How to use FreeNas as a cloud storage?

[Dolev Levy]

Hey! first of all this is my first time here (and with FreeNas itself) so sorry in advance if this post is not supposed to be here.
I just built my first FreeNas system with these specs
CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 2300G
RAM: 1X8 GB HyperX kit (3200mhz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B450M DS3H
PSU: Corsair CX550M (550W)
Case: Sharkoon VS7 Window

one of my main purposes of building a nas was that i will use it as a cloud storage (becuase if i will compare price-per-time it will be much cheaper to build a nas then to buy some more stroage on google drive \ icloud)

after installing freenas and messing with it with some test drives i decided to test some plugins. unfortunately, i couldn't find any cloud or equivalent plugins to use freenas as a cloud storage. i googled a bit and could only find pluings which are for the earlier versions of freenas (like owncloud) and i am running freenas 11.2-U5
and i cannot find any good plugins to use.
does anyone know a good plugin \ tutorial for freenas 11.2 U5 that can get my freenas system as a cloud storage so i can access it from anywhere?

Thanks in advance!

 

[garm]

Hi and welcome to the forum

I’m sorry to say you got the wrong hardware for FreeNAS. It will function to some extent but will probably let you down in reliability..
There is plenty of content on the forum about hardware selection.

There are several ways of making FreeNAS into a “cloud”. There is a built in S3 like interface and installing Nextcloud in a jail is relatively straightforward. The later even has a community built script to make the process more or less hands off. What you should use is up to your intended use case.

But you need RAM to run the database and web server and you have the minimum required to run FreeNAS. You need to get an additional stick of RAM to host anything on your machine.

There is more to “access it from anywhere” then just setting up FreeNAS the right way. You also need to consider your own safety. You need a decent firewall and to take measures not to expose anything unnecessary to the wider internet’s. A consumer grade router is not something I would consider strong enough to handle the abuse you will receive once you start opening ports. Personally I use pfSense, but there are other alternatives. pfSense make it easy for me to use multiple WAN gateways and VLANs for instance.

Most private ISPs do not give out public IPs due to the IPv4 shortage, so you need to talk to your ISP to make sure you get one. You will probably not get a static IP so you need to set up a dynamic DNS service to keep the DNS record updated. You need to purchase a domain to use for your DNS records.

Cloudflare is a mayor DSN provider that offer a free tier. They also have a dynamic DNS offer.

Hope this will get you started.

 

[danb35]

You need to purchase a domain to use for your DNS records.

Unlikely--many dynamic DNS providers will give you a subdomain on their own domain (something like username.duckdns.org), or you can even get your own domain for free from freenom.com. But as to the rest of your post, I'd agree, and add the suggestion that access from outside the LAN be via VPN if possible (which, happily, pfSense supports quite well).

 

[garm]

many dynamic DNS providers will give you a subdomain on their own domain (something like username.duckdns.org)

But then you are limited to self signed certificates?

 

[danb35]

But then you are limited to self signed certificates?

Not at all. If you can show domain control (and if you can run a web server on port 80, or adjust TXT DNS records, you can show control), you can get a cert from Let's Encrypt.

 

[John Doe]

@garm can you tell me more about this S3 Nexcloud thing?
I know nextcloud but what does the S3 mod?

 

[John Doe]

by the way +1 for pfsense

do not put your freenas behind a ISP grade router with open ports, it will backfire!
consider VPN server client setup.

 

[danb35]

I know nextcloud but what does the S3 mod?

https://www.ixsystems.com/documentation/freenas/11.2-U5/services.html#s3

 

[John Doe]

https://www.ixsystems.com/documentation/freenas/11.2-U5/services.html#s3

still haven't got the big picture.
Amazon provided with the S3 service as an API, this API is rebuilt with this service, so that you can use almost any app/programs/tools and the data will be saved on freenas instead of amazon server?

 

[garm]

I haven’t tried it myself yet as I use AWS for such needs. But FreeNAS is using minio, and this is their intro
https://docs.min.io/docs/minio-quickstart-guide.html

 

[Dolev Levy]

Seems like you guys know better than me. I tried a ton of guides over here in the ixsystems forums and in github links that were here too but i always run into problems i can't resolve. Is there anyone out here who can help me install the service and get it up and running?
i tried it like 8 times and i always run into problems
thanks

 

[Heracles]

Hey Dolev,

What you described is exactly what I am doing here. Nextcloud is my frontend and FreeNAS is the backend. But before you go that way, you have to be very sure about your design.

An example is that you did not wrote anything about your drives and your intended pool setup. RaidZ1 is pretty high risk and you should plan not to go over 50% of your used space. Also, when you put all your eggs in the same box, you must be sure that this box is solid to the max. What will happen if there is a fire at your place ? No matter how many hard drives you will have in that server, they will all be destroyed. To protect yourself against that, you need offsite backups.

I have a total of 3 servers : on main site is my ESXi and main FreeNAS server. Nextcloud is run from a Docker host in ESXi, so is pfSense. On a secondary site, I have a DD-WRT router that does site-to-site VPN with my pfSense. Over that VPN I do ZFS replication to my DR server. Both servers are using 5 drives in a RaidZ2 vDev. Everything is server grade, from RAM to power supply, HDD to motherboard and casing.

Take your time to design everything and give yourself a budget. Once fixed on the budget, see how you can turn it to strong enough hardware for putting your digital life in it.

Good luck,

 

[Dolev Levy]

Hey Dolev,

What you described is exactly what I am doing here. Nextcloud is my frontend and FreeNAS is the backend. But before you go that way, you have to be very sure about your design.

An example is that you did not wrote anything about your drives and your intended pool setup. RaidZ1 is pretty high risk and you should plan not to go over 50% of your used space. Also, when you put all your eggs in the same box, you must be sure that this box is solid to the max. What will happen if there is a fire at your place ? No matter how many hard drives you will have in that server, they will all be destroyed. To protect yourself against that, you need offsite backups.

I have a total of 3 servers : on main site is my ESXi and main FreeNAS server. Nextcloud is run from a Docker host in ESXi, so is pfSense. On a secondary site, I have a DD-WRT router that does site-to-site VPN with my pfSense. Over that VPN I do ZFS replication to my DR server. Both servers are using 5 drives in a RaidZ2 vDev. Everything is server grade, from RAM to power supply, HDD to motherboard and casing.

Take your time to design everything and give yourself a budget. Once fixed on the budget, see how you can turn it to strong enough hardware for putting your digital life in it.

Good luck,

Well, i am just a beginner here, i don't need all of those EXSi systems and stuff, i just need to remote control my FreeNAS system so i can just grab some quick files off the go. the rest of the files that will be in the NAS System are just long term storage in my local home network for things that i don't need in my PC that often. I am just having a hard time configuirng NextCloud to actually work as for remote access and i am asking for somone who can maybe help me install it and get everything set up correctly

P.S I just got my new 2X 4TB nas drives after 3 weeks of waiting (thanks amazon...) and now i am ready to go full time with it. up until now i was just testing and expirienceing the system and how the GUI looks like and how it works, now i am ready for the "big deal".