Beginner building a NAS for accessing data over internet, need some help please

[Zuanism]

As stated in the title, I am a complete noob when it comes to building a NAS, but I would consider myself somewhat tech savvy.

Basically my main use case will be to use it as a storage device that can be accessed from anywhere (also outside of LAN), since I travel quite a lot. I would like to access pictures, music, videos etc all from one point rather than having it stored on each PC that I use. I have a desktop, laptop, tablet and a phone, with which I want to access the files on the NAS. Additionally, it would be nice to have something like Plex running to transcode videos from the NAS. I have never used Plex, but from what I understand, I would be able to play any video on any device connected to the NAS, without worrying about encoding (please correct me if I'm wrong on this).

After some researching, I decided to build my own NAS (I already have PC building experience). For the hardware aspect, the parts I have picked so far look as follows:

- CPOU: Intel Pentium G4400
- Motherboard: ASUS H110M-A D3
- PSU: be quiet! System Power 7
- Memory: Transcend JetRam 8GB DDR3-1333 CL9
- Storage: Toshiba DT01ACA300 3TB

I have read about the use of ECC memory, but I'm not sure if I will need it, it will bump up the costs for sure (which i'm trying to keep low). Also, Is 8 GB even necessary for what I want to do, or can I do with less?

As for the software aspect, I thought about using Xpenology as the OS, since I expect it to provide me with a user friendly UI. To satisfy my internet-connected NAS needs, I could use one of the apps available in this OS, but it requires opening a port on my router, and I have read that it is very insecure. A solution would be to use a VPN to connect to my NAS (is this correct?). To do so, I would like to host my own VPN, but I'm not sure if this is possible.

Basically, my question is: am I heading the right way with this and is all of this even possible as a noob or am I way over my head?

 

[fluked]

If you really need a NAS and the files it will house are irreplaceable and one of a kind, use ECC.

That said, it sounds like you just want to stream media. I don't use PLEX for this, but I hear it works.

For the OS I use OpenMediaVault since Linux has much more to offer up than BSD in terms of quantity and variety at least.

If space isn't a concern, you can get old used servers without HDDs on ebay for very cheap, but I'm not sure they will transcode h265 fast enough (everything else should be fine). You could use ffmpeg with a gtx 1050's pascal features to cut costs dramatically being you could then run any CPU made in the last 7 years, I'm not sure that even the new Kabylake i7700 can compete with that method (use other help sites for ffmeg+pascal).

 

[Zuanism]

If you really need a NAS and the files it will house are irreplaceable and one of a kind, use ECC.

That said, it sounds like you just want to stream media. I don't use PLEX for this, but I hear it works.

For the OS I use OpenMediaVault since Linux has much more to offer up than BSD in terms of quantity and variety at least.

If space isn't a concern, you can get old used servers without HDDs on ebay for very cheap, but I'm not sure they will transcode h265 fast enough (everything else should be fine). You could use ffmpeg with a gtx 1050's pascal features to cut costs dramatically being you could years then run any CPU made in the last 7 years(use other help sites for ffmeg+pascal).

Thanks for the reply. Streaming is kind of my secondary use for the NAS. My main use will be accessing data over internet (rather than just in a LAN). What I am most concerned about for this is setting up a VPN and whether I need a separate PC for VPN hosting and NAS, how much computation power is needed etc.

Regarding ECC, ideally I would indeed want to have a reliable storage center, but unfortunately, my budget does not allow to do this at the moment. However, wouldn't having 2 HDD's in raid 1 be reliable enough for safe keeping?

I thought about buying an old server like that, but I think they consume more power and are less powerful than the build that I have wrote.

 

[boosted1g]

For home use ECC is not necessary at all.
If you are running an ecommerce website or other task that has millions of reads/writes to a database a day then yes you absolutly need ECC.

You should not have all your eggs in one basket thus you should have backups of your files. While you can certainly incorparate a backup solution inot your NAS, NAS does not just mean the same thing as a backup.

You will need MUCH better hardware then that to run plex with transcoding. More like an i7 and 16gb of ram.

If you do not need to run the videos on low end devices then running kodi on the devices as a front end that connects to the NAS is the much simplier way to go. If you want a dedicated media player, a $40 Rapsberry Pi 3 running LibreElec (a Just Enough OS of linux plus Kodi software) works very very well.

As far as accessing files from the internet:
1) this immediatly is determined/bottlenecked by your internet connectiion (specifically your upload speed).
2) just having a NAS in no way allows you to access the files from the internet. You will need to setup a secure FTP (so SFTP or FTPS) server on your NAS, open ports on your router, and setup client. ASUS routers have a built in utility for this, and there are a few "home cloud" server programs as well but I have not tried any of them.

 

[boosted1g]

FTP is simplier for just downloading a few files while on the go, but VPN is also an option.

