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My local setup - please critique as you like. For NAS, I am running Windows Server 2022 (I have a rational reason for this). It hosts many things. * IIS, for

by RajT88 3y ago

My local setup - please critique as you like. For NAS, I am running Windows Server 2022 (I have a rational reason for this). It hosts many things. * IIS, for my local browser start pages, I configure with "new tab redirect" plugins * JellyFin - Basically a personal Netflix for all my ripped media * DokuWiki, thumbdrive version - for documenting house stuff * Twonky - Because it's the least-bad DLNA solution I've used so far * NGINX - provides public reverse proxy function for Jellyfin I have a backup script which backs up the most critical documents (taxes, work code, personal writings) up to S3 and Azure - pennies a month. I have all my stuff on mirrored drives locally. I have been mulling over burning MDISC discs for my larger media (personal photos, video, etc.), and doing something with that. This is partly aspirational - Once-a-year MDISC burning for stuff could be cool, but where do I store those when safety deposit boxes are becoming more and more rare?

deepmauka 3y ago
Thanks for sharing your elegant and versatile setup. A thought for the discs and safety deposit boxes, I live in a rural area and have an account with a credit union that service several labor unions. They’re rooted in the community, profitable, and I don’t see them changing anytime soon. 3”x10” boxes are $20/yr.
- salad-tycoon 3y ago
  To expound on safety deposit boxes since GP was asking for critiques. From what I’ve read they can be prone to accidents, theft, damage and are a big reasons to have them is for showing off. My understanding, which entirely comes from this NYT article, is that banks hate them. Safe Deposit Boxes Aren’t Safe, NYT, 2019: https://archive.is/NfnL6 https://archive.is/NfnL6
  - infecto 3y ago
    Agreed on Safe Deposit boxes. I would probably invest in a real fire rated safe. Real defined as a safe over $1000. Not the consumer crap that gets shoveled out.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    This risk is a bit overhyped. Things can happen, yes, but it's pretty rare, and if you're doing regular weekly offsite backups to your safe deposit box, you're not going to suddenly discover that it's gone.
jim180 3y ago
I am very honestly curious, what's the reason for Windows Server 2022?
- RajT88 3y ago
  A few reasons, in order of my priorities: - Win10 / 11 seem to be more and more crabby about talking to SMB shares, so I reasoned I needed to be able to exert more control over the file server. I can't tell you for my old nas how many times after a reboot I found myself running "net start mrxsmb10". - Much of my professional life has been on the Windows stack, so when things aren't working right, I can troubleshoot it a lot more efficiently. Think: Sysinternals tools. - I get free windows licenses through my MSDN through work, so it didn't cost me anything. - It's nice to have an RDP host I can use to have some separation from my work stuff. - I had some existing software licenses on stuff that only runs on windows: PlayOn, Twonky, TVersity. It turns out these older versions of PlayOn and TVersity are mostly useless these days.
infecto 3y ago
Slightly off topic, on the client side how do you use JellyFin? I tried both browser and some of the iOS apps that just wrap that browser interface and it never worked well. It perhaps was also an issue on the JellyFin server itself. I went back to Plex only because it was plug-n-play for me. Just seeing if you have any additional tips here.
- skydhash 3y ago
  Infuse [0] is very nice (subscription, but the price is reasonable). [0]: https://firecore.com/infuse https://firecore.com/infuse
- RajT88 3y ago
  Browser, WebOS, Android clients. They all seem pretty great to me. Android client has issue talking to a port other than 8920. There's multiple people debating on github if it is a bug or not.
cm2187 3y ago
Do you store stuff on multiple disks? I struggle with windows as a NAS. Windows storage space sucks hard (particularly their RAID5 style parity which has unacceptable performances, but also I had it failing without reporting it, and it doesn't handle parity with column size >8). The native windows software raid is deprecated, and can't handle disks of different sizes. I use stablebit drivepool for a secondary backup where I don't really need parity (backup of the backup). But it comes with all sort of issues of its own (some weird file locking bugs, performance limited to single disk, also if you setup an SSD cache, it can't handle files larger than the smallest SSD (happened when backing up a vhdx). For NAS, for the moment I haven't found anything beating linux based NAS solutions (synology style) for simplicity and stability. For MDISC, call me skeptical. I think in 10-15 years you will struggle to find anything to read a CD or DVD, like you would struggle now to read a Zip or floppy disk. The most durable and cheapest way to do long term of storage is to replicate your data on new media regularly. The price / GB drops so fast that no non-retail form of storage (MDISC, LTO, etc) will be economical vs buying a big drive from time to time (every 5-7y). You can buy a 12TB drive for $200-300 now.
- tallanvor 3y ago
  Honestly, for me, JBOD works fine on my media PC. With some manual re-balancing about once a year, it works fine for me.
- vel0city 3y ago
  I've got nearly 30-year-old optical drives that still work fine today. I can plug a 3.5" floppy drive into my Android phone and it still works. Sure, there's a chance in a decade or so SATA ports disappear, but USB adapters still work. Do you really think in 10-15 years it will be hard to find a device that still talks USB? ZIP drives had a number of mechanical issues (click of death). That's probably the biggest reason why they're challenging to try and use today. But as it stands right now, I can take a CD-ROM drive from the 90s, use a cheap USB adapter, and plug it in to a USB port on a brand-new Linux or Windows or MacOS device without issue. And even then, so what. In 25 years when I'm an old man I'll need to plug in my last optical drive into my 8 year old computer to read the disks and move that data off into the four dimensional hypercrystal storage mediums we'll all be using, and then I'll go into my cryogenic storage chamber to sleep for another 100 years and then transfer my data to the next media format when I wake.

