Advice Needed About NAS Configuration on Ubuntu Server, Aborting FreeNAS

[mhumm2]

Greetings,

The purpose of this post/thread, is to illicit advice from the KF community concerning my home NAS.

NAS Hardware, purchased for the NAS server:
- Supermicro X9SCM Mobo (16GB Bootable Flashdrive with OS installed)
- 16GB RAM, DDR3 Unbuffered ECC 1600/1333 MHz
- 3 each WD 2TB NAS HDDs (SATA)
- Rack-mounted 4U Case

I've been struggling with the FreeNAS operating system and FreeNAS community for almost a year and I still do not have a viable NAS that does what I want it to do. Here is the list of functions I want from the NAS:

- A personal Cloud for 3 users plus a Guest (when needed). (Setting up "Shares" in FNAS never met my needs due to permission issues)
- I want to be able to VPN into the NAS from anywhere (Setting up a "Jail" in FNAS for OpenVPN never did work for me) (correctly Port-forwarding an AT&T U-verse mode/router is not easy and help was
not quick to assist me on their forum)
- Media Server to Samsung Bluray players (and eventually a Roku 4K box) that can see the NAS (UpNP or DLAP) using MediaTomb or another application if there are any better ones available.

I think much of the terminology in FNAS comes from BSD, and after 10 years with a Debian Linux distro, I didn't translate well and the FNAS Guide IMO was written for more advanced users and networkers than I am.

I'm looking to see what pit-falls will arise if any, and what advantages I will gain using Ubuntu server instead of FNAS. I would like to use software RAID 5.

One of the issues are the shares. I need 5 top level directories. 3 users will have their own share. Each of those need to be private (no read, no write). Everyone can see the top level directory name of the each of the users, but only the owning user can "drill-down" into the sub-directories. This was not possible in FNAS. Can it be done in Ubuntu Server? There will also be a "Share" directory that all users can access and use to exchange files.

A few FNAS users warned me that only FNAS has a built-in gui, but can't I install and use Webmin on the ubuntu server to serve the same purpose?

I'm very open to any cautions, warnings, pro-con, advantages, etc. of using Ubuntu server instead of FNAS. I think one of the biggest reasons is the amazing level of support provided by you the KF community. I'm very comfortable here and I don't have to deal with arrogance and "gotchas" which is refreshing. You guys are the best!

Mark

[oshunluvr]

A couple of comments - I have been running a dedicated home server for 5 years;

- Webmin works great, but I rarely need it. I do most tasks (upgrades, hard drive maintenance, backups) using ssh or with cron jobs.

- Permissions aren't that tricky but it depends on how you allow access. On mine, direct server (local network) file access is "Public" meaning all users have access to the files on the server. That's rather the point of having a server in my world. Private files are in our home folders, not on the server. For "private" access, like backups of home folders, I use NextCloud. I wasn't too hard to install (after lots of time reading and following how-to's) and provides access to both private and public files. I don't know what you mean by "personal Cloud" but I assume you mean configurable file access. Nextcloud does a very good job for free and there's lots of help getting it up and running. The actual process you'll need to use will depend on how you configure - users, access type (direct via NFS or SAMBA or another tool) directories, mounts, etc. I don't see any walls here - i.e. whatever your objective is you'll be able to get there.

- There are numerous way to access media content. I tried a few of the DLNA options and frankly all were lacking or difficult to configure well. However, this was in 2012-13. I then discovered a commercially available option that works extremely well - Plex. I bought the lifetime server license and the application has Smart TV (Samsung, LG, Visio, Sony and others), Roku, Android, Apple (all variants), and Web access options and it works on Samsung Bluray players. I figured since my OS and almost all my software is free, I could put a few bucks toward making my life easier and the media I have is much more accessible than it would be otherwise.

I'm not using a VPN to access my server.

Follow the links above for a bit more info...

[mhumm2]

Thank you oshunluvr. "Personal cloud" as I used it above, means the FamilyNAS is our own personal cloud. To that end, I want to provide the same utility as the free commercial cloud sites do, but it's in our home and I have physical control over it. Perhaps it's the "prepper" in me <grin> for the day the internet goes down and the Zombies attack.

The only thing I'm going to use VPN for is on those occasions when we're on vacation or I'm out of town, on business, and need to access the files on the FamilyNAS. While at home, ssh (with keys) works fine.

I'm still waiting for the ZFS repo to come back online. I sent them an email telling them one of the sources was a 404 error and that evening the whole repo was taken down. If you've never tried it, ZFS is an amazing piece of SW. It's a 128-bit file system as well as an LVM. FreeNAS has had it for some time, which is why our server had that OS installed. Now that Ubuntu 16.04 has native ZFS, I dropped FreeNAS like a hot potato and started setting up with Ubuntu 16.04.2LTS. I'll add the server hardware to my hardware list if you care to take a look. Otherwise, thank you for your input, it's always welcomed and thought provoking.

The media server functionality of the FamilyNAS is last on the priority list. When I get to it, I will check out Plex.

[oshunluvr]

As you likely know if you have read almost any of my posts, I've been using BTRFS for at least 5 years now without issue. The main reason I never tried ZFS was it's not in the kernel and never will be. I won't be trying it now as I see no need or benefit. BTRFS handles multiple devices extremely well, as well as compression, snapshots, subvolumes, backups, and all of this while still on-line and without rebooting. And it's in the kernel so I can run any Linux OS without reformatting my drives.

My server currently has 2x6TB drives and 2X2TB drives as separate RAID1 file systems and a small SSD as a boot device. The SSD is imaged to the 2TB RAID1 pool as a backup. Currently using Ubuntu server 14.04, I run NFS and SAMBA for local file sharing, NextCloud for remote file sharing, Transmission for bittorrent, Plex to deliver media content, and that's about it. I have enough drives in my desktop that my local backups are kept on it, but I can send (using btrfs) backups of subvolumes to the server if I choose to.

Plex is pretty awesome and constantly undergoing upgrades and improvements. The assist forum is fairly responsive (I've had several issues resolved within hours of posting) and it covers almost every type of device I can think of. The one thing to verify is the Smart TV player availability. Many of the Smart TV clients are not created by the Plex company and the coverage is not wide. LG WebOS is supported and Sony, Visio, and Samsung are covered within a certain model range. Roku's are not expensive and can be added to any TV that doesn't support Plex natively.

The Samsung Plex app works great on my bedroom TV and I use the Roku app and Android app as well. The one thing to look into for remote watching (streaming to devices outside your home network) is the encoding settings and requirements. Basically, you can define video quality for remote access and the server will encode on-the-fly to the remote device. If your server isn't powerful enough to handle that, you'll need to restrict how that is set so you don't have a lot of buffering. You can also have multiple versions of a movie - say 1080p for local watching and 720p or 480p for remote devices. Usually, when I travel, I will "sync" (copy a file to...) a movie or two to my tablet for watching off-line. - a very handy feature. Plex is really very configurable and as I said, there's lots of helpful users and Plex reps. on-line.

You can try it for free with limited features but a lifetime Plex pass is on sale right now for $120. A solid deal IMO: https://www.plex.tv/features/plex-pass/

[GregM]

What's NAS?

[chimak111]

What's NAS?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-attached_storage may help.

Edit: removed previous link as it could be seen as promoting a particular product.