Hello All -
I just joined this forum today after watching some L1T Youtube videos about Unraid with ZFS.
I just took an old Dell Optiplex 360, core 2 duo, 4GB ram, added a PCIE Sata card, and 2x 4TB WD Blue, and 4x 2TB WD Green drives that i had laying around collecting dust.
I originally planned to run FreeNAS on it until i realized it needed 8GB of RAM. So i tried installing Proxmox, but can not get it to install. I can’t find anywhere in BIOS to enable virtualization even though Core 2 Duo should support virtualization.
After watching L1T videos I’m considering trying Unraid but i want to use ZFS.
I don’t really need to to do virtual machines or anything else beside serve as a network storage. I would like a nice web GUI that makes it easy for others in my family to use.
I have family all over the state. Ideally I want each person to have their own private storage and the bulk of the storage available for everyone to have R/W access to.
The idea is to access it from my PC (Arch), my surface pro (win10), my parents PC (ubuntu), my girlfriends PC (win), and hopefully everyone’s android devices.
This is my first adventure in building a file server so any help/advice is greatly appreciated.
Welcome to the forums and congrats for trying to get your new server running.
This would be ddr2 or ddr3. A ram upgrade will cost less than $20. You can run Freenas on less than 8GB ram but it will not be optimal. Should get you started though.
The settings will depend on the board not the cpu. For something that old the board may not have it. You don’t need to virtualise though for freenas or just plan Linux with zfs. That may be better than proxmox for your use case.
Not sure I understand what you are trying to do. For a file share /NAS there is no need for anyone but you to see the web GUI. The service will just be delivered through samba or an application like Plex. I wouldn’t recommend Plex for your hardware. You can deliver each family member a folder on the share and setup security.
To the comment about “family all over the state” does this mean you intend to share the data via VPN for remote access, or an FTP site? That adds complexity and is beyond the scope or most basic tutorials. Be careful if doing that as you expose your personal data to the internet.
ZFS is not the best fit for your assortment of drives, you won’t see much benefit from it. 4gb of ram is a real bottleneck for a heavy distro like unraid/freenas, etc.
A basic install of alpine linux would run great on that machine. Learn the console commands to manage your storage, on a small system it is not very difficult and will give you a more intimate understand of what you’ve built, versus a black-box that just does magic.
I on the Dell GX260 used nas4free now XigmaNAS, but I have not used it for quite a long time so I do not know at what stage they are now. Personally, I prefer omv or freenas.
I will look into getting 2x4GB sticks, this MB only has 2 RAM slots.
And then just go with FreeNAS and i wont have to worry about virtualization support.
Yes i was going to setup FTP.
I don’t have much experience with Plex but what little i have used it, it seem much more like a gimmick than something useful.
In the meantime i will try playing around with OMV and see how i like it.
Sounds like a plan. Just remember you only have two cores and old ones at that so you will quickly choke the CPU with multiple users copying full gigabit data streams. Consider another $20 on a core 2 quad or a compatible Xeon from that era if the motherboard will take it (search the qvl).
On the FTP site, make sure you set up good security and encryption (sFTP) or consider using a freenas plugin like nextCloud that will add security for you.
This Dell may be old and is not a super efficient unit in 2020 but without exaggeration, some people sometimes overdo the requirements for the NAS.
Will it be FreeNAS or OMV then you have BSD and Linux underneath …
FreeNAS seems to be the most popular at the moment but also has some requirements.
OMV is definitely lighter, OMV5 under has Debian Buster. OMV has plugins for virtualbox so you can run VM’s.
When it comes to CPU performance, let’s not go too far … I have no problem getting 1Gb/s on Exynos5422 and 2GB RAM on omv. Sftp, ftps, https, smb, nfc are not that demanding, we are talking here about 1Gb/s and not about 10Gb/s. On omv you can also run everything and if necessary it’s just a debian buster and you can look under the hood.
If this is to be a small NAS for a family home then it should be OK. I easily do the same on Odroid HC1 …
So I went with OMV and so far seems to be working great on all local devices.
Very easy to setup.
I have OS on USB drive with flash memory plugin. Then zfs plugin and z1 raid. I have one pool of 3x6TB and 3x4TB. I wish I could combine into one pool. But for now I’m autobacking up to one pool and using the other pool for large file storage.
I have yet to setup the remote computers to access it. But plan to in the near future.
