I want a server running nextcloud, immich and others.
I have a N100 mini server with a 2TB external HDD. I want to secure the system against data loss. Hence, I want a backup and redundancy.
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Most important question: How do I build everything? Is this a NAS? My naive approach is to buy 3 external HDDs and connect them to the N100 with a USB hub. I assume this is not “the right way” but to use/build a NAS. Do I have to build a separate NAS computer? When I lookup NAS buying, it is a computer with a case for 4 drives, excluding the drives and costs 400 bucks. I am confused because this is incredibly expensive compared to what I already have. What is the additional benefit compared to my setup? Am I cheap?
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Regarding redundancy, is RAID still the way to go? At 2 TB, using RAID 5 with 3 drives sounds good. I’d have 4 TB of usable space, much more than I intend to use in the next years, and adding a drive increases the storage by 2 TB, effectively increasing space by 50%.
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I have 4 TB usable space, but I won’t reach 2 TB in the next one or two years. I’d use a 2 TB HDD for a local backup via borg. Once my hot storage needs to increase, I replace the backup drive with a larger one and use it to increase the RAID storage. Is one backup sufficient? Or should I keeping multiple versions of the data. Daily, weekly, monthly backups? What is your experience with it?
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Another 2 TB HDD for an offsite backup, LUKS encrypted, backed up once a year (that’s the goal for now).
Does that sound good?
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If your N100 mini server has an ITX motherboard with several SATA ports then changing the case to something like a Jonsbo N2 might be a solution that works better than USB.
next time with more SATA ports, thx!
Sounds like you should look at N3 and N4 then. :)
I’ll do that, thx!
Lot to unpack, just a quick answer:
- Don’t do that, forget the USB hub it’s unreliable, if you absolutely want to go with the USB route get something like a HDD multi bay enclosure: https://sabrent.com/collections/hard-drive-accessories/products/ds-sc4b But if you don’t want to fiddle with things get a ready made solution (qnap, synology, ugreen, etc) you get the hardware and the software, just insert the disks and you are ready to go.
- If you are doing DIY look into ZFS, or use the solution from the software you are using, Unraid for example.
- The usual advice is to do the 3-2-1 backup (three copies of your data across two different storage types with one off-site), but entirely depends on you and your data, keep at least a separate copy of your most important things.
- Sounds good.
thx, I’ll look into it!
I think that sounds pretty solid to me. Realistically you should count on having 3x drives for your important data:
- The main data drive(s)
- Drive(s) for redundancy, mirroring the data drives. (I use btrfs RAID1 for this.).
- Offline local hard drive(s) that you keep somewhere relatively safe that you occasionally backup to.
- (Optionally) Some kind of offsite backup.
So if you plan on having 2TB of data, you’ll ideally want 3x 2TB drives. 2 in the PC mirroring eachother, and 1 in a closet or safe that you plug in and backup to a few times per year. (With bonus points if you can get another 2TB of off site or cloud storage to also backup to, in case of catastrophy.)
As for how you build it, I think it doesn’t matter too much. Its possible to use whatever random spare PC parts you have to make a decent home server, imo. A lot of people on YouTube and Reddit have all kinds of fancy servers in a rack, but an old repurposed desktop can be fine. ( I would probably use new, decent quality drives though.)
thank, that’s good to read!
Depending on the board in your mini-server, you may have enough SATA ports to plug in directly. I have a system similar to what you’re describing (N100 with 4x 2TB HDDs with 1.5TB data): 2 of those drives are set up in RAID1 (mirror), and once a month, I plug in one of the spares, rsync the array to it, and unplug it. Every 3 months or so, I swap the offline drive with an offsite drive. I used to use a USB dock for the offline drive, but I got a 3-bay hot-swap enclosure to make the whole process faster and easier.
The server shares the array via NFS and SMB, and it is absolutely a NAS for all my other systems.
