Hi there,
I hope it's the right spot here. I have currently my second Synology NAS running, a DS216+II. My volume is slowly running full, but I think I have several months, if not a year, left before I really have to take actions. Nevertheless, this triggered again considerations whether I just upgrade my drives or whether I set up my own server. I am tending to do the latter. But from this nearly made decission arise new questions and I hope I can get some guidance here.
I will try to write down a short summary, why I came up with my current NAS, how I am using it currently, and what bothers me. This should lead to a list of questions I couldn't answer myself yet.
Before my current NAS I had a DS413. After some crash of it my volume got damaged. With the help of Synology I could repair it, but there was doubt whether some files got corrupted. I wanted to use my Synology Backup but, this didn't worked, because the backup tool forced it to do a integrity test which failed then. So I had to do a new backup from the doubtfull volume. I am quite sure now that I didn't loose anything back then, but it was quite close. So I thought about data integrity and found btrfs and that other Synology models support it. This made me switch the NAS towards my current model. But I think that the lacking of ECC RAM is a bummer in this regard.
How I am using my NAS: I think it's a quite common usecase.
Data: I have several shared folders for me and my wife or my HTPC with different users and permissions. I solely use SMB to mount them. I have everything on my NAS. My PCs are solely workstations and hold no data. Thous I really care that they should be safe there. Currently it's not encrypted but I think I will change that again in the future.
Data-Integrity: My idea was to use BTRFS in order to avoid bit rot and have errors automatically repaired. I do a backup on my USB-HDD on demand (again with the Synology tool ), I have an older backup on an second HDD. A third layer of security is an automated encrypted backup of all folders once a day to GDrive in order to have something if the first backup dies or the house burns down, theft or whatsoever. To protect the hardware and volume from "blackouts" I have a small USV that if the battery is activated sends a signal to the NAS that triggers a safe shut down.
Services: I don't use any of the Synology services. I only let run an AV from time to time and of course the administraton tools. I run an Emby Docker container that provides at the moment one Kodi client with metainformation. Currently I don't use the streaming from Emby since the NAS is not powerfull enough.
There are some things that bother me with my setup. First and most importantly, I felt a bit betrayed when I later figured out that BTRFS without ECC is maybe not that secure and even gets risky when my RAM should get damaged. I want my data storage robust and "self healing" and get to know when some files might be corupted and I should check for earlier versions in my backups. Although I am a fan of not running to many disks I feel a bit limited right now because I can't extend my raid and have to replace my disks, which is with only one nas a long lasting thing because I need to use the backups. The power of the system is sometimes a bit slow. I dont use Emby for playback since even display of subtitles takes to much power. Lastly, something which is more expandeble. I have on my HTPC a TVHeadend server/client combo. For the future it could be nice to integrate the TV-Card into the homeserver and access from different clients and have recorded shows directly on the server.
So that was one long text! Thanks for reading already!
So obiously I would require OMV to fullfill all my current needs and the things I am lacking currently. But I am not hundred percent sure about all the points and whehter OMV can do this and what the best option might be. So it cums up to the following priotirized list, if I didn't forget anything:
- I want a system that holds my data secure and guarantees data integrity. So using ECC RAM is a must. OMV does support BTRFS and ZFS over a plugin. I saw on github a proposal that in the future solely BTRFS should be supported. I am not a FS expert and really unsure what would suit me best and what the future of OMV might be.
- I guess backups (encrypted and decrypted) are of course somhow integrated in OMV. So I have no doubts about my USB-Backups but what about my daily GDrive backups? This would be highly important for me.
- Can OMV work together with my USV as the Diskstation does?
- Not really a question but, user permissions, Docker, Samba I expect to work as usual
That's really the end now. I know that are a lot of questions, but since I spent a really high effort and money on my data and my home IT, I really don't want to make similar mistakes like with the decision to the DS216+II again. I would really like to make an elaborated decission being aware of the features and drawbacks it comes with.
Best,
FordPrefect