Hi all.
So I am building a New NAS for my home use. I used to Rock FreeNAS, but since it does not support some functions, I will need for my office use. I am looking for a new OS option.
I am looking for a NAS OS that supports Optical Drive Sharing and using. As well as ZFS, Cloud syncing, having a Hardware Transcoder, Web Browser Remote Access, and iSCSI. This NAS is going to be a mixed-use machine for Media, Office, General File Storage, Video editing, and Archiving. The optical drive is to Archive to Blu-Ray for hard copy backup, read the rare optical media, and/or to Rip to an ISO inside the NAS.
I thank you all for your time and your help. As soon as I can narrow down to OS’s that do what I need them to do, I can start moving forward on this build.
Do you mean you want to be able to insert an optical disc and mount it as a share and write to it? Linux or windows server do that, but the simpler option is to rip the disc to an ISO file and share the file, mounting it natively on the client.
As above I would just do this on the client and leave the data on the NAS in isolation. That way you don’t need to install the Blu-ray burning software on the server. One could even use a raspberry pi or an ultra SFF machine to build a “burner box” you can tuck away and use just for backups. It may give you more flexibility.
Ok this basically narrows you to Linux or if you are feeling masochistic, BSD. Ubuntu server is probably the easiest solution… But read on
Do you mean access a management console from a remote (on same network) or remote (over the internet) client, or do you mean access the files on the server from a remote location (ie nextCloud style)?
One usually needs dedicated drives and setup for this, but doable on a Linux server. ISCSI is a pain in the bum in my experience and causes more stress than it is worth. Unless you are sporting tens on thin clients it may not be worth it.
I’d consider not putting all these functions under one OS. Perhaps a virtualization solution would work better like Unraid or proxmox, then you can mount a TrueNAS VM for all the shares and the iSCSI then have a windows server or Ubuntu VM for the transcode and “burner box” features. You could tier the storage as well to do the video editing on faster drives and keep a slower zfs array for bulk storage.
Depends how much you want to spend and how comfortable you are managing it all.
Good luck
I came here just to say this. As soon as you add video editing, this is no longer a true NAS so any out of the box NAS solution probably won’t be what you want.
Virtualization was a great suggestion, and you can pass the drives through directly to the TrueNas VM for raw disk access, and pass through the GPU to the video editing VM for raw hardware performance.
How familiar are you with the Linux console?
Personally i tend to only have what i need on a system, so i´d pick Arch Linux and set it up on ZFS. Thats not the easiest thing to do but really straight forward if you invest a little time in actually reading instead of skimming (the mistake i always do) the archwiki article to that topic.
You can basically do all you´ve listed on arch (at least as far as i know), as it is insanely versatile. I use it on my ZFS nas, as well as on my Laptops for Photo editing. You can decide for yourself what you want to include (and i mean from the ground up, which desktop, if one at all and so on)
And i think Arch is a great option here because of its rolling design (just type "pacman -Syu and your whole system is up to date in every way), and the ease of use once its set up while staying one of the most lightweight systems you can find.
I also thought about adding my BD drive to my NAS and setting up something as you described it, but i didnt really investigate further on that topic and just thought i´d write a bash or python script myself to automate backup and ripping of the Blu Ray once i feel the need for it. But might be possible that something similar exists.
For ISCSI you can just use the open-iscsi Package
Proxmox as an OS, VM Ubuntu Server, Handbrake, and Truenas.
When I am saying remote in, I mean through the World Wide What. The sharing optical drive is for the computers in the house that do not have an ODD, so a network ODD and burner function is what I am looking for. The Trans-coding is for streaming movies over the network. Having it as one machine, is because of limited space and electrical overhead, but running VM’s for each task is an idea I did not think of. I know this is a bit of an Unoptanium project, but it is for my household to use as an archive, as well as a work server, and a media server. I also was planning to use it to archive ISO and Floppy images for the retro consoles and machines I have. Down the road I plan to have three dedicated machines, but for now, I have to do it all in one.
A good article on reddit on how to pass through a dvd drive to a VM.