by RajT88 3y ago

deepmauka 3y ago

Thanks for sharing your elegant and versatile setup. A thought for the discs and safety deposit boxes, I live in a rural area and have an account with a credit union that service several labor unions. They’re rooted in the community, profitable, and I don’t see them changing anytime soon. 3”x10” boxes are $20/yr.

salad-tycoon 3y ago
To expound on safety deposit boxes since GP was asking for critiques. From what I’ve read they can be prone to accidents, theft, damage and are a big reasons to have them is for showing off. My understanding, which entirely comes from this NYT article, is that banks hate them. Safe Deposit Boxes Aren’t Safe, NYT, 2019: https://archive.is/NfnL6 https://archive.is/NfnL6
- infecto 3y ago
  Agreed on Safe Deposit boxes. I would probably invest in a real fire rated safe. Real defined as a safe over $1000. Not the consumer crap that gets shoveled out.
- lapcat 3y ago
  This risk is a bit overhyped. Things can happen, yes, but it's pretty rare, and if you're doing regular weekly offsite backups to your safe deposit box, you're not going to suddenly discover that it's gone.

jim180 3y ago

I am very honestly curious, what's the reason for Windows Server 2022?

RajT88 3y ago
A few reasons, in order of my priorities: - Win10 / 11 seem to be more and more crabby about talking to SMB shares, so I reasoned I needed to be able to exert more control over the file server. I can't tell you for my old nas how many times after a reboot I found myself running "net start mrxsmb10". - Much of my professional life has been on the Windows stack, so when things aren't working right, I can troubleshoot it a lot more efficiently. Think: Sysinternals tools. - I get free windows licenses through my MSDN through work, so it didn't cost me anything. - It's nice to have an RDP host I can use to have some separation from my work stuff. - I had some existing software licenses on stuff that only runs on windows: PlayOn, Twonky, TVersity. It turns out these older versions of PlayOn and TVersity are mostly useless these days.

infecto 3y ago

Slightly off topic, on the client side how do you use JellyFin? I tried both browser and some of the iOS apps that just wrap that browser interface and it never worked well. It perhaps was also an issue on the JellyFin server itself. I went back to Plex only because it was plug-n-play for me. Just seeing if you have any additional tips here.

skydhash 3y ago
Infuse [0] is very nice (subscription, but the price is reasonable). [0]: https://firecore.com/infuse https://firecore.com/infuse
RajT88 3y ago
Browser, WebOS, Android clients. They all seem pretty great to me. Android client has issue talking to a port other than 8920. There's multiple people debating on github if it is a bug or not.

cm2187 3y ago

Do you store stuff on multiple disks? I struggle with windows as a NAS. Windows storage space sucks hard (particularly their RAID5 style parity which has unacceptable performances, but also I had it failing without reporting it, and it doesn't handle parity with column size >8). The native windows software raid is deprecated, and can't handle disks of different sizes. I use stablebit drivepool for a secondary backup where I don't really need parity (backup of the backup). But it comes with all sort of issues of its own (some weird file locking bugs, performance limited to single disk, also if you setup an SSD cache, it can't handle files larger than the smallest SSD (happened when backing up a vhdx). For NAS, for the moment I haven't found anything beating linux based NAS solutions (synology style) for simplicity and stability. For MDISC, call me skeptical. I think in 10-15 years you will struggle to find anything to read a CD or DVD, like you would struggle now to read a Zip or floppy disk. The most durable and cheapest way to do long term of storage is to replicate your data on new media regularly. The price / GB drops so fast that no non-retail form of storage (MDISC, LTO, etc) will be economical vs buying a big drive from time to time (every 5-7y). You can buy a 12TB drive for $200-300 now.

tallanvor 3y ago
Honestly, for me, JBOD works fine on my media PC. With some manual re-balancing about once a year, it works fine for me.
vel0city 3y ago
I've got nearly 30-year-old optical drives that still work fine today. I can plug a 3.5" floppy drive into my Android phone and it still works. Sure, there's a chance in a decade or so SATA ports disappear, but USB adapters still work. Do you really think in 10-15 years it will be hard to find a device that still talks USB? ZIP drives had a number of mechanical issues (click of death). That's probably the biggest reason why they're challenging to try and use today. But as it stands right now, I can take a CD-ROM drive from the 90s, use a cheap USB adapter, and plug it in to a USB port on a brand-new Linux or Windows or MacOS device without issue. And even then, so what. In 25 years when I'm an old man I'll need to plug in my last optical drive into my 8 year old computer to read the disks and move that data off into the four dimensional hypercrystal storage mediums we'll all be using, and then I'll go into my cryogenic storage chamber to sleep for another 100 years and then transfer my data to the next media format when I wake.