DIY NAS - Remote Access

[UnPlugNRePlug]

Hey,

 

Very new to setting up a NAS, Ive built computers and have moved on to trying to set this PC for stuff like

-plex server

-data hoarding

-setup snapshot back up database

-make my own google drive

-remote gaming if possible

 

Id like to know a bit more about "Snapshots". I have a second PC that Ive stuffed with HDDs. I put a AIO on the CPU, I have an Air Cooler for back up incase the 2 year old AIO doesnt hold up. I am considering on putting a GPU in, but the iGPU seems to be fine for my needs. I wouldnt know if a 1070ti would be overkill or how to utilize it in a server. Considering on removing the 2x4GB sticks of ram, not sure if it will improve or hurt overall performance. 16GB vs 24GB of RAM.

Case: Enthoo Pro Full w/ Tempered Glass
Motherboard: Asrock Z77 Extreme4
CPU Cooler: Corsair H150i AIO
CPU: i5-3570K
RAM 2x8GB Corsair DDR3 1600MHz and 2x4GB Corsair DDR3 1600MHz
Harddrives:

-1x1TB WesternDigital Blue 6gpbs

-1x2TB Seagate Firecuda 6gbps

-1x2TB Hitachi 3gpbs

-1x5TB Seagate Expansion 6gps

-2x8TB Seagate Barracuda 6gbps
Solid State Drive 1x500GB Samsung 860 EVO (BootDrive)
PSU: RM750x

 

Advice on where to start, I have a windows 10 pro on it but have very basic stuff downloaded like VPN, Brave browser, VLC. I am open to wiping it and using a different OS if necessary, dont really have much guidance where to go after its put together. I know for streaming games you need great upload/download speeds. I think the motherboard has 1 gigabit  speeds.

 

Thanks,

Edited July 17, 2023 by UnPlugNRePlug
Updated info

[Bersella AI]

Remote gaming would seem to require a massive bandwidth to the Internet, making it unlikely suitable for outdoors; but it's feasible in-house, although not that necessary. Other than gaming, the GTX 1070Ti has all functionalities on H.265 transcoding, which may be useful for Plex, although requiring a lot of power standing by. If the electricity bill matters, consider others more efficient such as Quadro P400/P620.

 

For choices of memory, it depends on applications intended to be used. However, additional RAM may help in TrueNAS & ZFS pools.

 

As for these hard drives... I'd like to make hypotheses one by one:

• The WD Blue & the Firecuda drives would seem to be made of CMR, younger and thus solid;
• The Hitachi drive would seem to be aging (>6 yrs) and could be thought not so good;
• The external 5TB drive would seem to be made of SMR and couldn't be thought robust;
• The Barracuda 8TB drives were more likely to be made of SMR, and couldn't be thought robust.

Taken together, I'd suggest making a RAID 1 array with Firecuda & Hitachi for snapshots, and making basic pools with each other drive. The 5TB & 8TB drives are recommended only for media storage, whilst the WD Blue drive could be used for more applications such as downloading.

[AI_Must_Di3]

Also remember, turning on remote access makes you ripe for infiltration. Especially today and im not going to say how to do it or give hints, but i will say that if you look at MANY of the security update bulletins that come out, a VAST number of them are predicated on remote access scenarios. Also, in the US its illegal to have encryption that cant be broken. Please dont think cause you are using a VPN or TOR that you are safe or anonymous cause believe me, thats just not the case.....by a mile.

[LIGISTX]

4 hours ago, AI_Must_Di3 said:

Also, in the US its illegal to have encryption that cant be broken.

This is just not a true statement at all. The world operates on encryption… 

 

On 7/16/2023 at 2:06 PM, UnPlugNRePlug said:

Hey,

 

Very new to setting up a NAS, Ive built computers and have moved on to trying to set this PC for stuff like

-plex server

-data hoarding

-setup snapshot back up database

-make my own google drive

-remote gaming if possible

 

Id like to know a bit more about "Snapshots". I have a second PC that Ive stuffed with HDDs. I put a AIO on the CPU, I have an Air Cooler for back up incase the 2 year old AIO doesnt hold up. I am considering on putting a GPU in, but the iGPU seems to be fine for my needs. I wouldnt know if a 1070ti would be overkill or how to utilize it in a server. Considering on removing the 2x4GB sticks of ram, not sure if it will improve or hurt overall performance. 16GB vs 24GB of RAM.

Case: Enthoo Pro Full w/ Tempered Glass
Motherboard: Asrock Z77 Extreme4
CPU Cooler: Corsair H150i AIO
CPU: i5-3570K
RAM 2x8GB Corsair DDR3 1600MHz and 2x4GB Corsair DDR3 1600MHz
Harddrives:

-1x1TB WesternDigital Blue 6gpbs

-1x2TB Seagate Firecuda 6gbps

-1x2TB Hitachi 3gpbs

-1x5TB Seagate Expansion 6gps

-2x8TB Seagate Barracuda 6gbps
Solid State Drive 1x500GB Samsung 860 EVO (BootDrive)
PSU: RM750x

 

Advice on where to start, I have a windows 10 pro on it but have very basic stuff downloaded like VPN, Brave browser, VLC. I am open to wiping it and using a different OS if necessary, dont really have much guidance where to go after its put together. I know for streaming games you need great upload/download speeds. I think the motherboard has 1 gigabit  speeds.

