NAS Articles

I have been running Nextcloud for years and absolutely love it. Recently, I decided to ditch my standalone instance in favor of the IX app for TrueNAS Scale. After having run it for some time I finally got annoyed enough with some of the warnings that were showing up in “Security & setup warnings.” One of these issues is that …

It comes as no surprise to my friends and family that the time has come for me to set aside some of my storage devices and server builds of the past for something bigger and better in 2017. Over the years, we have embarked on a couple of projects related to building a NAS and piecing together a 40TB server using parts left over. This year, I have decided that I would go a few steps further...I decided that this build would last more than just a year. With that said, I started to scour the web for components and started planning the next CODServer, but why?

ASUSTOR has been hard at work. Not only have they been releasing some very impressive NAS lately, but they are also hard at work in the development labs to try and make ADM (ASUSTOR Data Master) the best operating system they can. ADM is intuitive, impressive, and fast.

Just when I thought I had it all figured out, Microsoft drops another one on my lap. I had already covered what I thought was Windows Storage Server 2012 R2 and its functions and flavors when I learned about Essentials. Essentials is still built for a NAS device, but it adds some fantastic functionality to the platform. Some of these include Active Directory Services, Computer Backups, and IIS.

In 2013, we published an article on building your own NAS for an affordable storage solution.  Well, there was such a positive reaction and such demand for an updated NAS build, I decided that it is high-time I revisit this article with a parts list relevant to 2015.

QNAP recently released an update to their QTS Operating System, QTS 4.1.3, that implements a couple of enhancements and a slew of bug fixes. Although the list of Enhancements is short, it does include things like: VPN Client/Server, NAS over HDMI, Block-Based LUN Backup, and Storage Pool support for X51 and X53 models.

If you are one of the many QNAP faithful, you may have realized that there have been many quiet changes that accompanied QTS 4.1. Among the many enhancements came an enhancement to QNAP's MyQNAPCloud service. From the start, the service didn't look like it would be something that I would really take advantage of. The interface was simple and didn't really offer me much in the way of functionality. Also, having multiple NAS meant multiple logins and just an additional layer of pain. Well, things are different now... and I like it.

Having data at my fingertips is a necessity in my world; and having services like Dropbox around made things very easy for me, especially with their mobile apps. Unfortunately, I have some issues with using services like Dropbox like having your data stored on their servers. Additionally, their free services just don't give you enough space. With that said, I had been exploring other options for anywhere storage and with the latest firmware and app upgrades from QNAP, I don't need to look any farther than my QNAP NAS.

You probably have already read our Build Your Own NAS tutorial, but for us it isn't enough. We, at COD, like to push the limits and with that , we require MASSIVE amounts of storage (mostly for our rather large library of uncompressed Kung-Fu movies). Following up on our NAS tutorial, we are going to put together a Monster 40TB NAS (32.75TiB after RAID & Format) with spare parts, a few HDDs, and the knowledge we gained from our NAS Build Guide.

Having a ton of extra hard drives lying around doing nothing seems like a huge waste to me. In my efforts to put some of this storage to good use, I have been toying with the idea of building a NAS using standard hardware and one of the open source NAS packages out there; namely OpenMediaVault. With performance, size, and budget in mind; I am going to guide you on how to build a NAS.