Building custom NAS to replace QNAP

[MrRVK]

Hey all, I have a 4+ year old QNAP TS-453A NAS currently (with 4x 4TB WD Red HDDs), but the recent Qlocker ransomware attack has gotten me to think about replacing it with a custom NAS. Aside from the fact that the QNAP isn't fast enough for any transcoding, I'd love to get a bit more flexible machine together (running some VMs, mixing HDD sizes for future upgrades, etc.).

 

I currently have an old NZXT Noctis 450 case with an EVGA 650W Gold PSU and Corsair H115i as a spare, left over from a previous PC upgrade. I'm thinking if I buy an MSI Z590-A PRO motherboard, Intel i5-10400 CPU, and 2x 8GB DDR4-2666 RAM, I can get a very capable machine together for around $450. I keep the NAS in the garage, so I'm no longer using the direct HDMI ports it has and mainly use it as a Plex server, Pihole host, Wordpress/mySQL server, and of course store data (some of which is backed up to OneDrive).

 

As I've never gone custom NAS before (had a Synology for 5 years prior to getting this QNAP), I was hoping to get a few more eyes on my plan to see if I'm missing anything. I'm leaning toward using Unraid for the flexibility with VMs, but not sure if that'd be better than FreeNAS?

 

Thanks in advance for any tips/pointers!

[WereCatf]

18 minutes ago, MrRVK said:

I'm leaning toward using Unraid for the flexibility with VMs, but not sure if that'd be better than FreeNAS?

I don't know how much it matters for your uses, but as far as I know, you still can't use hardware-encoding with Plex under FreeNAS.

[SorryBella]

4 hours ago, MrRVK said:

replacing it with a custom NAS

You dont need THAT MUCH power for a NAS build. My pick would be an i3 10100, with 2*4GB RAM 2666mhz, and a cheapo H410 motherboard instead. And then spend those savings on getting a dedicated RAID card if possible. But i do think its a good pick if your wordpress server gets a lot of hits, just replace the board with a good B460 instead because you dont benefit much in power delivery department going for a Z590.

[MrRVK]

9 hours ago, WereCatf said:

I don't know how much it matters for your uses, but as far as I know, you still can't use hardware-encoding with Plex under FreeNAS.

Good to know, I'll look into that!

5 hours ago, SorryClaire said:

You dont need THAT MUCH power for a NAS build. My pick would be an i3 10100, with 2*4GB RAM 2666mhz, and a cheapo H410 motherboard instead. And then spend those savings on getting a dedicated RAID card if possible. But i do think its a good pick if your wordpress server gets a lot of hits, just replace the board with a good B460 instead because you dont benefit much in power delivery department going for a Z590.

Thanks, budget isn't as much of a concern and I'd rather future-proof and give myself a bit more power to run a few more VMs and such. That being said, I was leaning toward the Z590 for upgradability potential and on-board RAID. Should I be using software RAID through Unraid, the on-board RAID, or a separate PCIe RAID card?

[Electronics Wizardy]

53 minutes ago, MrRVK said:

Good to know, I'll look into that!

Thanks, budget isn't as much of a concern and I'd rather future-proof and give myself a bit more power to run a few more VMs and such. That being said, I was leaning toward the Z590 for upgradability potential and on-board RAID. Should I be using software RAID through Unraid, the on-board RAID, or a separate PCIe RAID card?

Yea you want to use the software raid in unraid, its much better than most hardware raid.

 

If you want even better vm support look at proxmox.

 

Id probably get a ssd to run vms on.

[MrRVK]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Yea you want to use the software raid in unraid, its much better than most hardware raid.

 

If you want even better vm support look at proxmox.

 

Id probably get a ssd to run vms on.

Gotcha, thanks! I'm thinking adding an NVMe for VMs and boot(?) is probably a good idea.

[stratege1401]

If you are planning a DIY raid /nas server there is 3 main different philosophy:

 

1- The hardcore way: build you own server using hardware part and Unix/Linux.

I did run a server based on Debian Jessie up to Buster, with mdadm, lvm2, apache2, mariadb, php7.2, nextcloud, fail2ban, letsencrypt and a few other packages

It did work pretty well, but i am done playing with all those *.conf manual files.

Alternates are proxmod base server using dockers...but still with a lot of *.conf files.

Cheap, except if you count man hours of headaches during setup and updates playing with dependencies and makes. 

