Advice for a NAS project

[Vincent1332]

Hi everyone

It's been a while since I've been thinking about a NAS project but due to a lack of time (and money) I have not advanced on it. I think to concretize it in September (finally!) But I have a few questions. I have fallen by chance on this forum and I think you will be able to help me regarding my project

I have attached a simple diagram of what I would like to do. Here is the idea: I would like to save on my NAS my movies, my photos and my Time Machine backups of my two macs. I would like to connect this NAS to my TV via an HDMI cable to watch my movies (which are mainly mkv and avi). I think I can go on a NAS with two bays in Raid 1 (if I understand the principle of raid 1, the second disk will make a backup of the first in case the first crash. But do not hesitate to tell me if I am wrong). Finally, for the backup of the second disk of the NAS i think that I will do it on a NAS in my mother's house in another country (Maybe with a Sinology DS115J + 1 WD Red of 2To). First of all, I though to do it on a cloud with amazon glacier but it seems too complicated and too expensive.

Regarding the model of the NAS (with an HDMI port) I saw that there were notably the nas QNAP TS-251 and the Asustor AS3102T in my budget. If you have other models in mind do not hesitate to tell me

For the HDD I think to take two WD Red of 2To each.

And here are my questions (some will probably seem stupid to you but it is my very first NAS, all my apologies):

- Based on my project (watch movies on TV or mac, Time Machine backup), do you think that a NAS is appropriate?

- In order to watch my MKV and AVI on my TV I am a little worried because I read on some forums that there could be problems with the sound of the AC3 license. Is this still the case ? Does using Plex or Kodi help to solve the problem? Is it necessary to subscribe to the paid version of flex to do this? I also heard some problems with the subtitles. Do you know something about this issue?

- Will it be possible to read a movie on a mac and a different one on TV at the same time (with my partner sometimes we have a hard time agreeing on the Saturday night movie ...) ?

Thank you so much for your help

Vincent

PS : All my apologies I am french and my english is pretty bad.

 

[mad_ady]

If you are into DIY, you can use an Odroid XU4 http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php with the Cloudshell 2 enclosure http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G149142327280
I use it as a NAS, but it has a HDMI port and can run kodi 17.3. No problems with audio decoding, but it can't do 4k and h265 is decoded in software (might have frame skips on high bitrate videos)

 

[sfx2000]

If you are into DIY, you can use an Odroid XU4 http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php with the Cloudshell 2 enclosure http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G149142327280
I use it as a NAS, but it has a HDMI port and can run kodi 17.3. No problems with audio decoding, but it can't do 4k and h265 is decoded in software (might have frame skips on high bitrate videos)

Erm... probably not... hobby boards are cool, but there are tasks that they're not the best for over the long run - I've written up a how-to for Pi3 that can do pretty much all that is NAS - the intent there was more to inform, not particularly to implement.

FreeNAS on a supported x86 board is a good option for DIY -- it's similar enough to pfSense - the challenge here is politics within that community - not all is good within the BSD variants... but hey, that's BSD.

Going COTS - most of the NAS vendors have entry level solutions that are very good - and the added benefit here is that one does get a level of support from the vendor.

(COTS - Commercial Off The Shelf)

 

[Vincent1332]

Thank you very much for your answers guys !

Since it will be my first NAS (and knowing that my knowledge are really limited) I think that I will go COTS (I did not know this expression thanks for the explanation). But I will keep your ideas for later for sure.

And regarding Kodi mad_ady you do not have some problems with the subtitles?

 

[mad_ady]

What kind of problems? For me subtitles work just fine, even downloading them from kodi

 

[Vincent1332]

Some people explained that the subtitles do not appear at all or disappear after a while especially with MKV. But if it is not the case it's a good news because all my movies are MKV.

 

[mad_ady]

Never had this issue with Odroids and Kodi 16/17. Must be something particular to the specific platform/Kodi version.

 

[Vincent1332]

Hello everyone 

I am coming back to you because the situation has changed a bit: my mother-in-law offered me an Apple TV (they can be nice sometimes ). So I think take a DS216play or DS216j (I have read a lot of comparatives but I have a hard time deciding) and use infuse to watch my MKV on my TV.

