Need help to upgrade old NAS. Lots of questions.

Unfortunately, the crashes continue. I bought a NVMe heatsink in hope the problem is due the SSD overheating. But I am almost convinced that I have a bad NVMe.

Best regards.

I'm emptying a 32GB thumbdrive right now.

Best regards.

I have installed OMV in a thumbdrive, with OMV-Extras, Flashmemory and ClamAV. At this point, everything seems to be running fine. I was never able to keep the server running for so long with NVMe.

Even so, as my initial hypothesis was that the NVMe was overheating, I bought a cheap m.2 heatsink. It appears to have enough metallic mass to dissipate a few degrees of the SSD.

It came without a manual and I had to figure out the purpose of the different thermal pads that were in the package. The manufacturer's website didn't give me any clues either. I used the thickest ones.

I will try to install this unit again and see if overheating was the cause of the crashes.

Best regards.

Today I took the server apart to test NVMe with the heatsink. Big disappointment. There is no room to install the now wider m.2 card, the SATA connector is a millimeter in the way.

As you can see in the pictures, to install the heatsinked board I'll have to cut a slot on the heatsink itself (bad!), Or cut the side wall of the motherboard SATA connector (very bad!). I should have known better that this endeavor would not be easy.

As after doing that, I can still find out that the problem is with the motherboard's m.2 connector (and I wouldn't be able to RMA a chopped/modified motherboard), I will test this SDD on another computer before any definitive hardware modifications.

Best regards.

Zitat von crashtest

I'd cut the heatsink (just metal and low cost) before I'd cut the motherboard connector. It might be hard to get the NVME's thermal pad to release. In any case, bad news.

There are NMVE to USB adapters but you wouldn't get the phenomenal speed of the NMVE when it's plugged into USB. Even if the NVME is fine, there's the socket on the motherboard to consider. (And there's the adapter order delay time to consider as well. An RMA is usually limited to 30 days.)

On the other side of it, I'm assuming that the thumbdrive is working fine. You really don't need fast boot media unless you're doing virtualization or, maybe, storing more than one or two dockers on the boot drive.

In Brazil, the warranty usually lasts one year. But I'm really thinking about cutting the heatsink.

And even though the thumbdrive is working fine, I'm upset that I bought this motherboard specifically because of the m.2 (beside the notebook DDR4) and not using it, so I'll do my best to use what I bought. But at a last resource, the thumbdrive is an excellent option.

Edit: There is an m.2 riser cable, but it's not easily found in Brazil, and I can't wait 60 days to wait for international delivery (oh yes, our customs is this slow).

Best regards.

I tested NVMe on another computer. I installed Debian and kept it running for several hours with no problems. So I think I'm really going to cut this heatsink.

Best regards.

The case I'm using isn't that small, but it has mounting locations for just three 3.5" HDDs. With scalability in mind, I wanted to build a rack for four 3.5" drives. As I said before, I am using these old units for testing. Because they are small and slow, I won't use them on this NAS. They will only be used as templates for building the rack.

Two units fit nicely on the left side of the case, and I can only wonder why the manufacturer didn't provide this mounting option as a stock option.

The material chosen for the rack was made by prior availability. I already had a 3.5mm celeron board from a previous project. Celeron is a dielectric laminated material made of cotton or paper fiber and phenolic resin that is easily machinable. Due to their dielectric properties, insulating grommets and mounting spacers will not be needed. So, I cut a piece of the board to the required size.

Then I marked and drilled holes according to the box's stock mounting points.

The rack snaps securely into place. The stock shockproof pads were a wonderful bonus.

My attempt to machine screw recesses didn't turn out as good as I expected, but while it didn't look good, the screw recesses are quite functional.

There it is: the rack and units in the rack. But I have to say I'm concerned about heat build. If this becomes an issue, I may need to make ventilation holes in the celeron board behind the drives.

These are two of the definitive drives I will be using. Although they aren't empty yet, I was looking forward to seeing this case with four drives to test if they fit properly.

I think the result is very good, with enough space for air circulation inside the case.

Now I must find time to machine the NVMe heatsink and finish the OMV NAS assembly.

Best regards.

I think I will postpone the heatsink trimming. I bougth another SSD and will wait for it to finish this server.Until then, I will keep using this OMV in the flash drive to get used to it.

A few days ago, I installed Docker, Portainer and Nextcloud, but i think I still need to enforce some kind of security and I realy don't know what or how. I wonder if Letsencrypt and Nginx could be used in my case. If someone can advice me on this I will appreciate.

Best regards.

Zitat von crashtest

Letsencrypt won't do anything for you. The only benefit in using Letsencrypt is if your hard drives are physically stolen. (Highly unlikely.) The use case for Letsencrypt is for Laptops or business servers where the risk of theft is a possibility.

If you don't open server ports at your router, which exposes your server to the Internet, you'll have very good server security.

Well, actually I have opened port 443 for using Nextcloud with my cell phone. What kind of precaution should I take for not remain so exposed?

Best regards.

Zitat von macom

I think you confused it with LUKS (filesystem encryption). Letsencrypt is the ssl thing.

The intent of using Letsencrypt was, in fact, to be able to use a more secure SSL connection.

Best regards.

Zitat von Soma

In that case, just run nextcloud with SWAG as per macom guide

Soma , i couldn't find macom 's SWAG guide. Where can I fint it?

Best regards.

I am a little confused about some steps in macom guide. In the beginning, it tells us to "create a user dedicated for docker in the GUI of OMV (...)" and to "(...) determine UID (user ID) and GID (group ID) of user "docker1". Then, it tells us to install Nextcloud in the docker1 user's home folder. In my case, Nextcloud is already installed and running. Is this user creation mandatory?

Best regards.