Backup, remote backup, and remote access

[andrew124c41+]

I have a number of unused PCs floating around and have been thinking about building my own network attached storage since I have experience building PCs. However, while I have some networking experience, I am not an expert. So, I have a number of questions

1) Can Free NAS be used to build a device that acts as both a media server AND a server for backup?

2) Can Free NAS be configured to be accessed over the internet remotely to backup say, a laptop or PC at another location?

3) If it can be, how difficult is it to secure it from malicious attack by hackers?

4) Is a 4 core 64 bit MB with AMD FX 4300 processor sufficient?

5) How much DDR3 memory would be recommended?

6) Is a RAID 1 configuration with two drives enough.....or are more drives and a different configuration better. (I know this is largely dependent upon the amount of data. At present, we do not have much media....total with OS and data backups for the two of us would probably be under two T

7) Finally, I use Acronis and Macrium to backup both the OS and Data as images.....never compressed. (I am starting to think that for data, I should just use a sync program......just that I have never fully trusted compressed, proprietary backup programs...even the two I use!) Can either of these programs be used to backup to Free NAS.....I am assuming that they can but I just have no experience with an NAS

 

[sretalla]

1) Can Free NAS be used to build a device that acts as both a media server AND a server for backup?

Yes

2) Can Free NAS be configured to be accessed over the internet remotely to backup say, a laptop or PC at another location?

Yes (many different ways to make that happen, depending on need, data volume and cost)

3) If it can be, how difficult is it to secure it from malicious attack by hackers?

FreeNAS itself isn't going to do a lot of the protection, but together with appropriate firewall (like pfSense) and a properly configured SSL reverse proxy, sure. Nextcloud is probably going to be involved here somehow. There are plenty of reverse proxies like Caddy, nginX and Apache that can get it done.

4) Is a 4 core 64 bit MB with AMD FX 4300 processor sufficient?

Depends on your intention with the media server and how much importance you place on your data integrity (I think no ECC RAM for that platform... happy to be corrected) and performance (not sure the maximum RAM for the board, but don't think about less than 16GB as a starting point and more is better.

5) How much DDR3 memory would be recommended?

See last part of the above, 16GB plus, ideally 32GB if you want to see good performance with transcoding and backups.

6) Is a RAID 1 configuration with two drives enough.....or are more drives and a different configuration better. (I know this is largely dependent upon the amount of data. At present, we do not have much media....total with OS and data backups for the two of us would probably be under two T

If you want good media performance at the same time as backups run, consider more mirrored (RAID1) VDEVs in your pool. If that's not a concern, a single mirror with enough storage to not hit 80% full throughout its life is probably OK

7) Finally, I use Acronis and Macrium to backup both the OS and Data as images.....never compressed. (I am starting to think that for data, I should just use a sync program......just that I have never fully trusted compressed, proprietary backup programs...even the two I use!) Can either of these programs be used to backup to Free NAS

Probably via SMB or NFS share, but you may do better to look into one of the many backup options like UrBackup or Syncthing. Also think about Nextcloud as an option there as it has good integration with mobile devices also for things like photos as well as documents... Plex is also good for photo backups.



As an overall response on the hardware question, the general consensus around here is that pre-loved server hardware goes best in terms of value for money. Intel NICs, ECC RAM and loads of disk slots with a good power supply and cooling make them perfect for the job.

That said, I'm also a home enthusiast and I get the wish to do something with older hardware that doesn't have another purpose... just be prepared for compromise on several levels (including your sanity) if you go down that road.

Pay close attention to the need for good SATA connections whether through an abundance of MoBo ports hanging off a controller that isn't Marvell or with an LSI HBA card (or equivalent)... plenty of advice about those around the forums, just search for "IT mode" and "HBA" and you'll see it.

 

[andrew124c41+]

Wow.. thanks for all the help. Maybe I should just by a NAS lol.

When I first read about FreeNAS I thought you could sause just about any old hardware. I don't have any server goodies.

 

[sretalla]

When I first read about FreeNAS I thought you could sause just about any old hardware

Will "work" and will be good to use are 2 different things.