 

2- The easy way:

buy a all-in-one brand new Qnap or Synology box, and rely on this hardware-software package.

Expensive, software dépendent, not really flexible.

 

3- The easy but flexible way:

Use a dedicated software like FreeNAS OS, OpenMediaVault, XigmaNAS ( former Free4nas Os ), Rockstor ( centOS based, end of life coming soon) or like Linus himself use unRAID.

Free or Cheap, flexible and most of the time open-source.

 

I spent a few weeks testing them and i finally choose unRAID, with a life-time license Pro.

My new server is based on unRAID v6.9.2 (latest).

 

I have this hardware:

Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. B450M DS3H-CF, Version x.x
American Megatrends International, LLC., Version F61b GF
BIOS (beta) dated: Fri 16 Apr 2021 12:00:00 AM CEST
AMD Ryzen 5 5400G with Radeon RX Vega 11
PCI device 0x8086:0x10fb (ixgbe) Intel X520-DA2 10G
SPCC-ssd cache 1TO
Array of six devices total size: 16TB

My Double Parity Array size is 16TB.

 

I am using different docker like:

- mariaDB 10.4.8

- ProxyManagerNGINX v2.8. based on NGINX 1.14.1 and latest Letsencrypt API

- Redis 6.2.2

- Nextcloud 2.1.x.x with enhanced F2A ( Database and users data from my bprevios DIY Buster server )

- PhpMyAdmin 5.1.0 with enhanced F2A 

- TorRelay based on Tor 0.4.5.7

 

...and i am so happy not to have to ding in *.conf files anymore, except some console modifications...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[MrRVK]

5 hours ago, stratege1401 said:

If you are planning a DIY raid /nas server there is 3 main different philosophy:

 

1- The hardcore way: build you own server using hardware part and Unix/Linux.

I did run a server based on Debian Jessie up to Buster, with mdadm, lvm2, apache2, mariadb, php7.2, nextcloud, fail2ban, letsencrypt and a few other packages

It did work pretty well, but i am done playing with all those *.conf manual files.

Alternates are proxmod base server using dockers...but still with a lot of *.conf files.

Cheap, except if you count man hours of headaches during setup and updates playing with dependencies and makes. 

 

2- The easy way:

buy a all-in-one brand new Qnap or Synology box, and rely on this hardware-software package.

Expensive, software dépendent, not really flexible.

 

3- The easy but flexible way:

Use a dedicated software like FreeNAS OS, OpenMediaVault, XigmaNAS ( former Free4nas Os ), Rockstor ( centOS based, end of life coming soon) or like Linus himself use unRAID.

Free or Cheap, flexible and most of the time open-source.

 

I spent a few weeks testing them and i finally choose unRAID, with a life-time license Pro.

My new server is based on unRAID v6.9.2 (latest).

 

I have this hardware:

Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. B450M DS3H-CF, Version x.x
American Megatrends International, LLC., Version F61b GF
BIOS (beta) dated: Fri 16 Apr 2021 12:00:00 AM CEST
AMD Ryzen 5 5400G with Radeon RX Vega 11
PCI device 0x8086:0x10fb (ixgbe) Intel X520-DA2 10G
SPCC-ssd cache 1TO
Array of six devices total size: 16TB

My Double Parity Array size is 16TB.

 

I am using different docker like:

- mariaDB 10.4.8

- ProxyManagerNGINX v2.8. based on NGINX 1.14.1 and latest Letsencrypt API

- Redis 6.2.2

- Nextcloud 2.1.x.x with enhanced F2A ( Database and users data from my bprevios DIY Buster server )

- PhpMyAdmin 5.1.0 with enhanced F2A 

- TorRelay based on Tor 0.4.5.7

 

...and i am so happy not to have to ding in *.conf files anymore, except some console modifications...

Thanks for the breakdown! This whole Qlocker situation has really deterred me from your "easy way", so looks like I'm going the Unraid route

[stratege1401]

On 4/25/2021 at 6:55 AM, MrRVK said:

Thanks for the breakdown! This whole Qlocker situation has really deterred me from your "easy way", so looks like I'm going the Unraid route

So far, unRAID feel safe...until something happens. There is unfortunatly NO SAFE SYSTEM. 

You need to take your whole network/appliance as a global unit.

Build several layers of security, manages access, use WAF/Pfsense protection, use all tricks to protect yourself.

And, at the end, remeber the 3-2-1 rule for backing up your data...

 

Check out https://www.nomoreransom.org/