Making My Own NAS, With A Backup

[Axeoasis]

Hello all, I'm currently getting more into video production work, as well as 3D modeling and such. These of course come with the need for large amounts of storage. Now normally, i'd just use some of the 4TB my main rig has, although I'd actually like to use one of my other rigs, which is pretty much my fail safe rig. The only thing is, I don't own any NAS hard drives and wouldn't want to buy any right now as i already have 2.5 TBs worth of extra HDD space in the failsafe rig.

 

For these reasons, i'm looking into some software that will allow me to set up a computer's storage devices (internal and/or external, whichever) as NAS. It will need these requirements:

 

- It needs to allow out-of-network/remote connections, as it's going to be used by both me and a coworker.

- Preferably free, as i'm on a tight budget at the moment.

- Allow internal and hopefully external mediums to be used.

 

I'm also going to be looking into some free backup software for the rig, so if you have any suggestions please let me know.

 

Thanks guys!

[Windows7ge]

I don't know of any software like that to run on Windows but an OS that I can verify does most of those things is called FreeNAS.

 

It supports SSH/SFTP for remote access

 

It's free.

 

I don't know what "mediums" are.

 

It supports a function known as replication. This could be used to backup all the data. It can target a connected pool or a remote server.

 

I don't know if it'll let you use external drives. I've never tried connecting one to see what happens.

[mtz_federico]

8 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

I don't know of any software like that to run on Windows but an OS that I can verify does most of those things is called FreeNAS.

 

It supports SSH/SFTP for remote access

 

It's free.

 

I don't know what "mediums" are.

 

It supports a function known as replication. This could be used to backup all the data. It can target a connected pool or a remote server.

 

I don't know if it'll let you use external drives. I've never tried connecting one to see what happens.

I think that with mediums he is referring to hard drives 

[jjdrost]

Tip don't use USB External drives because they are not for 24 7 use they will stop working after half a year. My experience  

[Windows7ge]

53 minutes ago, mtz_federico said:

I think that with mediums he is referring to hard drives 

Maybe they meant media? Internal and external storage media? Either way if they mean hard drives I can't verify if FreeNAS works with USB hard drives.

[Axeoasis]

14 hours ago, jjdrost said:

Tip don't use USB External drives because they are not for 24 7 use they will stop working after half a year. My experience  

Sorry for the late reply, yeah by medium i was talking about hard drives and such lol. Also, jjdrost, i'll be using my externals too as i've had them for about 3 years now without issues, they'd only be for daily/bi daily backups.

 

With freenas, the only issue i have is that it seems to require port forwarding, which i'm absolute garbage at and have never done successfully.

[Windows7ge]

8 hours ago, Axeoasis said:

With freenas, the only issue i have is that it seems to require port forwarding, which i'm absolute garbage at and have never done successfully.

Well your options there are to open a port or tunnel your way out. I'm not sure what implications come with tunneling but port forwarding isn't hard. Some routers have 2 port numbers to configure some have 4. You have to specify the incoming request port number and then once the request in internal the outgoing port number to the server.

[Mikensan]

If your storage is already in use / has data, and you don't have enough disks to create an array - then it's just a matter of making the data available.

 

The simplest approach is installing teamviewer unattended access, and your co-worker can remote in and use team viewer's file explorer to push/pull files. No port forwarding required (hence the easiest).

 

Next would be SMB + VPN. SMB is nice because then the way you access it is no different than him, and he can work out of the share directly vs making a copy. The only "hindrance" is the VPN. You can again use Teamviewer, hamanchi, or get crazy and go with OpenVPN. Teamviewer/Hamanchi are turnkey and simpler, and also can bypass your firewall so no forwarding required. SMB is your typical windows share, lot of guides on the internet for creating a SMB share on windows.

 

Finally is a little more complex, creating a Nextcloud installation. This will require more configuration + port forwarding (443) - but gives you a google-drive like feel. It will at the very least reach out to letsencrypt to generate a certificate for you - but you need to own a DNS name or use something like no-ip for it to work. If the data isn't sensitive then no biggie, but any PII or other sensitive information I would focus on getting HTTPS working.

 

Finally - backups...

