Help with NAS design

nano22007 · February 2, 2023

Hi all, new on the forum but longtime LTT watcher

I'm looking to set up a NAS for myself.

The things I would like to be able to do:

Store important files with redundancy
- Available over the internet ideally in a google drive style program
Home security
- Collect a small number of camera streams while preventing camera's to phone home etc.
- Analyze camera streams with object recognition and alerts
Store and stream non-important media (movies etc.)

What I am considering now:

I have an old PC that id like to use. Get some new drives for the important files and use Raid 1 or 6. Keep some older drives for the unimportant drives. Use Jellyfin as platform. For the security cameras im considering Frigate with home assistant for the notifications.

What I dont know and need help with:
Which NAS software should I use?

Which Raid is best suitable or other type of redundant storage?

Which google style system is good and safe?

How to prevent camera's to phone home?

And any other suggestions why I should use another system than im considering.

Thanks everyone that takes the time to read and share their advice!

LIGISTX · February 2, 2023

47 minutes ago, nano22007 said:

Hi all, new on the forum but longtime LTT watcher

I'm looking to set up a NAS for myself.

The things I would like to be able to do:

Store important files with redundancy

Available over the internet ideally in a google drive style program

Home security

Collect a small number of camera streams while preventing camera's to phone home etc.

Analyze camera streams with object recognition and alerts

Store and stream non-important media (movies etc.)

What I am considering now:

I have an old PC that id like to use. Get some new drives for the important files and use Raid 1 or 6. Keep some older drives for the unimportant drives. Use Jellyfin as platform. For the security cameras im considering Frigate with home assistant for the notifications.

What I dont know and need help with:
Which NAS software should I use?

Which Raid is best suitable or other type of redundant storage?

Which google style system is good and safe?

How to prevent camera's to phone home?

And any other suggestions why I should use another system than im considering.

Thanks everyone that takes the time to read and share their advice!

There is a lot to this… more then just “a NAS”.

Jellyfin is just for streaming movies/tv shows from your local storage, it doesn’t do anything beyond that.

As far as the rest, you will need some sort of hypervisor to do all of those things; I am a fan and user of proxmox, but unraid or truenas scale can also provide this functionality (as can any linux distro, with the proper setup).

A hypervisor allows you to run VM’s, which will be needed to run a NAS, a camera NVR, and home assistant (this can be a docker container, but I’d recommend making it a full on VM). The hardware needed for this isn’t much different then what you likely already thought you needed for a NAS.

As far as keeping the cameras from phoning home, now your talking about a managed network, with multiple subsets (likely via vlans), which would require a lot more networking knowledge as you would need to set up a router with vlan capability (I use pfsense as do many others) and you will need managed switches which can also talk vlan (I use ubiquity, as do many others). You will then put the cameras and NVR on their own subnet with no way to communicate with anything outside of that subnet, and no way to get out the WAN to phone home.

This is a lot to digest I’m sure, but I would start googling the terms you are not familiar with so you can get an idea of what all of it means, and then come back with any specific questions

Basically, the hive mind of the forum is very happy to help, but to go from “nothing” to “relatively full on homelab setup with managed networking”, your going ti have to start learning lots and ask for help where you get stuck.

Homelabing is very fun and rewarding, and a great learning experience, but it’s impossible for anyone to explain from start to finish with all of the required detail what will go into this, especially since everyone’s knowledge, needs, and budget differ greatly.

nano22007 · February 3, 2023

10 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

There is a lot to this… more then just “a NAS”.

Jellyfin is just for streaming movies/tv shows from your local storage, it doesn’t do anything beyond that.

As far as the rest, you will need some sort of hypervisor to do all of those things; I am a fan and user of proxmox, but unraid or truenas scale can also provide this functionality (as can any linux distro, with the proper setup).

A hypervisor allows you to run VM’s, which will be needed to run a NAS, a camera NVR, and home assistant (this can be a docker container, but I’d recommend making it a full on VM). The hardware needed for this isn’t much different then what you likely already thought you needed for a NAS.

As far as keeping the cameras from phoning home, now your talking about a managed network, with multiple subsets (likely via vlans), which would require a lot more networking knowledge as you would need to set up a router with vlan capability (I use pfsense as do many others) and you will need managed switches which can also talk vlan (I use ubiquity, as do many others). You will then put the cameras and NVR on their own subnet with no way to communicate with anything outside of that subnet, and no way to get out the WAN to phone home.

This is a lot to digest I’m sure, but I would start googling the terms you are not familiar with so you can get an idea of what all of it means, and then come back with any specific questions

Basically, the hive mind of the forum is very happy to help, but to go from “nothing” to “relatively full on homelab setup with managed networking”, your going ti have to start learning lots and ask for help where you get stuck.

Homelabing is very fun and rewarding, and a great learning experience, but it’s impossible for anyone to explain from start to finish with all of the required detail what will go into this, especially since everyone’s knowledge, needs, and budget differ greatly.

Thanks for your input, appreciate the effort.

Yeah I appreciate that its a big leap and I wont go from nothing in one go but take steps. In that sense just having Plex on my PC was a bit of a first step.

For me the NAS part is the most important now. What I am a bit afraid of is that I start with a NAS system and then a year or 2 or whatever time later figure out my fundament is not suitable for my next step. But if understand you correctly I need something to run VM's which is commonly available in NAS OS which I can then later on use to expand.

LIGISTX · February 3, 2023

7 hours ago, nano22007 said:

Thanks for your input, appreciate the effort.

Yeah I appreciate that its a big leap and I wont go from nothing in one go but take steps. In that sense just having Plex on my PC was a bit of a first step.

For me the NAS part is the most important now. What I am a bit afraid of is that I start with a NAS system and then a year or 2 or whatever time later figure out my fundament is not suitable for my next step. But if understand you correctly I need something to run VM's which is commonly available in NAS OS which I can then later on use to expand.

Correct, you can expand down the line in many ways.

I initially had truenas core (not scale, core is pretty horrible for VM’s) on bare metal, but eventually wanted to get into VM’s and docker containers, so I backed up my truenas config (which is a simple XML file), formatted my boot drive, and installed ESXi and virtualized truenas under it. Since. I have moved to proxmox (this was a little less ready since I then had many VM’s needing to be migrated).

Point is, there is almost always a way to a new solution in the future, just takes some time and knowledge, and maybe a few dollars (if you virtualize your NAS, you need an HBA which is ~50 bucks), and a good bit of forum/blog reading and video watching.