How to make a remotely accesible NAS with Raspberry Pi?

[xYorYx]

Hello!

 

I have a Raspberry Pi 3 sitting in a drawer and need a cheap NAS, so would like to use it for that. I have 0 experience with Pi and NAS, so I read a lot of guide over the past few days, but I find most of them very rushed and leaving a lot of questions, so decided to come here for help. I am aware that the Pi 3 is old and will probably be slow, but I am ok with dropping some files on it and letting it do its thing overnight.

 

So, I hope that you can answer this for me with a detailed guide or point me to one you are sure works:

 

How can I turn my Pi 3 into a 2 disk (RAID 1) NAS server that I can access over the Internet (for example, to upload pictures that my girlfriend will be able to see on her phone in another country)?

 

Thank you and I really appreciate your help!

[Zalosath]

13 hours ago, xYorYx said:

Hello!

 

I have a Raspberry Pi 3 sitting in a drawer and need a cheap NAS, so would like to use it for that. I have 0 experience with Pi and NAS, so I read a lot of guide over the past few days, but I find most of them very rushed and leaving a lot of questions, so decided to come here for help. I am aware that the Pi 3 is old and will probably be slow, but I am ok with dropping some files on it and letting it do its thing overnight.

 

So, I hope that you can answer this for me with a detailed guide or point me to one you are sure works:

 

How can I turn my Pi 3 into a 2 disk (RAID 1) NAS server that I can access over the Internet (for example, to upload pictures that my girlfriend will be able to see on her phone in another country)?

 

Thank you and I really appreciate your help!

For remote access use Wireshark WireGuard, never have your NAS directly open to the internet.

[FlyingPotato_is_taken]

2 minutes ago, Zalosath said:

Wireshark

Wrong program. Did you mean WireGuard?

 

Alternative program would be OpenVPN or what ever the router has build in.

 

 

 

[DavidRomao]

If your goal is simply to share files, "simply" configuring a NFS or SMB share, for file access. And WireGuard, to remotely access the local network , should be enough.

 

As for the RAID part I haven't investigated that part, on my setup I just settled for a nightly rsync for backup but maybe it's possible to have raid, I really don't know.

 

I suggest installing DietPI as the OS, because it has plenty of pre configured packages and helpful documentation. Which minimises having to fiddle with configurations and dealing with implementation details. https://dietpi.com/docs/software/

 

 

Regarding the VPN, you can choose between OpenVPN or Wireguard, either way you can use PiVPN to manage that , https://www.pivpn.io/

 

Depending on how familiar you are with Linux and command line, the difficulty may change.

 

I think OpenMediaVault may be a good option to manage the Disks and Network Share, if you don't want to spend much time on the Terminal, but I haven't personally tried it. However it should be easy to install with DietPi.

 

There are already many guides available, so I suggest trying to follow one, and if you run into issues then come back here with more specific questions which will be easier to help you with.

 

For example, here's one that seems ok to setup the Network Share part https://singleboardbytes.com/3352/setting-up-a-samba-share-on-dietpi.htm

[xYorYx]

10 hours ago, DavidRomao said:

If your goal is simply to share files, "simply" configuring a NFS or SMB share, for file access. And WireGuard, to remotely access the local network , should be enough.

 

As for the RAID part I haven't investigated that part, on my setup I just settled for a nightly rsync for backup but maybe it's possible to have raid, I really don't know.

 

I suggest installing DietPI as the OS, because it has plenty of pre configured packages and helpful documentation. Which minimises having to fiddle with configurations and dealing with implementation details. https://dietpi.com/docs/software/

 

 

Regarding the VPN, you can choose between OpenVPN or Wireguard, either way you can use PiVPN to manage that , https://www.pivpn.io/

 

Depending on how familiar you are with Linux and command line, the difficulty may change.

 

I think OpenMediaVault may be a good option to manage the Disks and Network Share, if you don't want to spend much time on the Terminal, but I haven't personally tried it. However it should be easy to install with DietPi.

 

There are already many guides available, so I suggest trying to follow one, and if you run into issues then come back here with more specific questions which will be easier to help you with.

 

For example, here's one that seems ok to setup the Network Share part https://singleboardbytes.com/3352/setting-up-a-samba-share-on-dietpi.htm

 

Sounds like a solid start, is this the right order to do the installations:

DietPi > PiVPN > WireGuard (seems to be much newer and faster) > OpenMediaVault > Samba

 

I am a little confused about something, though. From what I've read, OMV supports SMB natively, so why do I need Samba? I also assumed that WireGuard will do the access to the files, do I need SMB at all? I am mostly asking because a few people mentioned SMB is not a good choice because of its low security and I also saw that it requires 16GB of RAM which my Pi 3 is far from.

[DavidRomao]

5 hours ago, xYorYx said:

 

Sounds like a solid start, is this the right order to do the installations:

DietPi > PiVPN > WireGuard (seems to be much newer and faster) > OpenMediaVault > Samba

 

I am a little confused about something, though. From what I've read, OMV supports SMB natively, so why do I need Samba? I also assumed that WireGuard will do the access to the files, do I need SMB at all? I am mostly asking because a few people mentioned SMB is not a good choice because of its low security and I also saw that it requires 16GB of RAM which my Pi 3 is far from.

If OMV supports SMB out of the box, then you wouldn't need to install and manage Samba yourself. The guide I shared was in case OMV wasn't sure, I should've made that clearer, my bad.

 

Regarding the 16gb of ram, you definetely don't need that to run a SMB Server, not even close. I believe the Pi 3 should have enough ram for this.  

 

Regarding security of the SMB protocol, it doesn't really matter as long as it is only available on the local network, meaning not accessible from the Internet. At least not without a VPN.

 

I suggest using SMB If you plan on accessing your files from a Windows computer, otherwise you could just use NFS.

 

You'll need a VPN (WireGuard) to provide access to the local network, this is where security is important because it's the entrypoint, all the network traffic to access the SMB Share will go through WireGuard when you're not at home.

 

WireGuard will not access files, it doesn't handle file sharing or anything else. It'll only allow a device which is not on your home network, to access the network, just as if it was connected to your router at home. Without it, you'd only be able to access your SMB Share when at home. This is why the security of SMB is not critical.

 

 

 

 

[LIGISTX]

5 hours ago, xYorYx said:

 

Sounds like a solid start, is this the right order to do the installations:

DietPi > PiVPN > WireGuard (seems to be much newer and faster) > OpenMediaVault > Samba

 

I am a little confused about something, though. From what I've read, OMV supports SMB natively, so why do I need Samba? I also assumed that WireGuard will do the access to the files, do I need SMB at all? I am mostly asking because a few people mentioned SMB is not a good choice because of its low security and I also saw that it requires 16GB of RAM which my Pi 3 is far from.

SMB is a network share protocol, WireGuard is a VPN application. 
 

SMB lets you share your data via the network, so when you go to add a network location in windows, that’s using SMB. WireGuard will let you remotely VPN into your network while physically away from home, so your SMB shares still work. They are both needed as they are totally different things. If you don’t want to access files while away, you don’t need WireGuard.