Windows 10 Raid or TrueNAS/ FreeNAS/

Operating Systems & Open Source
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Hello everyone :slight_smile:

I need some advice on how to best implement a new NAS in our small Buisness Network. Most Tutorials want you to install any DIY NAS software straight on to the ‘host’ machine or refer to the installation process itself, but i wasnt able to find the answers to some dwelling questions of mine…
so:

In our company are 4 Laptops, 2 PCs, one Workstation PC that acts as a Server for our Accounting Software and a reeeal old Synology NAS.

All time long, the old NAS was/is the centerpiece of all file related stuff we did: we all scaned and saved Documents to it , uploaded work-related pictures and other important files via our phones (though a Synology App) to it if needed. The NAS was pulling backups of the Accounting Software’s database folder.
Problem is: The old NAS is running out RAM, if more than one user is trying to do something on it. But even if one Person is working on it, its sooooo slow AF :frowning:

The Plan: The new Workstation PC (I7 12700K, 64GB RAM, GIGABYTE Z690 UD DDR4, 2 NVMe SSDs in Raid 1) is way overpowered for what it has to do right now (wich is basically just hosting a SQL database and exposing it into the LAN.

Why not fill that case up with HDDs/ SSDs running some kind of NAS software on it?
BUT - there is a catch:

The Accounting software needs to run on Windows 10, and because its a crappy piece of software, it straight up refuses to work inside a Windows VM. I spend so much time, trying to get this piece of s*** running and working inside a VM - but clients randomly lost connection, or data wasnt written into the database bla bla bla. installed it on the host system - works fine :rage:
Buuuut i can run TrueNAS, FreeNAS or whatever inside a VM thats running on Windows.

But can it work the way we need it?

We dont need a large Fileserver… 2-4TB of available storage is way more than enough for our usecase. We dont even fill up 500GB of data - since years. so even just 1TB of useable storage would be fine…

But redundancy is EXTREMLY important.

  • drive failiure - just rip the broken drive out - slap a new one in, no need to care for the software: I want :+1:
  • self rebuilding data if new drive is detected after failure: i want :+1:
  • the possibility to run some sort of plugins (or so) that automatically backups specified folders: i want :+1:
  • having “shadowcopies” of accidently deleted files: i want :+1:
  • having the shared folders exposed to the internet in some shape or form (VPN, Remote Desktop, idk): i want :+1:

What i want is having at least 3-4 drives mirroring the content of the fileserver. or more drives. whatever makes best sense.

Windows itself also has got a tool to make a software RAID, i didnt explored it yet myself, but from what i could make out, it also could let you run a bunch of disks in parity mode, wich i understand is like RAID 5 or 10? even if it may be easier to set up, the TrueNAS/ FreeNAS variant seem to offer more benefits down the line, right? so…

  • TrueNAS or FreeNAS?
  • Maybe UNRAID?!
  • (NVMe) SSDs or HDDs? i myself would tend to (NVMe) SSDs, just to have the NAS system as snappy as possible…
  • what happens to the VM NAS if the host system crashes?
  • how hard is it to restore the VM NAS if the host system dies to a hardware defect?
  • what happens to the documents, files, … on that VM NAS if the host system dies to a hardware defect? I set up the VM + NAS again, but will it then detect that there is already an existing RAID config on that drives and load up the previous NAS again?
  • virtualization needs to be turned on in the BIOS, the the VM can have direct access to the storage, right?
  • did i miss out on something i should have thought on? :slight_smile:

greetings from Germany :metal: :love_you_gesture:

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FreeNas was the old name for the free version of TrueNAS. They eventually merged payed and free version and there is only TrueNAS now.

With that small space requirement, don’t bother with HDDs. 10TB+ is where HDDs still have a place.

Restore from backup that is kept on the NAS? Only one trap out of many when virtualizing storage.

From what I’ve read in your posting, I highly recommend to not virtualize anything but rather get a commercial NAS or install TrueNAS on an old PC that can accomodate drives and networking.
Or get a dedicated new PC for that, hardware requirements are really low for a storage server and it can do other stuff as well and grows over time.

If data is as critical as justifying 5-way-mirror, don’t mess around with “experimental” tinkering you’re unfamiliar with. And don’t expose that kind of data to the internet.

TL;DR: Get a proper NAS or buy a cheap PC with proper networking and 3-4 SSDs and install TrueNAS.

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Given your " redundancy is EXTREMLY important ." quote, I would have the following suggestion…

  1. Create 2 machines - a NAS and a machine for the accounting software
  2. Include some disks on the accounting machine that are a backup of the NAS.
  3. Keep the old NAS as yest another backup.

TrueNAS (Core the FreeBSD version, or SCALE Linux version) will give you a robust NAS. My personal recommendation would be on the “new” machine so you can get something with ECC RAM, and don’t VM.

This setup would give you some resilience for hardware failure as well, and avoid any issues with the accounting software.

I realise this has extra costs in terms of hardware, effort, electricity and management, but only you know the value of the data.

In terms of using Windows, the software “RAID” options seem transportable between hardware (I’ve done this with USB drives). I don’t have personal experience with the VM side, bu the OS part should isolate the hardware so on failure you should be able to move the data fairly easily (I’m sure others will chip in).

4

I have a couple ideas but wanted to clear up a couple questions first to clarify a couple things.

Is this machine currently running the accounting software or is it just the SQL database exposed to the LAN?

Is this MS SQL Server or some other SQL database?

You mention clients randomly lost connect to the accounting software. Is it web based? Are these internal “clients” you are referring to?

Is the accounting software name a secret or can you mention it?

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The Workstation PC is running the server application to the accounting software (SelectLine) wich, requires MS SQL 2019 for its databases. Not web-based, everything is Local, everything online related happens as far as i can tell through the clients…

Those random connection losses (and client crashes) are a well known problem to the company where we bought it from. But the company where we bought it from provide only support in like “how to use” the software. they pitched several times our problems to SelectLine… but its the same piece of s*** it always has been. Outside a VM its sometimes a pain in the butt to use, but inside a VM, it just got wild.

Main point of concern is f.e., that the server wont allow any connection once a firewall is up on the host. It doesnt give a crap about white listing or what ever.

AND YES: i know that this sounds like user error BUT even the company who supports us with this responded with: “the server was never meant to be connected to the WWW” - like… what the hell?! :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

We are looking for a replacement, but theres just too much stuff in the pipeline right now, therefor gotta live with it 'as it is

To clarify another point: our company is in germany, small business of 4 people, everything may get handled ONE time, so i case it gets handled - it should be close to a final solution as possible. as it stands right now, im leaning torwards a new machine, spec it nice (within a budget), slap TrueNAS on and call it a day…for many many years. to every problem, there is a solution; and in this case its that solution, that lets us reliably earn money…

6

Can we move the Crappy software to some type of lower end machine? Like maybe someone in the office needs a workstation upgrade anyway, so we just use their old work station for this. Then the NAS can be a stand alone on the good computer, and won’t need to run in a VM or anything.

Also yeah it seems like TrueNAS would check all your boxes just fine for the NAS software.

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For zfs, it is not even a hdd failed, so I need to buy a replacement hdd… you can add hot spares to the array so that when a drive fails, you pull the blinking hdd, warranty replace it, then add it back into the array as the new hot spare.

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