My network attached storage – Early 2022

Introduction

I have mentioned on many different occasions, that I run my own network attached storage devices at home. I do have quite a large amount of data and storing it is quite a challenge. Even more of a challenge is backing it up. My storage solutions have been massively influenced by my own skillset and also the videos of: It’s My Natural Colour, Craft Computing and Linus Tech Tips.

My data

Before we begin, I think it is important to explain the type of data I am storing. I won’t go into full detail as some of it is private. But below is an overview of my shares.

Share	Use	EST. Size	Synced?
VAULT	15+ years of software and OS installer archive.	1.5TB	YES
Plex	My Plex media library containing my movies, TV programs and family videos.	1.1TB	YES
John	My personal archive containing, hard drive images, cloud storage archives	800GB	YES
Backup	Proxmox virtual machine and container backups	100GB	NO
Time Machine	Apple device backup share	500GB	NO

My rack

Apple AirPort Time Capsule

See: Apple Time Capsule in 2022 for more details.

This is the latest addition to the rack, even know it’s the oldest bit of kit. I got this recently to backup my MacBook Pro. This automatically backs up my Mac multiple times a day while it is online at home. I don’t even have to think about it. It also have two extra network ports, just incase I need to add more devices in the future. I don’t use the WiFi or the routing on this though.

BADIDEA

This server is a custom 4U case with some kind of old Gigabyte board installed. It has a Intel Core2Quad and 4GB of DDR2 ram. Yes its very old hardware. But all it does is mirror the server below. It has 5x 1TB hard drives installed as well as a 500GB drive that it boots from. It runs Debian 11. The drives are in a MDADM software raid 0. Hence why its called ‘BADIDEA’. I run a script that copies the content from all the shares not the server below for a rainy day. It also has a random GT 640 GPU installed. For no real reason other than to give me a VGA port. I may rebuild this server with TrueNAS. But keeping the RAID 0. As this is only a backup server. This server does not run 24/7.

MegaServer

This is my main server. This custom 4U case. Has a Gigabyte 1150 socket board with a Intel Core i7 4770 processor. It also has 20GB of ram. This machine runs TrueNAS core. I have a ZFS pool called ‘MegaRAID’. This has two RAID-Z1 v-devs with the first being WD 1TB Red drives. The 2nd v-dev has recently been upgraded to all WD 2TB Red drives. This has given me an extra few TBs of space to play with. The server boots from a pair of Kingston 128GB SSDs in a ZFS mirror. When I look back on this. I realise what a waist this was. The server also has a single 240GB crucial SSD for a white cache. The machine also runs a container for my Plex media server. It hosts all my share apart from time machine. This server is powered up 24/7. Overall. I get about 8TB of usable space of witch I have used about 3.5TB overall.

How do I back all this up?

The only server I actively backup is MegaServer as everything else is considered backup data already. I live by the thought that the best backup is one that is disconnected and stored securely. This protects me from theft, disasters, fire, ransomware and accidents (to an extent).

I have the following external drives:

• External enclosure with a 4TB WD Red.
• External enclosure with a 2TB drive.
• 2x 2TB external Samsung 2.5″ drives.
• 1x 1TB WD external 2.5″ drive.

Yes, I have quite a lot of drives. But not all of them are considered backups. Most are considered ‘offline syncs’ that I can take on the road with me.

4TB external: This is my main offsite backup drive. I mirror all the shares that need backing up from MegaServer and this drive lives at a family member’s house for safe keeping. I bring it back for syncing about once per month.

2TB external: This drive contains a sync of my Plex media so that I can take it on the road with me if I need to.

1TB WD external: This drive contains a sync of my John share that I can take with me.

2x 2TB Samsung drives: The first one of these drives contains sync of the VAULT, that I take on the road with me. The 2nd used to me my time machine drive. Right now I am just keeping it as it is for archival purposes. But no new data is being written to it.

Conclusion

I know my setup is far from perfect and there are quite a lot of nodes to this system. But at its heart. Is just the main server that I use daily. The other machines are used for backup only. I do plan to upgrade to TrueNAS scale in the future. But who knows. Please do comment below as I am interested to hear people’s thoughts.

Backup, NAS, network attached storage, Storage, Time capsule, Time machine, TrueNAS

Hardware, Linux, Networking, Software, Storage, Tech

January 29, 2022