FreeNAS has often been mistaken for an old hardware dumping ground... it is not and was never intended to be that, but some things were certainly posted on forums in the early days to that effect (before the fork from Nas4Free/Xigmanas). The guys on the other side of the fork are probably a bit less tied to the hardware and may ber a better fit for your project (although I note that their support is certainly different to these forums)... they are not a for-profit company using that project as a development platform for something that they sell.

In my personal experience (several years back now), I tried both before deciding that FreeNAS was clearly a better organized product which was something I would prefer to work with.

I understand that in re-branding to Xigmanas, the other guys may have improved things a bit, so might be worth a look, but I personally won't be doing that as I'm very happy with FreeNAS.

 

[andrew124c41+]

Sorry, you lost me. Every single article I read referred to repurposing old equipment.

An I on the wrong website?

My bottom line is for home use..cheaper to buy parts and build NAS or simply but Synology or Asuster?

(I have built PCs in the past...but is building a NAS for home use cost effective now. The NASes sold here are Overkill for what I need need.

 

[reasonsandreasons]

Repurposing old consumer hardware is a contentious topic on here. FreeNAS is at its core the free version of an enterprise product (TrueNAS). As such, it's designed to devote a significant amount of time and effort to data integrity and long-term stability, both of which benefit from server-grade hardware. As well, server grade gear is generally a less expensive proposition than you'd think if you're buying used Ivy Bridge era parts (these are the Supermicro X9 family). Most folks here think that if you're going to run FreeNAS, it's worth doing right. I largely agree, and built my system more or less entirely out of parts from the hardware recommendations guide.

That being said, you can absolutely run FreeNAS on non-server gear. It's a fun project, and will likely perform acceptably for home usage and be cheaper than a Synology with equivalent capabilities (this is also true of one made with server parts, by and large). It will, however, take a little bit more effort and you will have to be sure you understand exactly why folks make the hardware recommendations they do so you can understand what compromises you're making by using consumer gear. If you haven't already, read the hardware recommendations guide. There are a few sections you're going to want to pay special attention to:

• Networking interfaces (NICs): Make sure you have Intel NICs, either on the board you're using or on a PCIe card. Many consumer boards have Realtek NICs in them, which are very flaky and can often limit your speeds. Good-quality, gigabit Intel NICs are available used for the price of a cup of coffee these days, and there's no reason to cheap out here.
• Storage controllers: Consumer motherboards often don't have enough SATA ports, and the ones they do have can be flaky. Even with server gear, folks will often add an LSI HBA (host bus adapter) flashed to a non-RAID firmware to add more SATA ports to their system. These cards use SAS to provide more ports to the system transparently, without passing them through a RAID interface. FreeNAS and ZFS depend on having direct access to your drives, and it's important to not use hardware that interferes with that. These are also cheap used (between $25 and $50 depending on if you want four or eight ports), and worth getting just for peace of mind.
• RAM: FreeNAS and ZFS use RAM for cache (ARC in ZFS terms). The more you can throw at your system the better. 8 GB is the minimum, 16 is recommended, and 32 is probably ideal. There's no right answer to this question, but they system will perform better the more you give it.
• CPU: Make sure your CPU isn't too old. You need some amount of power to handle this, and a Pentium D isn't going to cut it. If you want to use Plex to transcode media on the fly, that number is going to be higher. That being said, your FX 4300 will probably be just fine on a horsepower level, but I don't know about that generation's general compatibility.

So, the tl;dr is this: FreeNAS is a great storage OS, but it's targeted at folks who want enterprise-level assurances of data integrity and performance. As a result, folks who use it tend to recommend hardware that supports those goals, like ECC RAM and server hardware. There's no reason FreeNAS can't run on consumer gear (folks do it all the time) but you should know that you're a bit off the beaten path and will need to do research to make sure you're making the right compromises while still making a good working system. If that sounds like not quite your cup of tea, folks seem to really like Unraid for home use, though I chose FreeNAS because I think ZFS is a generally better filesystem for long-term data integrity and a nicer overall package.

