NAS and Small Home Server

JoshGinter · January 6

Hi Everyone. For the last 8 years or so I've been using a QNAP NAS as a backup and (mainly) as a Plex Server. I upload mainly full quality BluRay and DVD rips in mkv format (ie: not compressed to H.264 or H.265). The solution had been working well until the last 5 months or so. The QNAP interface has become very slow, the Plex Server "app" crashes regularly, CPU and RAM usage is higher than it seems like it should be. I had it freeze on bootup once after a power outage. I haven't lost any data yet (at least none that I know of) but it feels inevitable. So I want to be proactive and start figuring out a replacement.

I think I want to build my own this time around... but am not opposed to another QNAP or Synology system if that ends up making the most sense. My main use-case is as a Plex Server (though given the state of Plex, I will inevitably be playing with Jellyfin soon enough as well). Transcoding is nice, but I mainly just stream on my internal network at full quality (to an NVIDIA shield). I do have a couple other small VMs or containers I might want to run (pi-hole, web server for my own personal projects, maybe home assistant/automation stuff). I do not need high powered servers but I want the process of spinning up something new to experiment and play with to be fairly easy.

As far as access to the "NAS" part itself goes, I wouldn't be accessing from outside my network. I just need to be able to have basic FTP/NFS/SMB shares available. I will be storing a lot of photos but don't think I'll need any special features for that. I have access to fairly cheap WD drives through my job so I'll probably be starting with 4 or 6 12-16TB drives I'd like the ability to add a couple drives in the future if they become necessary.

When thinking about a custom build NAS I come across two main questions I'd like opinions on:

1. "What kind of hardware makes the most sense?" I know I want 2.5 gb ethernet, and I want to have the most power efficient setup possible. 99% of the time this box will be idle, and 99% of the time it is doing 'something' it'll be sending files over the network it's not going to be doing anything particularly intensive. I want the most efficient low power states possible. I'd also like it to be as quiet as possible, I know it won't ever be silent what with HDDs and all, but I cannot have real server hardware with real server fan noise... I share an office with this thing.

2. "What kind of configuration makes sense?" Should I be thinking about this as a device that runs a NAS OS, and that OS has the ability to run VMs and containers for Plex and whatever else (this would be similar to how QNAP and Synology work)? Or should I be thinking of the system as running some sort of hypervisor where it runs several VM/containers one of which is the NAS OS, another of which is Plex etc.?

There are plenty of articles and videos about the various NAS OS options out there so I don't think I need to discuss that much. I haven't decided which one I want to use but I have plenty of information to choose one.

Would love to hear from folks that have done this before.

Zii_ · January 9

Just curious what model of QNAP NAS do you have? Ever thought of installing a new OS onto it? It was pretty easy for my QNAP TS-251, breathing whole new life into it. I was able to install TrueNAS Core by removing the old usb DOM device that had the old OS installed and then install a new usb storage device in place of the DOM. TrueNAS worked out great for a while and I'm pretty sure it covers all of your requirements too. I have since "evolved" into using plain old Debian Linux in a headless setup cuz I'm a command line masochist. Just thought I would drop this bit of advise because I saved a lot of cash by re-purposing my old NAS instead of buying whole new hardware.