Veeam windows agent will help you configure a backup. It can go to local disk or a SMB share - pretty powerful and simple (and free!).

[Axeoasis]

7 hours ago, Mikensan said:

If your storage is already in use / has data, and you don't have enough disks to create an array - then it's just a matter of making the data available.

 

The simplest approach is installing teamviewer unattended access, and your co-worker can remote in and use team viewer's file explorer to push/pull files. No port forwarding required (hence the easiest).

 

Next would be SMB + VPN. SMB is nice because then the way you access it is no different than him, and he can work out of the share directly vs making a copy. The only "hindrance" is the VPN. You can again use Teamviewer, hamanchi, or get crazy and go with OpenVPN. Teamviewer/Hamanchi are turnkey and simpler, and also can bypass your firewall so no forwarding required. SMB is your typical windows share, lot of guides on the internet for creating a SMB share on windows.

 

Finally is a little more complex, creating a Nextcloud installation. This will require more configuration + port forwarding (443) - but gives you a google-drive like feel. It will at the very least reach out to letsencrypt to generate a certificate for you - but you need to own a DNS name or use something like no-ip for it to work. If the data isn't sensitive then no biggie, but any PII or other sensitive information I would focus on getting HTTPS working.

 

Finally - backups...

Veeam windows agent will help you configure a backup. It can go to local disk or a SMB share - pretty powerful and simple (and free!).

The both the SMB+VPN and Nextcloud options sound good, which one would you say is more like having the hard drive actually in the computer? From the descriptions it sounds like the SMB option, although if Nextcloud has a google drive feel to it, it sounds great as well.

 

For me if i'm able to, i'll be using an external HDD as a temp storage medium to transfer data from the PC to the NAS (I'd use the PC itself, although i chose a NAS setup for data backup/redundancy in case the PC should fail), so the NAS's remote connection would be primarily for the coworker, whichever option would require the least amount of setup on his end to connect to it is what i think i'd like to go with.

[Mikensan]

16 hours ago, Axeoasis said:

The both the SMB+VPN and Nextcloud options sound good, which one would you say is more like having the hard drive actually in the computer? From the descriptions it sounds like the SMB option, although if Nextcloud has a google drive feel to it, it sounds great as well.

 

For me if i'm able to, i'll be using an external HDD as a temp storage medium to transfer data from the PC to the NAS (I'd use the PC itself, although i chose a NAS setup for data backup/redundancy in case the PC should fail), so the NAS's remote connection would be primarily for the coworker, whichever option would require the least amount of setup on his end to connect to it is what i think i'd like to go with.

SMB you can mount so it shows up as a drive letter, that's most natural feeling one. As a remote user, you can create a desktop shortcut so after you connect by VPN you just click the shortcut. You can stack nextcloud ontop of this solution, doesn't have to be exclusive.

 

So for VPN+SMB user would just connect via VPN, and then click his shortcut on the desktop. Fairly painless for a sense of security. The requirement would be to install the VPN server software on your server + the client would need to do the same.

 

The only caveat is when you share your folder you can share with "everyone" which means he would not need to enter a password (it doesn't mean people on the internet could access it, just local/VPN users). However if you restrict it to a user account, then he would be prompted for a username/password.

[mtz_federico]

21 hours ago, Axeoasis said:

The both the SMB+VPN and Nextcloud options sound good, which one would you say is more like having the hard drive actually in the computer? From the descriptions it sounds like the SMB option, although if Nextcloud has a google drive feel to it, it sounds great as well.

 

For me if i'm able to, i'll be using an external HDD as a temp storage medium to transfer data from the PC to the NAS (I'd use the PC itself, although i chose a NAS setup for data backup/redundancy in case the PC should fail), so the NAS's remote connection would be primarily for the coworker, whichever option would require the least amount of setup on his end to connect to it is what i think i'd like to go with.

you could use nextcloud and get a nice web interface and use webdav to acces the files just like it was a local drive

[Axeoasis]

Awesome tips guys, I'll probably be trying out both, starting with the SMB although i have to wait until next tuesday, as that's when i'm scheduled to be moving to a new apartment. I'll update you guys then!