 

[andrew124c41+]

My only experience is picking up MBs, processors, PSUs, and memory, etc. from Microcenter.
Is there a specific list of parts and where to purchase them from...including a smaller case than would usually be used for a PC?
Just out of curiosity, if I started from scratch, how much would it cost for the entire project?
BTW, we do not even have two terabytes worth of data. I was thinking I could get away with two 4 T WD Red drives.

 

[reasonsandreasons]

The FreeNAS hardware guide is a great resource--it's a few years old, but it lays out the fundamentals really well and gives you enough knowledge to start picking away at what you still don't know. Most folks buying off that list are purchasing used off of eBay, which is cost-effective and more or less risk-free to the buyer at this point.

4 TB drives are a good starting point for 2 TB of data. You want to aim to keep your drives around 20% empty, so that leaves you with room to grow without immediately hitting capacity.

For cost, a basic backup and Plex server without storage drives might run you around $400 with a build like this:

• Motherboard: Supermicro X10SL7-F ($80)
• CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1220 V3 ($50)
• RAM: 16 GB ECC DDR3 ($70)
• Boot drive: Cheap new or used SATA SSD ($20)
• Case: Fractal Design Node 804 ($100) (it's hard to get a mITX motherboard that's cost-effective, and this is a relatively small case with lots of drive bays)
• PSU: Good-quality 80+ Gold unit ($80)

This'll hold those two drives to start, along with enough expansion to go all the way up to eight drives in the future if you need the space (those extra bays are useful for a local backup of your data, at the very least), and costs less and is generally more capable than Synology's 4-bay units.

 

[markwill]

@reasonsandreasons While I'm not directly on this thread, I just want to say that your comments and respectful dialog are awesome and greatly appreciated. Thank you for your insight.

 

[andrew124c41+]

The FreeNAS hardware guide is a great resource--it's a few years old, but it lays out the fundamentals really well and gives you enough knowledge to start picking away at what you still don't know. Most folks buying off that list are purchasing used off of eBay, which is cost-effective and more or less risk-free to the buyer at this point.

4 TB drives are a good starting point for 2 TB of data. You want to aim to keep your drives around 20% empty, so that leaves you with room to grow without immediately hitting capacity.

For cost, a basic backup and Plex server without storage drives might run you around $400 with a build like this:

• Motherboard: Supermicro X10SL7-F ($80)
• CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1220 V3 ($50)
• RAM: 16 GB ECC DDR3 ($70)
• Boot drive: Cheap new or used SATA SSD ($20)
• Case: Fractal Design Node 804 ($100) (it's hard to get a mITX motherboard that's cost-effective, and this is a relatively small case with lots of drive bays)
• PSU: Good-quality 80+ Gold unit ($80)

This'll hold those two drives to start, along with enough expansion to go all the way up to eight drives in the future if you need the space (those extra bays are useful for a local backup of your data, at the very least), and costs less and is generally more capable than Synology's 4-bay units.

Thank you. I really appreciate your advice. This is really helpful. I am not sure having looked at all this, that for our simple needs....less than two T of data and media....(I do not think we really need a media center,) that this is the way to go. I can see that there is no doubt that what you suggest would be very reliable and closer to an Enterprise solution. It is that for the price, and in the interest of time, it would be better for us to purchase a NAS since there are several that are pretty good that are available on the market. (I am getting a little long in the tooth as they say.)

 

[reasonsandreasons]

Yeah no, absolutely. A four-bay Synology like the DS418Play sounds like it might be best for your use case, then. Room to expand if you need to in the future, pretty tiny, and a lot less work to get up and running. And it's no problem! Happy to help out.

 

[andrew124c41+]

After a bit more investigation I realized that there are quite a few people that have used an older PC successfully. I have a bunch of new 128 gig SSDs once of which I can use for free NAS and at least 8 gig if not more of DDR3 memory.

The initial setup seems to be fairly straight forward.

The main question I have is what is the safest way to set it up in a manner that I can do backups from another PC over the internet. I do not want to leave myself wide open to malicious attacks.

