An idiot proof plan to setting up a NAS and connecting it to an offsite backup? reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Entropy_nihilist · 2023-12-30 07:13 I’m sorry if I sound like an absolute noob, but, well, I am. I’m just starting to learn about all of this. . I’m trying to set up a used desktop as a NAS and an old laptop elsewhere as an offsite backup, with a VPN connecting them. . This is intended as a cheap starting point that I can easily develop and upgrade over time, adding more things like Jellyfin etc. . There’s just one problem - ADHD. Computer terminology is seemingly a brick wall for my ADHD for multiple reasons. I get lost, confused and frustrated reading online guides and answers to questions on forums and subreddits. . The NAS is where I’m running into trouble. I tried using Truenas Scale on the desktop but gave up due to reasons described above. It’s running Proxmox with VMs now. The RAID / ZFS array isn’t set up yet. . The VPN is also proving annoying. Networking seems to be my most consistent issue. In case it helps, here are the specs of the drives and devices: Offsite backup laptop - 4 core, 4 thread, 125gb SSD boot drive, 8GB RAM. NAS desktop - Intel 7700 (4 core, 8 thread), 500gb NVME, 8gb RAM (I'll upgrade to 16gb), new 450W PSU. NAS drives – 6 used 2tb HDDs. I know, not great, but they were really cheap and I’ll upgrade them later. I want 2 to be parity drives for 8tb total. Backup drive - a new 8tb HDD in an external HDD case, connected to the laptop. What would be the simplest, most idiot proof way to do this? I don’t really care if the simplest solution isn’t the best or most efficient. Do I need Wireguard or Tailscale set up on both devices or just one? How do I get them to actually send information? . What would be the simplest way to get the offsite backup working? I’m open to suggestion. . I’m hesitant to run Truenas at this point (to be frank, I’m just sick of dealing with it), so what would be the simplest way to turn Proxmox itself into a NAS? . I realise that a lack of understanding of the terminology is a huge issue for me, but it’s such a huge subject that I don’t even know where to start. . What would be the most crucial stuff to understand in order to pull this off, and where would be the best place to look it up? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Entropy_nihilist · 2023-12-30 07:19 Wow, what happened to the formatting here... sorry! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Nestramutat- · 2023-12-30 07:46 If you're struggling with networking, just go with Tailscale. It will simplify things immensely. You install the binary on both systems, log in to the same account, and now they both have a 100.0.0.0/8 IP address to communicate with, plus an automatic DNS name. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BelugaBilliam · 2023-12-30 08:14 I'd stick with proxmox. I setup truenas scale as a host system before and running anything on it via docker or the containers caused me issues. If you setup a truenas VM (which is what I do), you can pass through hard drives, even if using a raid card, to the truenas VM and then setup all your arrays in TrueNAS as you would if it was bare metal. Pass through using a simple command on proxmox console, google is your friend. As far as VPN goes, wg-easy, and PIVpn are great wireguard solutions that are easy to setup vs bare metal. Essentially install one, open a port on router, and then other devices use the config file to connect. If this gives you problems, I'd recommend tailscale, and with tailscale, look into headscale for self hosting. I do not have experience with this, I use wg-easy/PIVpn. You could run these in a lxc container on proxmox, but I personally prefer to use a VM and run it all on that. Setup on VM, port forward wireguard port to that VM IP, done. The specs on your hardware is more than fine. As you stated you'll upgrade, more ram is good so you can have more VMs in the future, or give existing more horsepower. Remote machine is fine too, me personally, I'm just loading Linux onto it, connection to home network, and just creating a few directories where I can use rsync/rclone and send zipped backups to. I have this setup, where I have debian on the remote machine, and it's connected toy home network via wireguard, I have a script that will zip up my important files, and copy it over to the remote machine, and it's a Cronjob (scheduled task) to run periodically. This is what works for me. Hopefully this helps in some way! Apologies for the long reply. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ro55mo · 2023-12-30 10:50 Something different to think about. For offsite backup consider sync'ing to an AWS S3 bucket (if you are not storing huge volumes of data). I use this for my more important files (not media I can just download again). Currently at 30GB and it costs me £1 per month. You can set this up from the GUI in TrueNAS Scale or via the command line in and normal Linux distro. [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/getting-started-inst all.html](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/getting- started-install.html) [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/s3/sync.html](https: //docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/s3/sync.html) If you already have an Amazon account for shopping and such please make a different one for AWS. You want to keep them separate. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DementedJay · 2023-12-30 10:54 Agreed with tailscale for this, though I use OpenVPN in my setup. But you can setup an rsync job, it's super easy if you use their guided setup once you have tailscale setup or whatever you decide to use for encryption/tunneling. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Entropy_nihilist · 2023-12-30 11:07 I really appreciate it. This does not come naturally to me at all. I'll have to bookmark this. Building a rig? No problem. Setting up the networking? Yikes. Pretty much the only server related topic I have some understanding of is Minecraft servers, which, to be honest... I suppose it's better than nothing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BelugaBilliam · 2023-12-30 20:48 Luckily, there isn't a whole lot of networking involved. You may have to open a port for a VPN, Minecraft server, etc, but other than that, there's not much to it. If you setup your own domain and play with DNS, then you will a little, but most of that stuff isn't too complicated once you play around with it.