea3/ /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e67439d5-00a3-4942-bd5f-b84ab86aa850/ Don't forget trailing slashes, and BE CAREFUL. (HT: Getting Started with OMV5)

    Equipment - Thinkserver TS140, NanoPi M4 (v.1), Odroid XU4 (Using DietPi): PiHole

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