Best option for VPN is to run at your router (if it is capabile) instead of having a VPN pc.

 

[kanewolf]

Your purchase costs may be higher, but a commercial NAS will get you functional MUCH faster. Simple user interface, VPN, or HTTP access available from the start. QNAP, Thecus or Synology are all pretty much fool-proof.

 

[Zuanism]

For home use ECC is not necessary at all.
If you are running an ecommerce website or other task that has millions of reads/writes to a database a day then yes you absolutly need ECC.

You should not have all your eggs in one basket thus you should have backups of your files. While you can certainly incorparate a backup solution inot your NAS, NAS does not just mean the same thing as a backup.

You will need MUCH better hardware then that to run plex with transcoding. More like an i7 and 16gb of ram.

If you do not need to run the videos on low end devices then running kodi on the devices as a front end that connects to the NAS is the much simplier way to go. If you want a dedicated media player, a $40 Rapsberry Pi 3 running LibreElec (a Just Enough OS of linux plus Kodi software) works very very well.

As far as accessing files from the internet:
1) this immediatly is determined/bottlenecked by your internet connectiion (specifically your upload speed).
2) just having a NAS in no way allows you to access the files from the internet. You will need to setup a secure FTP (so SFTP or FTPS) server on your NAS, open ports on your router, and setup client. ASUS routers have a built in utility for this, and there are a few "home cloud" server programs as well but I have not tried any of them.

Thanks for your reply. The minimum requirements on the Plex website state a passmark of 2000 to transcode 1080p, or am I misunderstanding something? I only really need to stream to 1 device at a time. I will also look into your solution though.

Regarding accessing files from internet:
1) My upload speed is 60 Mbit/s, so I suppose this should be enough for accessing most stuff to 1 client?
2) My main concern is safety, that's why I was considering a VPN. Unfortunately, my router does not support VPN (D-link DIR-868L), so that's why I was wondering If i can host a VPN on the NAS. Preferably, I don't want to download files, but rather access and open them directly in a file browser. I will do some more research about FTP though.

 

[fluked]

Gotcha. Your VPN will be fine. And yes, I think your all fine as well, now just to configuration of software FreeNAS and OMV seem to be the go to. While I prefer OMV, FreeNAS systems can also run pfSense, which is not to be overlooked by any means.

RAID1, yes. Others rave about other RAID configs, but 1 is the only RAID I use anymore.

Keep ECC in mind for next time though, you really can find it very cheap used. It's 2017, why not.

 

[JaredDM]

I went the route of building my own NAS some years ago, and it worked fairly well at its time. Then I finally bought a Synology when it was time to upgrade the hardware and I could never go back. The features and functionality built into these far surpasses anything you'll ever get around to configuring in a homebrew NAS. If you can afford the slight extra cost, just buy a used Synology on ebay and put some good HGST drives in it.

The nice thing with Synology (and Qnap as a budget option) is that all the software is plugin based. Want a Plex server, just add in the package configure and go. Want a CCTV system, download a package. Want your own IMAP email server, download a plugin. Want a PHP database server... you get the point. In minutes you can make it do more than you'll accomplish in months of working on a homebrew NAS.

 

[Zuanism]

I went the route of building my own NAS some years ago, and it worked fairly well at its time. Then I finally bought a Synology when it was time to upgrade the hardware and I could never go back. The features and functionality built into these far surpasses anything you'll ever get around to configuring in a homebrew NAS. If you can afford the slight extra cost, just buy a used Synology on ebay and put some good HGST drives in it.

The nice thing with Synology (and Qnap as a budget option) is that all the software is plugin based. Want a Plex server, just add in the package configure and go. Want a CCTV system, download a package. Want your own IMAP email server, download a plugin. Want a PHP database server... you get the point. In minutes you can make it do more than you'll accomplish in months of working on a homebrew NAS.

Yes, these are pretty much the reasons why I considered buying a Synology ds213j or ds214+. However, the cpus in these machines are too low powered for transcoding, which is (I think) something that I would like to do. I thought that Xpenology pretty much has the benefit of having a Synology, since it's basically DSM 5.2, so it should also have all these plugins available? If I'm wrong on this, I will definitely consider buying a prebuilt NAS more.

 

[fluked]

All the latest NAS distros are plugin based., so...

I haven't seen the Synology spec sheet in years, but what could it possibly do that a BSD or Linux cannot? Last I checked, you basically bought a Synology box for the name, case and peconfiguration.

 

[kanewolf]

All the latest NAS distros are plugin based., so...

I haven't seen the Synology spec sheet in years, but what could it possibly do that a BSD or Linux cannot? Last I checked, you basically bought a Synology box for the name, case and peconfiguration.

All of the commercial NAS units make having a fully functional system much quicker than roll-your-own. You do pay more for that. But if the desire is to have shared files and online access to your files as quickly as possible, it is much faster.