Help setting up my work NAS

[DingdongTP]

Hi guys.

 

I'm a video producer and the time has come where I need to upgrade my storage solution to a proper NAS with redundancy. My plan is for it to act as a file server/backup storage, but not to necessarily edit footage directly from it, so super fast speed is not a priority.

For context, I've never setup a NAS before, but I've built more than 10 computers at this point.

 

Main things I require for my NAS:

• Scalability - I'm thinking of starting with 3 12TB drives and I want to be able to upgrade it in the future without messing all the redundancy and having to rebuild the whole thing (minimum 5 HDD bays).
• Remote access - I want to be able to access the NAS outside my local network and have 1 or 2 trusted remote video editors being able to upload/download footage from the NAS to edit locally on their machines.

Good things to have but not mandatory:

• 2.5Gbit networking for me to be able to move/edit stuff on LAN without any network bottlenecks.

I've watched Linus' video on the Jonsbo NAS build, and it got me intrigued, as I thought it maybe would be a cool solution to my issue right now.

 

What I need help with:

• QNAP/Synology solution for ease of setup or custom build with TrueNAS or similar?
• If custom build, recommendation on parts that would be good for this scenario?
• Amount of RAM needed for the NAS to work comfortably without bottlenecks? (assuming a 64TB drive size)
• How to setup easy remote access for my editors (VPN,SSH, FTP, other) without losing tons of bandwidth for remote users? How would this work security-wise?
• Other important stuff I might have overlooked?

 

As I said this will be my first experience with the NAS/Server side of computers, so all help and tips would be appreciated.

 

Thank you very much for your help guys.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, OvrilPT said:

• QNAP/Synology solution for ease of setup or custom build with TrueNAS or similar?
•  

Do you want to diy? Both work fine, the synologies will probably take less time to setup and have support, but the diy is more customizable.

 

1 hour ago, OvrilPT said:

• Amount of RAM needed for the NAS to work comfortably without bottlenecks? (assuming a 64TB drive size)
•  

4gb should be plenty for this use, you really don't need much ram for 1gbe or 2.5gbe nas for backing up files

 

1 hour ago, OvrilPT said:

• How to setup easy remote access for my editors (VPN,SSH, FTP, other) without losing tons of bandwidth for remote users? How would this work security-wise?
•  

Probably a vpn and cifs would be the easiest as it would show up as a drive in windows. SFTP/SCP would also work well.

 

But what is your speed to your ISP? Many home connections have a pretty limited upload speed and large files will take a very long time to copy over wan.

 

 

[DingdongTP]

11 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you want to diy? Both work fine, the synologies will probably take less time to setup and have support, but the diy is more customizable.

I love building computers, I'm just a bit hesitant about the software side of things, not the hardware side. I don't have a lot of experience outside Windows machines.

 

11 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Probably a vpn and cifs would be the easiest as it would show up as a drive in windows. SFTP/SCP would also work well.

Do you have any recommendation on reading material / videos for me to learn how to setup that?

 

11 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

But what is your speed to your ISP? Many home connections have a pretty limited upload speed and large files will take a very long time to copy over wan.

Currently I have 1Gbps down and 300Mbps up, with room to upgrade in the future.

[Psykologe]

5 hours ago, OvrilPT said:

I love building computers, I'm just a bit hesitant about the software side of things, not the hardware side. I don't have a lot of experience outside Windows machines.

 

Do you have any recommendation on reading material / videos for me to learn how to setup that?

 

Currently I have 1Gbps down and 300Mbps up, with room to upgrade in the future.

I can't give u any recomondations about hardware but maybe (if u like windows) this video from anthonyanthony might help u:

 

[DingdongTP]

19 hours ago, Psykologe said:

I can't give u any recomondations about hardware but maybe (if u like windows) this video from anthonyanthony might help u:

I like Windows as a user, but I don't want to deal with Windows on my NAS ahah, that's a good video though, thanks!

 

On 5/22/2022 at 9:57 PM, OvrilPT said:

QNAP/Synology solution for ease of setup or custom build with TrueNAS or similar?

Currently my main decision is coming down to one of these solutions, that's what I mainly need advice on.

[voyager_]

If speed isnt a great concern, Unraid may be a good option just for its ease of expansion later down the road. Transfer speeds can be greatly improved by adding a cache drive ( plan to put them in raid for safety). My network is all gigabit but with the ssd cache I can write 1tb at 100-120mpbs until the cache is full. TrueNas uses ZFS which is a great file system but expansion is more difficult, unlike unraid where you can add a drive and let it build. I run dual parity drives just for a little extra peice of mind. Backblaze or something similiar may be a good investment too, just as an addition precaution.

[Psykologe]

4 hours ago, OvrilPT said:

I like Windows as a user, but I don't want to deal with Windows on my NAS ahah, that's a good video though, thanks!

 

Currently my main decision is coming down to one of these solutions, that's what I mainly need advice on.

Oh okay than I understood u wrong XD

[DingdongTP]

18 hours ago, voyager_ said:

If speed isnt a great concern, Unraid may be a good option just for its ease of expansion later down the road. Transfer speeds can be greatly improved by adding a cache drive ( plan to put them in raid for safety). My network is all gigabit but with the ssd cache I can write 1tb at 100-120mpbs until the cache is full. TrueNas uses ZFS which is a great file system but expansion is more difficult, unlike unraid where you can add a drive and let it build. I run dual parity drives just for a little extra peice of mind. Backblaze or something similiar may be a good investment too, just as an addition precaution.

Speed is going to be a concern, because even though I'm probably not editing all my projects on the NAS, I will be downloading and uploading a lot a big video files on the NAS frequently, so I wouldn't like that process to be slow. Currently I'm trying to understand the disadvantages of going with a solution from QNAP/Synology, instead of going with TrueNAS.

 

The Backblaze solution is one I'm seriously thinking of adding as well, but as a bulk offsite backup, not as a working system, thanks for the tip!