However, I ask myself a new question: having already been burglarized I would like to encrypt the NAS (from what I understood with Synology it is not possible to digit all the disk simply directories). Is it possible to back up this NAS on another NAS if the data is encrypted (via rsync for example) ? I searched on the internet but it is not simple to understand... Ideally I would like that the second NAS to be also encrypted. I guess that this operation is really complex if one NAS is a Synology and the second on a Qnap ?

And I have two more questions :

- If the volume where my movies is encrypted can this cause a reading problem with infuse on my appletv?
- I am in Luxembourg and with the Apple tv a lot of service are limited so I think putting a mini router between my modem and the Apple tv and go through NordVPN in openvpn. Can this setup cause slowness between the Apple TV and the NAS? On one side I say to myself that not because it is in local so it does not pass by Internet of another I tell myself that the mini router will restrict all the Apple tv connections. In short I am lost

All my apologies for this huge post.

 Thank you

 

[Cake]

Vincent I only know a easy way if you had a headless system with any linux distro on it and set up samba shares.

Possible choice #1 Put truecrypt or veracrypt on it and make some very large encrypted containers on your disks. At boot time you can set up something in rc.local to fetch the password file from a vps offsite or a file on your router. In rc.local you add a line: scp .... and that would copy the key file (password) to a tmp location such as /var/ram (a ram disk). Your next line in rc.local would be telling veracrypt or truecrypt to mount the container using the key file in the tmp directory and where to mount the container. If your interested I can share more. Then for your backup you can just rsync containers. Also this choice involves setting up password-less ssh logins.
I use this system and it has worked very well.

#2 Use LuKs
I have just started using this on a Odroid that I sent to a data center. You make a encrypted partition using cryptsetup. To mount the partition you use command: cryptsetup luksOpen ....
I have no idea how to automatically mount that by fetching a key file offsite. I bet it can be done though.

 

[Vincent1332]

Thank you very much for your answer !

What is a "headless system" ?

I have nothing with linux in it but I have an old Mac so maybe I can use It. Honestly it is a bit complicated for me but I will search on my side in order to understand it. I know a bit very crypt because I am using it on an external drive but I don't know how to use it with Linux for a NAS...

I will also search more information for your second option.

I guess that if you do all this things it is because it is not possible to back up the encrypted volumes on another NAS with hyper backup for example right ?

 

[Cake]

Thank you very much for your answer !

What is a "headless system" ?

I have nothing with linux in it but I have an old Mac so maybe I can use It. Honestly it is a bit complicated for me but I will search on my side in order to understand it. I know a bit very crypt because I am using it on an external drive but I don't know how to use it with Linux for a NAS...

I will also search more information for your second option.

I guess that if you do all this things it is because it is not possible to back up the encrypted volumes on another NAS with hyper backup for example right ?

Headless server just means a computer acting as a server without a monitor or keyboard attached. Basically you just use ssh (secure shell) to remotely log in and do everything with the command line or some use a remote desktop session. If you went with mad_ady's suggestion and bought a Odroid, you would most likely be installing linux on that.

You could ssh into a server to enter a password and mount drives at every reboot. In my case I have power outages frequently.

Here is a example of some lines I put in at the botom of the file rc.local in the /etc/init.d/ folder. (I imagine veracrypt is the same)

 truecrypt --non-interactive --protect-hidden=no -m=nokernelcrypto -k /var/ram/keyfile /dev/disk/by-id/usb-WD_Elements... /media/DISK1

The above example will automatically mount the disk to /media/DISK1 using a keyfile at /var/ram/ instead of needing to input a password. I clipped the /dev/disk/by-id/usb... but to get yours just list the directory (ls /dev/disk/by-id/) Use by-id and not /dev/sd* because sometimes if you unplug a usb drive and plug it back in the location changes from for example /dev/sda to /dev/sdb.

Can I suggest not using a hdmi cable directly to your NAS. I suggest buying a cheap raspi, install kodi on it and tape it behind your TV. Also my setup does not use any raid at all. To keep a backup at your mothers house, you could use openvpn and syncthing possibly. That way your stuff is still kept private. As you mention kodi in your first post, you may want to setup on your NAS mysql and have a separate partition for media thumbnails. If you don't this stuff is saved in plain sight on kodi. There are tutorials around that can help you set up kodi for that. I am not sure what hyper backup is. rsync can copy containers efficiently.

 

[Vincent1332]

Thank you very much for this complete answer and all my apologies I have a lot of work at this time.

Can I just ask you why do you suggest to not using an HDMI cable with the NAS ?