 

Thanks,

With drives of mismatched size, I’d suggest looking into unraid as your OS. That way you can use all the drives in one large pool, and have redundancy across all of them. You can leave all the RAM in it, more RAM is helpful. 

[LIGISTX]

5 hours ago, AI_Must_Di3 said:

Please dont think cause you are using a VPN or TOR that you are safe or anonymous

Also, to add to this since fear mongering is not useful… no, a VPN will not entirely mask you, a VPN barely does anything for anonymity. But when used with other tools and best practices, it would be a single link in a very difficult chain to build if your goal is anonymity on the internet. 

As far as safe goes… yes, setting up a VPN at your house to VPN into is extremely safe. There are always people actively going to find ways to exploit things like wiregaurd or ovpn, but that doesn’t mean they are not safe. Again, the world runs on encryption… and any corporation will have numerous IPsec VPN’s connecting their different sites and locations together, you don’t often see major companies fall victim to VPN exploits, most attacks are targeting a user with credentials worth compromising… or via phishing. 

[apharma]

7 hours ago, Bersella AI said:

Remote gaming would seem to require a massive bandwidth to the Internet, making it unlikely suitable for outdoors; but it's feasible in-house, although not that necessary. Other than gaming, the GTX 1070Ti has all functionalities on H.265 transcoding, which may be useful for Plex, although requiring a lot of power standing by. If the electricity bill matters, consider others more efficient such as Quadro P400/P620.

 

For choices of memory, it depends on applications intended to be used. However, additional RAM may help in TrueNAS & ZFS pools.

 

As for these hard drives... I'd like to make hypotheses one by one:

• The WD Blue & the Firecuda drives would seem to be made of CMR, younger and thus solid;
• The Hitachi drive would seem to be aging (>6 yrs) and could be thought not so good;
• The external 5TB drive would seem to be made of SMR and couldn't be thought robust;
• The Barracuda 8TB drives were more likely to be made of SMR, and couldn't be thought robust.

Taken together, I'd suggest making a RAID 1 array with Firecuda & Hitachi for snapshots, and making basic pools with each other drive. The 5TB & 8TB drives are recommended only for media storage, whilst the WD Blue drive could be used for more applications such as downloading.

I agree about the remote gaming, I don't think it's really a good idea unless you are a baller.

Have you tried or considered the Arc A380? It may use more power than a P400/P620 30W/40W TDP vs 75W, but it is about the same price (UK) and very likely outperforms both those, having AV1 encoding and not having to deal with mini-DP ports is a nice bonus too.
I can't find too much data on idle power, some report the A380 as 17W-19W and the only thing I found about P400 was in German.

[Bersella AI]

11 hours ago, apharma said:

Have you tried or considered the Arc A380? It may use more power than a P400/P620 30W/40W TDP vs 75W, but it is about the same price (UK) and very likely outperforms both those, having AV1 encoding and not having to deal with mini-DP ports is a nice bonus too.

I've heard that the Arc A380 performed poorly in gaming on platforms, including this one shown by OP, without support for Resizable BAR. Although it seems to be unknown how A380 performs in video processing w/o Resizable BAR, I would suggest this GPU be excluded.

[apharma]

4 hours ago, Bersella AI said:

I've heard that the Arc A380 performed poorly in gaming on platforms, including this one shown by OP, without support for Resizable BAR. Although it seems to be unknown how A380 performs in video processing w/o Resizable BAR, I would suggest this GPU be excluded.

I was meaning purely for transcoding/encoding, I thought I'd made that clear.
I've seen people using it in the Unraid and Plex forums but hunting through months long threads to find out how it performs and works now is quite a hassle when the last few pages are troubleshooting niche cases. I guess I'll get one and try.

[LIGISTX]

7 hours ago, Bersella AI said:

I've heard that the Arc A380 performed poorly in gaming on platforms, including this one shown by OP, without support for Resizable BAR. Although it seems to be unknown how A380 performs in video processing w/o Resizable BAR, I would suggest this GPU be excluded.

Everyone seems to say arc makes for a great transcode card, which makes sense since transcoding video is much different then rendering out a game in real time. The bandwidth requirements are a fraction of what is needed for gaming which is why REBAR wouldn’t come into play. 
 

But, in my experience, any modern CPU can transcode 1080p plenty fine anyways, most people don’t need a GPU for Plex transcoding. 

[UnPlugNRePlug]

Thank you everyone that replied, I really appreciate the insight.

 

I will look into unraid. My biggest concern is creating a reliable back up system. Ill drop my pursuits into remote gaming, and plex server.

 

I will probably not use the 2TB Hitachi.