DIY all-round NAS feedback and tips.

[kdssoftware]

Greetings,
I am currently in a thought process of redesigning my home network into a much better system and wanted to get some feedback on this forum.
There may be better ways or better tools out there that I don't know yet.
Main things I wanted to focus one: plex as media server, nextcloud as file server ( pictures mainly ) and home assistant.
I wanted to redesign my server because currenlty its getting complex and a lot of data, for example I have around 90TB of movies, tv-shows, music and pictures.
I dont want to buy any pre-designed NAS, like TrueNAS, QNAP or Synology. Because its much for fun to do it the DIY-way and cheaper.

This is the current design of the ideal NAS:
- the disk allocation: I wanted to use JBOD ( just a bunch of disks ) for movies, tv-shows ( everyting in yellow). Because its not necessary to use RAID for this.
photos, videos and ebooks ( in blue ), I will use in RAID for, because I dont want to lose these. And for extra backup i will use Backblaze B2, because its the cheapest I have found. ( will use rclone to mount it on the server probably )
- User sofware:
Plex: its the biggest part of this server, I have about 15 users, local and remote. So I have every movie in 720p, 1080p and 2048p, So transcoding shouldnt be a thing. The upload speed of my server is 1Mb/s ( without vpn)
- Servarr: using prowlarr, sonarr and radarr to manage my movies and tv-shows downloads. I only use torrent to do this, and qbit-torrent is my current download client that I am happy with.
- Next cloud: will probably use the AIO docker version, since this is the easiest to setup.

Server software I plan to use:
- UnRaid: to use RAID for the pictures and videos. I have never used it before, but heard good things. I just wanted to use RAID so I dont lose anything because of disk (sector) failures.
- vpn: using a vpn to download from ( torrenting ) for obvious reasons. I will use probably use TorGuard since it has port forwarding, so seeding goes better. ( I want to seed all torrents in 1:1 ratio )
Wireguard vpn: a good vpn I heard about, so I can connect to the network remotely.
- reverse proxy: Nginx Proxy manager, its nginx but more easly managed and does automatic certifcate handling from lets encrypt for you.
- as backup: using backblaze b2 to periodically save snapshots of the server.



Currently I am just researching on wants the best DIY NAS is best for my use case, If anyone knows any good guides or things to learn. Please share it, thanks!
TLDR; I want to create a home NAS where I can host my 90TB disk, use plex extensively, servarr, backup the stuff I find imporant ( pics, ... ) and downloading and seeding torrents. Its just a draft, I wanted to get some feedback, tips, ...

 

[Cromewell]

You do not need to buy TrueNAS hardware, you can run it on pretty much anything. I run a custom Atom C2550 based TrueNAS setup. IMO unRaid is a nicer UI but the "new" TrueNAS web UI is a lot nicer than it was.

I am not sure you can really say full custom hardware is cheaper. the majority of your cost should be on storage which is constant regardless of custom or off the shelf. I went with a custom build because I wanted low power consumption and either passive cooling or close to (I have a single 120mm fan right now) and at the time I could not find an off the shelf unit that was non-rack mounted and supported more than 4 disks.

I generally just figured it all out myself as I went as opposed to following any guide. I was not aware of unRaid when I built, I would have been tempted to go that route. That said, I think I would maybe go for larger disks as mine are only 4TB, but otherwise do everything the same. I have had 1 disk fail and a second is working on dying right now so I am definitely happy that they are in a RAID.

 

[beers]

So transcoding shouldnt be a thing. The upload speed of my server is 1Mb/s ( without vpn)

That's a really constrained amount of upload.