I have not been able to find a simple, concise set of instructional videos to explain how to do that.

Can anyone suggest anything? We are just running windows on our PCs....both 7 and 10

Thanks in advance.

 

[Redcoat]

Your need is for a firewall. As you said you have a number of unused PC's floating around, you might investigate using pfSense on one of them if suitable - take a look at this article to get a flavor https://www.tecmint.com/installation-and-configuration-of-pfsense-firewall-router/

There are lots of YouTube videos on installing and configuring pfSense - here's an example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kSZ1oM-4ZM

 

[joeinaz]

I have a number of unused PCs floating around and have been thinking about building my own network attached storage since I have experience building PCs. However, while I have some networking experience, I am not an expert. So, I have a number of questions

1) Can Free NAS be used to build a device that acts as both a media server AND a server for backup?

2) Can Free NAS be configured to be accessed over the internet remotely to backup say, a laptop or PC at another location?

3) If it can be, how difficult is it to secure it from malicious attack by hackers?

4) Is a 4 core 64 bit MB with AMD FX 4300 processor sufficient?

5) How much DDR3 memory would be recommended?

6) Is a RAID 1 configuration with two drives enough.....or are more drives and a different configuration better. (I know this is largely dependent upon the amount of data. At present, we do not have much media....total with OS and data backups for the two of us would probably be under two T

7) Finally, I use Acronis and Macrium to backup both the OS and Data as images.....never compressed. (I am starting to think that for data, I should just use a sync program......just that I have never fully trusted compressed, proprietary backup programs...even the two I use!) Can either of these programs be used to backup to Free NAS.....I am assuming that they can but I just have no experience with an NAS

I have a number of unused PCs floating around and have been thinking about building my own network attached storage
I look at it in this manner; You can do a FreeNAS system for to learn or to provide some non-critical storage or you you can deploy a FreeNAS solution to provide a "mission critical" device when you want to maximize data fidelity. The "unused PC floating around" is a great opportunity for learning FreeNAS or to provide storage for non-permanent data or data you can risk losing. When you are ready to move into a more serious deployment, we can help with that too.

1) Can Free NAS be used to build a device that acts as both a media server AND a server for backup?
Yes. Just view FreeNAS as a network storage resource serving storage to applications.

2) Can Free NAS be configured to be accessed over the internet remotely to backup say, a laptop or PC at another location?
Yes. The main issue is supplying a secure route through your router.

3) If it can be, how difficult is it to secure it from malicious attack by hackers?
That depends on the method of secure access used when you open you network to the world. I would look into a VPN;

4) Is a 4 core 64 bit MB with AMD FX 4300 processor sufficient?
For a starter FreeNAS system yes; The big concern is if you run Plex on your FreeNAS system would the FX4300 provide enough horsepower for video transcription? Normally, I would recommend a CPU and motherboard that supports ECC memory. An Intel E5640 or E5-2609-V2 both give similar performance to an FX4300 but the Intel CPUs support ECC memory. Both the mentioned CPUs also are very cost effective.

5) How much DDR3 memory would be recommended?
Start with 16GB.

6) Is a RAID 1 configuration with two drives enough.....or are more drives and a different configuration better. (I know this is largely dependent upon the amount of data. At present, we do not have much media....total with OS and data backups for the two of us would probably be under two T
Unless you are creating a "starter" FreeNAS system to experiment and learn with, be careful not to choose a configuration today that limits your growth tomorrow. In FreeNAS it is easier to start with a larger number of smaller disks and expand later rather than adding physical disks to an existing system.

7) Finally, I use Acronis and Macrium to backup both the OS and Data as images.....never compressed. (I am starting to think that for data, I should just use a sync program......just that I have never fully trusted compressed, proprietary backup programs...even the two I use!) Can either of these programs be used to backup to Free NAS.....I am assuming that they can but I just have no experience with an NAS
I use Macrium to backup a group of Windows PCs to a NAS box. It's a simple matter of mounting the NAS as a network drive in Windows (usually shows up as Z:) and then setting that network drive as the target of the backup.