Its new homelab time. And with that, potentially a new OS time too.
I currently am very happy with Debian and Docker. The only issue is I am brand new to using data redundancy. I have a 2 bay NAS I’ll use, and I want the two HDDs to be in raid 1.
Now I could definitely just use ZFS or BTRFS with Debian, and be able to use Docker just like I do currently.
Or I could use a dedicated NAS OS. That would help me with the raid part of this, but a requirement is Docker.
Any recommendations?
Generally, I think it is better to use a general server OS like Debian or Fedora instead of something specialized like Proxmox or Unraid. That way you can always choose the way you want to use your server instead of being channeled into running it a specific way (especially if you ever change your mind).
Debian and the standard linux mdraid?
Do you mean mdadm? https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/A_guide_to_mdadm If not can I have a link?
Yeah, that’s what he means.
I’m doing kinda the same thing with my NAS: md raid1 for the SSDs, but only snapraid for the big data drives (mostly because I don’t really care if i have to re-download my linux iso collection, so snapraid plus mergerfs is like, sufficient for that data).
Also using Ubuntu instead of Debian, but that’s mostly due to it being first built six years ago, and I’d 100% go with Debian if I was doing it now.
This. Don’t make it unnecessarily complicated.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters LVM (Linux) Logical Volume Manager for filesystem mapping NAS Network-Attached Storage RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage SSD Solid State Drive mass storage ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity
5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 20 acronyms.
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Unraid and Truenas are pretty popular. Openmediavault is less popular, but a pretty simple system based on Debian.
TrueNAS SCALE expects you to deploy Kubernetes clusters, it is unfortunately not meant for running plain Docker. You can jump through hoops to get it working but I personally gave up and ended up running a VM on top of TrueNAS just to run Docker on it.
I don’t know about Unraid though and OpenMediaVault felt a bit unpolished the last time I used it and I can’t attest for its ZFS support.
Truenas scale is switching to docker compose. I found this out when the truecharts catalog suddenly stopped working. more info
I’ve been happy with unraid, super simple to use and the community apps makes it easy to find and install docker containers
Unraid is great and I have been using it for over a decade now, but a paid OS on a 2bay nas seems excessive
UnRAID is ass.
Thanks for the insightful and helpful comment.
Honestly, from your description, I’d go with Debian, likely with btrfs. Would be better if you had 3 slots so that you can swap a bad drive but, 2 will work.
If you want to get adventurous, you can see about a Fedora Atomic distro.
Previously, I’ve recommended Proxmox but, not sure that I still can at the moment, if they haven’t fixed their kernel funkiness. Right now, I’m back to libvirt.
Bog-standard Debian with LVM. LVM can also do RAID, but you could also do mdadm below LVM if you prefer. Keep it simple.
Not as powerful as btrfs or zfs
XigmaNAS
I’m not falling for that one again. Next you’ll tell me to use DeezOS
Huh
Definitely use ZFS for the data volumes in order to avoid silent data corruption. If you don’t use separate drive for the OS, then you need to look into ZFS on root.
Or XFS.
ZFS is rigid? Please explain
I need to throw random spare old HDs at it, I expect failures, I expect expanding it, I expect very different sizes between the disks.
You can do that with ZFS. It’s built-in integrierty check will automatically heal errors and tell you what drive has gone bad.
Proxmox ZFS with plenty of ram. (ZFS is ram heavy)