If you expect to exceed 2TB data within 2 years, then you’ll need to replace all 4 of those 2TB drives in 2 years. You might, today, get a pair of 4 TB drives and one 2TB, use the 4TB as your main storage, the 2TBs as rotating backups, and wait until you actually outgrow 2TB to upgrade the backups.
that’s a neat way of creating the backup! thanks :)
Others have answered most questions but I just wanted to point out a few things:
NAS is network attached storage: a separate server which makes ‘shares’/volumes available over the local network. A DAS is ‘direct attached storage’ which plugs directly into a machine. Since you have a server, a NAS is probably the right route. https://www.techradar.com/features/das-vs-nas-what-is-the-difference
Good that you mentioned both backups and redundancy as they’re not the same. https://www.tencentcloud.com/techpedia/108368
Some people want a dedicated machine for being a NAS, while others want to make use of the hardware by making it pull double-duty as a server. I have an old PC I loaded up with drives and installed truenas on: I made zfs pools (opposed to raid) and exposed shares to the network. I can set up virtual machines or use “plugins” / jails for hosting other services like immich etc. E.g. https://www.truenas.com/docs/solutions/integrations/nextcloud/
Regarding backup versioning, modern filesystems like zfs and brfs have snapshot features. Regarding “one backup”, it depends how important it is to you. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/
Since you have a server, a NAS is probably the right route.
I don’t understand this. Imo, the previous sentence concludes that I want a DAS, not a NAS because I already have a server.
I’ll look into zfs and btrfs. Somehow this topic is really difficult to grasp
A DAS is more like an external drive where as a NAS is a service reachable on your LAN. Of course, you could use a NAS and plug it straight into your PC for a more DAC-like experience to keep it off your network… It really depends on what you’re after.
It ultimately breaks down to these choice dimensions, and there’s often overlap which may inform one another (in no particular order):
- platform hardware
- storage medium(s) (ssd, hdd, layout, caches,…)
- filesystem(s)
- operating system
- shares protocol (Samba, NFS, WebDAV,…)
- topology (direct attach or where in your network it’s located, vlans and firewalls etc.)
I interpreted ‘server’ to mean you had platform already which you want to turn into a NAS. If you want storage exclusively for your server, then DAS is fine. If you want to have the storage accessible my multiple devices, then you want a NAS.
It depends on your usecase and what features you’re after.
Thank you! That sounds great! I already own drives and a machine. I just want to upgrade and make it more secure. I don’t need a NAS then.
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Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters NAS Network-Attached Storage NFS Network File System, a Unix-based file-sharing protocol known for performance and efficiency RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 3 acronyms.
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RAID isn’t data redundancy, it’s an array of drives combined to form a single logical storage pool. It solves the problem of needing a single storage pool larger than the available drives. As such, it’s very sensitive to loss of a single drive.
At your storage size requirements (2 TB), RAID is unnecessary today.
Edit: Let me say it again for you downvoters-RAID is NOT data redundancy.
There is only ONE copy of your data in RAID (excepting mirroring). It’s why RAID now has double parity and hot spare drive capability.
RAID is for creating a single pool that’s larger than available drive size.
Go ahead and downvote in ignorance, and learn about data redundancy when your RAID fails.
RAID is NOT data redundancy - it’s DRIVE redundancy.
Take it from the source https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1987/CSD-87-391.html
RAID (except RAID0) is data redundancy, it just isn’t backup (ie. it doesn’t help if you accidentally delete stuff, or if some bug corrupts it, or if you drop the computer while moving it).
Fine.
Pull 1 drive and see how redundant your data is while it’s resilvering.
RAID is NOT data redundancy. You still have a single copy of your data.
Tell me again how RAID is data redundancy?
https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1987/CSD-87-391.html
RAID0 has no redundancy, but all of the other RAID options do have redundancy.
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By that reasoning, backup isn’t redundancy because you’ll lose your data if the backup gets corrupted while restoring.
That said, there’s nothing wrong in redefining “redundant” to mean “having two or more duplicates”… you should however tell people if you do, to avoid misleading people that assume the dictionary definition.
You’re using redundancy and backup synonymously, but they’re not. Raid 1+ absolutely provides redundancy, you are 100% wrong in saying that it doesn’t, because it provides a failover system that prevents operational interruption if a drive fails.
RAID5 and RAID6 can lose 1 and 2 drives respectively without data loss.
RAID0 has no redundancy, all other levels have (either mirroring or with parity)
That’s not data redundancy - there’s still only one copy of your data.
Those are mitigations against loss of data due to loss of parity.
There’s still only ONE copy of your data.
I think you’re confusing backup and redundancy. While I totally agree RAID1+ should not be considered backup, it absolutely is redundancy, as the same data is present on at least two disks (either on the form of the exact same data or something that can be used to rebuild the missing data).
You should look up what the R in raid stands for.
