Is OMV right for me?

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    Hello everybody I was finally able to install OMV on top of debian net install because for some reason OMV installer would hang on networking.


    Making a long story short I have bought an used dell t320 which I'll primarily use as a backup for data that will be stored on various pcs on my home lan.


    As it would be a pity to use a full blown server only as a NaS I spent the last couple of weeks studying and trying to figure the best configuration to accomplish the primary goal but being able to experiment and learn other things (pihole, home assistant, minecraft server) .


    I must admit is a tough and confusing job for a complete noob like me so bare with me. Please.


    I've tried proxmox but I'm not comfortable on virtualizing a Nas. I've tried debian with xfce which I find reassuring since it has a GUI but i think that OMV would be easier in many tasks storage related.


    I came to the conclusion that for my level of knowledge (low) OMV coupled with cockpit would give me a solid performance for my primary goal permitting me also, to tinker and learn new things via docker and VMs without risking too much. For my use case scenario is my reasoning sound or should I follow another path.


    I don't really need redundancy as most of the data would be in other disks too but I'm inclined to a setup with mergerfs+ snap raid (or even without mergerfs).


    I will have a 120 gb ssd as boot disk and another 4 disks (2 500gb and 2 3tb) but there is something I don't understand: how can 1 single parity disk protect an array of multiple disks that are more than double its size?


    What happens if the os disk or some other hardware fails? would I be able to reinstall OMV and recover all the data in the disks?


    Lastly, I have 48 gb of Ram do I really need 48 GB of swap (os disk is only 120bgb)?


    Thanks for you help

    Lots of questions. To answer your question about parity, it can't. The parity disk needs to be as large as your largest data disk.


    If os disk fails, you should be able to install omv on a new drive and remount your disks and data will be intact.


    120gb ssd is overkill for omv, but will work just fine.


    48gb of ram is also overkill. 48gb of swap is only needed if you want to hibernate the system. It needs enough space to write the memory to disk before halting.

    Thanks for your replies. I know that parity disk has to be as large as the larger. I read that I could setup the two 500 gb plus one of the 3tb and 1 3tb for parity. But to me doesn't sum up unless it stops backing up at some point.


    In reality I wanted to build a rig with an Intel j5005 and 16 gb of ram at most. But in the meantime I was reading about freenas... and zfs... and it's need of ram and that should have been ecc ram... So I bid over this dell t320 for joke and it turned out I won the auction (211 euros)...


    So what can you tell me? as far as I am concerned OMV will tick all the boxes. or should I go some other route maybe just plain debian with xfce? Clrearos?...

    Zitat von amigaoneit

    Thanks for your replies. I know that parity disk has to be as large as the larger. I read that I could setup the two 500 gb plus one of the 3tb and 1 3tb for parity. But to me doesn't sum up unless it stops backing up at some point.


    In reality I wanted to build a rig with an Intel j5005 and 16 gb of ram at most. But in the meantime I was reading about freenas... and zfs... and it's need of ram and that should have been ecc ram... So I bid over this dell t320 for joke and it turned out I won the auction (211 euros)...


    So what can you tell me? as far as I am concerned OMV will tick all the boxes. or should I go some other route maybe just plain debian with xfce? Clrearos?...


    two 500gb drives + 1 3TB with 1 3TB for parity will work just fine using snapraid. Drives are cheap enough though I'd probably pitch the 500's and get some more 3 TB.


    I think OMV will be perfect for you. Why would you need xfce? OMV is a file server and designed to run headless.

    As I said i had to go the debian install route. Ssh at the very end (OMV-something populate) gave me an error. Couldn't follow the instructions on idrac because my keyboard layout is Italian and debian installer didn't recognise the keyboard properly.

    So I installed xfce so I could copy/paste the instructions. I liked the idea to have a DE so to access the file system more easily. but I know that is not recommended with OMV. Just wondering if for my case scenario would be better have debian with xfce without OMV...

    i couldn't install OMV Iso; it hangs on detecting network connection. i had to go the debian minimal install first route.

    i installed and reinstalled OMV (and ubuntu; and proxmox and whatnot) many times, encountering difficulties that i had to solve sometimes creatively.


    I can connect to the server through a console via Idrac and is like being connected directly. the only problem is that this way my keyboard is not recognised properly so i cannot press some keys. the first time i sshed (is that a word?) the code needed to instal OMV through terminal everything seemed going fine untill the very end when it didn't recognise the last instruction (omv-confdbabmd populate) and the server crashed.


    so the first solution i had thought was to install via idrac (the console) debian with a desktop enviroment so i could copy/paste the code with the help of the browser. and it worked perfectly. but is adviced against the installation of OMV with a desktop enviroment. (although i read that someone use it for rdb).


    So i tried again via ssh and as expected at the very end error and crash. this time I rebooted and entered the last command on the console and it seems to have worked so i can get in OMV.


    Now i will follow some guides on how to configure it properly (techno dad videos look great). but before going all in i would like to share the thoughts of people more experienced if this is the right path for my needs (back up for data in other computers, home assistant for some automation, a minecraft server for the kids to play with their friends...) or should i follow another route....

    That's weird. Does your server have a weird network adapter that is not natively supported? Are you not using DHCP on your network? I still think OMV would serve you well. Myself, I run proxmox on the bare metal and OMV as a virtual machine for NAS. Other servers are run as separate VM's. Many folks have good success running separate services using Docker in OMV.

    I don't know... OMV 4 would imstall without any issues. Proxmox (or athore virtualizing software) n was the first thing I thought. But I found it of difficult implementation.


    I guess I should pass through the hard disks to omv


    I was stuck on two things. First what would happen in case of losing the os disk. I did some testing and recovering the VMs is difficult


    Second I couldn't manage to get a fixed ip address for omv. On bare metal I can force the dhcp to assign it the same address.....


    I

    I don't know what to say, I think recovering VM's in proxmox is super easy assuming you have the images backed up on another drive. (Another popular option many have done for years now is to run OMV from a USB flash drive, making it easy to backup and replace should they experience a hardware failure.)


    I have configured VM's as static or dhcp with no issue either way. It's pretty seamless. At some point I want to get link aggregation setup. :/


    The most difficult part of running virtualized OMV (and this is specific to my setup) was configuring PCI passthrough for the SAS HBA that all the data drives are connected to. Passing individual disks through to VM's is much easier but I desired that OMV should see the HBA.

    Since i'm still at the very beginning i'll give proxmox another go. what will be the benefits of passing the controller instead of the single drives? SMART monitoring?


    I have a perc h310 not flashed which can pass through drives as non raid. i was thinking of creating a hardware raid 1 array with the two 500gb drives for proxmox plus VMs and containers and pass through the two 3tb drives to OMV to take care of the nas side. this way i could still recover the data on the drives and reinstall proxmox and virtual machines ig somethong goes wrong. but it seems that i can not have different kinds of drives on the controller: either all as non raid or all raid ready.


    i know that flashing the controller is the recommended setup but i'm not really convinced to face the risk of bricking it...

    Correct, if you pass through the controller you will have SMART monitoring in OMV, although that can be accomplished in proxmox if needed. If you pass the disks through, you can have a maximum of 6 SATA disks and 14 SCSI disks. Passing through the controller means your NAS will be able to have as many drives as the controller supports.


    If you pass the controller through to a VM, then it will only be available for use by that VM.


    I would not do hardware raid.

    thanks for your help.


    i'll give proxmox another go. i'll install it on the sdd then and i'll use 1 500 gb for Vms and Dockers and the other for their backup. I'll pass the two 3tb drives to OMV and see what happens.

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