First time home server help

[Kandy_Man_1990]

I currently run a Synology DS920+ to host my Emby server as well as some docker containers, and of course all my media and files.  Emby struggles on it in a few situations and I've got a MinisForum UM690 on the way which I intend to move Emby over to and maybe the docker containers but that's a future problem.

 

My main problems are what OS to run on the UM690?  It comes with Win11 Pro installed, but that feels like overkill for just Emby and docker, not to mention I don't want to have to worry about Windows doing updates while we're in the middle of watching something.  I was thinking of sticking Ubuntu on it but I know very little about linux and would probably struggle to troubleshoot things on my own.  I'd also like it to have a web gui so I can just put the UM690 behind the tv and forget about it without having to find keyboard, mouse and hdmi every time I want to access it.  In an ideal world I would just install Synology's OS onto it as it's perfect for my needs in terms of user interface, simple ways to block out all access except for specific ports, that kind of thing.

 

Does anyone have any recommendations that would fit this use case?  I've heard of a few different NAS OS's like free nas, open media vault, unraid etc, but I wouldn't know where to begin with them.  Do any of them even fit my use case?  Would it be easier to lock down Windows and only allow specific ports like Synology does then do a remote desktop?  Can you even do that on Windows?  A lot of questions I know but any help is really appreciated as the Synology is just wearing us down at the moment.

[Aaron_T]

If you're interested most in virtualization, then maybe run proxmox on the hardware, and set up whatever other environments you need for anything else.

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

I use Windows 10 Pro on my server for running Plex, Docker, and game servers. I use Remote Desktop to control it from another PC in the house (no external access); There is normally no keyboard/mouse/monitor hooked up to it. Windows updates haven't been an issue. I have things auto start if it does reboot.

 

I considered using Ubuntu or some other Linux but I'm not interested in doing 4 hours of troubleshooting every time I want to do a thing (and break the OS). I considered switching to Free NAS or UNRAID or Proxmox, but... why? Windows just works for this use case and I know it well...

[Aaron_T]

14 minutes ago, Hairless Monkey Boy said:

I use Windows 10 Pro on my server for running Plex, Docker, and game servers. I use Remote Desktop to control it from another PC in the house (no external access); There is normally no keyboard/mouse/monitor hooked up to it. Windows updates haven't been an issue. I have things auto start if it does reboot.

 

I considered using Ubuntu or some other Linux but I'm not interested in doing 4 hours of troubleshooting every time I want to do a thing (and break the OS). I considered switching to Free NAS or UNRAID or Proxmox, but... why? Windows just works for this use case and I know it well...

Makes sense. A lot of people feel this way, and I've found Parsec to be an extremely useful tool for this type of situation.

If the OP does want to learn something new, then I'd likely go with Proxmox (or Unraid if you really don't need a full hypervisor). TrueNAS has a lot of capability also, but I just have a bit of a personal preference towards having a hypervisor on the hardware.

[m9x3mos]

8 hours ago, Aaron_T said:

Makes sense. A lot of people feel this way, and I've found Parsec to be an extremely useful tool for this type of situation.

If the OP does want to learn something new, then I'd likely go with Proxmox (or Unraid if you really don't need a full hypervisor). TrueNAS has a lot of capability also, but I just have a bit of a personal preference towards having a hypervisor on the hardware.

I run windows as the hypervisor. 

A vm then that runs truenas scale with my storage drives passed into it. 

This gives me the best of both worlds and even can set the truenas vm to allow nested virtualization and run apps in truenas as well. 

Been running like this for over 3 years with truenas core before and it works pretty good. 

[Kandy_Man_1990]

15 hours ago, Hairless Monkey Boy said:

I use Windows 10 Pro on my server for running Plex, Docker, and game servers. I use Remote Desktop to control it from another PC in the house (no external access); There is normally no keyboard/mouse/monitor hooked up to it. Windows updates haven't been an issue. I have things auto start if it does reboot.

 

I considered using Ubuntu or some other Linux but I'm not interested in doing 4 hours of troubleshooting every time I want to do a thing (and break the OS). I considered switching to Free NAS or UNRAID or Proxmox, but... why? Windows just works for this use case and I know it well...

This sounds closest to what I would want I think.  I was hoping to run something lighter than Windows but I think this makes sense for my use case.  On my Synology I have firewall rules set to block everything except a handful of ports that I want open, can I do something similar in Windows?  I've never needed to consider it before

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

10 hours ago, m9x3mos said:

I run windows as the hypervisor. 

A vm then that runs truenas scale with my storage drives passed into it. 

That sounds pretty nice. My one gripe with my setup has been the performance of Storage Spaces in Windows. It's very bad. Writes are SO SLOW. Reads aren't much better. I ended up buying a license for PrimoCache which has worked really well to speed file transfers up significantly.

 

4 hours ago, Kandy_Man_1990 said:

On my Synology I have firewall rules set to block everything except a handful of ports that I want open, can I do something similar in Windows?

I have custom Firewall settings on my Synology NAS, too. There are a lot of bots that target those devices...

 

The Windows Firewall mostly blocks everything by default. You have to tell it when you want something to go through. You can also go into the firewall settings and disable any of the default things you want, though I don't know to what effect. Anyway, yes, there are a lot of options to configure the firewall in Windows.

[LIGISTX]

4 hours ago, Kandy_Man_1990 said:

This sounds closest to what I would want I think.  I was hoping to run something lighter than Windows but I think this makes sense for my use case.  On my Synology I have firewall rules set to block everything except a handful of ports that I want open, can I do something similar in Windows?  I've never needed to consider it before

You shouldn’t need to block ports on the NAS… your firewall in your router is what separates your internal network from the outside world; that’s where you don’t want to open ports. Internal to your network… you shouldn’t need to worry much about that. If someone gets on your network, it’s pretty much game over for the synology. This is also why you should never expose your NAS externally. 
 

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t try and protect the NAS, you definitely should. But the way to do that correctly is with vlans and polys of least privilege. My truenas server sits on a separate vlan and it’s admin console (and ssh) are not even accessible on my normal user vlans. This helps ensure even if a device is compromised in my network, it would take a bunch of extra work to try and then get into the NAS. Simply blocking ports won’t do much - since your local devices can use the NAS, so would bad actors inside your network, or viruses that like to encrypt things such as ransomeware. 

[m9x3mos]

3 hours ago, Hairless Monkey Boy said:

That sounds pretty nice. My one gripe with my setup has been the performance of Storage Spaces in Windows. It's very bad. Writes are SO SLOW. Reads aren't much better. I ended up buying a license for PrimoCache which has worked really well to speed file transfers up significantly.

Yeah, that was exactly why I went this way. Storage speeds are much faster than storage spaces. Not a fast as truenas running natively but about 95% of the speed. Which I am pretty happy with. 

[Kandy_Man_1990]

Thanks for all the responses everyone.  The UM690 arrived yesterday, probably be a week or 2 before I get to mess around with it with work and house stuff.  If it doesn't go smoothly I'm sure I'll be back haha