Learning the Ropes

[DaveKerk]

Hey everyone,

Total noob here.

I am looking to learn about servers and such. First thought is learn how to setup a NAS and VMs. Then later get them in a way I can access them from non-local locations.

 

From what I've seen.. it looks like FreeNAS is a pretty good option for what I need. I can do a NAS (duh) and I can do VMs.

Does anyone have a better idea or wanna tell me I'm wrong about something?

 

This isn't for anything big.. household stuff for now and maybe down the road I can use it for something legitimate. Just learning for the moment.

 

Thanks,

Dave

[NelizMastr]

VMs in FreeNAS are pretty limited, at the moment. You really don't get many options. I'd personally run FreeNAS and the VMs on a hypervisor like ESXi, Proxmox or Hyper-V. They're easier to manage which ultimately saves time and frustration. 

 

Remote access is fun in theory, but you'll need to carefully look at the security side of things. Don't go for a PPTP VPN for instance, and use strong passwords. Also don't forward more ports than strictly needed  

[DaveKerk]

20 hours ago, NelizMastr said:

VMs in FreeNAS are pretty limited, at the moment. You really don't get many options. I'd personally run FreeNAS and the VMs on a hypervisor like ESXi, Proxmox or Hyper-V. They're easier to manage which ultimately saves time and frustration. 

 

Remote access is fun in theory, but you'll need to carefully look at the security side of things. Don't go for a PPTP VPN for instance, and use strong passwords. Also don't forward more ports than strictly needed  

By run FreeNAS and the VMs on a hypervisor.. do you mean running FreeNAS on a hypervisor that will also host VMs? (like i said... no idea what I'm doing right now)

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, DaveKerk said:

By run FreeNAS and the VMs on a hypervisor.. do you mean running FreeNAS on a hypervisor that will also host VMs? (like i said... no idea what I'm doing right now)

Look at proxmox, it has the same zfs file system and raid and volume manager as freenas, with a much better vm solution.

[DaveKerk]

42 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Look at proxmox, it has the same zfs file system and raid and volume manager as freenas, with a much better vm solution.

ok so replace the whole software deal with proxmox?

[NelizMastr]

36 minutes ago, DaveKerk said:

ok so replace the whole software deal with proxmox?

Yes. You wipe everything off the drives, boot only into proxmox and manage everything from the web interface. Proxmox will require some CLI knowledge as sadly not everything can be done from the GUI yet.

[DaveKerk]

12 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

Yes. You wipe everything off the drives, boot only into proxmox and manage everything from the web interface. Proxmox will require some CLI knowledge as sadly not everything can be done from the GUI yet.

I have no idea what CLI is but I'll figure it out I hope. Thanks for the help. I'll be looking into Proxmox.

[NelizMastr]

5 minutes ago, DaveKerk said:

I have no idea what CLI is but I'll figure it out I hope. Thanks for the help. I'll be looking into Proxmox.

CLI = Command Line Interface. Most Unix (and Linux flavors) greatly depend on it. 

[DaveKerk]

1 minute ago, NelizMastr said:

CLI = Command Line Interface. Most Unix (and Linux flavors) greatly depend on it. 

Got it. I will have to learn!

[dalekphalm]

On 8/16/2018 at 11:59 PM, DaveKerk said:

By run FreeNAS and the VMs on a hypervisor.. do you mean running FreeNAS on a hypervisor that will also host VMs? (like i said... no idea what I'm doing right now)

So a "Hypervisor" is a system that runs ("hosts") VM's. Typically when people mention hypervisors, they mean a Type 1 Hypervisor, which is a self contained operating system that runs directly on your hardware.

 

Examples of a Type 1 hypervisor include ESXi (VMWare), Hyper-V (Windows), etc.

 

There's also Type 2 hypervisors - these are software applications that run on top of another operating system. Examples of this include: VMWare Workstation, Virtual Box, etc.

 

FreeNAS has some VM features built in, but it's very very new to the OS, and not very mature.

 

I personally use ESXi as the base OS on my server - from there, I virtualize FreeNAS inside a VM, and directly pass my HBA (Host Bus Adapter - kind of like a RAID Card) directly to FreeNAS, so that FreeNAS gets direct access to any HDD's connected (This basically fools FreeNAS into thinking it's directly installed onto the hardware). I also run some Windows VM's in ESXi as well.

 

ESXi has a base free version - it's pretty well featured, but lacks some of the more advanced features like failover protection, and the backup API (ESXi has a backup API that allows third party backup programs to directly integrate into ESXi and do efficient and fast snapshot based backups - this is only available for the paid tiers - though it's not too much of a problem, since you can use traditional backup software instead).

 

Proxmox is a Linux based Hypervisor, similar to ESXi, but also combines in some File Sharing/Storage features, such as integrating ZFS (the software RAID filesystem used by FreeNAS), among other things.

 

Windows Hyper-V is a bit of a weird one. You can get a totally free Windows Hyper-V Server OS, but it's very bare bones. You can also enable Hyper-V as a service in any of the Server editions of Windows, as well as in Windows 10 Pro.

 

There are other options to go with as well, but these are some of the more popular choices.

 

Personally, I like the User Interface for ESXi, which is why I chose it.