I want a server running nextcloud, immich and others.

I have a N100 mini server with a 2TB external HDD. I want to secure the system against data loss. Hence, I want a backup and redundancy.

  1. Most important question: How do I build everything? Is this a NAS? My naive approach is to buy 3 external HDDs and connect them to the N100 with a USB hub. I assume this is not “the right way” but to use/build a NAS. Do I have to build a separate NAS computer? When I lookup NAS buying, it is a computer with a case for 4 drives, excluding the drives and costs 400 bucks. I am confused because this is incredibly expensive compared to what I already have. What is the additional benefit compared to my setup? Am I cheap?

  2. Regarding redundancy, is RAID still the way to go? At 2 TB, using RAID 5 with 3 drives sounds good. I’d have 4 TB of usable space, much more than I intend to use in the next years, and adding a drive increases the storage by 2 TB, effectively increasing space by 50%.

  3. I have 4 TB usable space, but I won’t reach 2 TB in the next one or two years. I’d use a 2 TB HDD for a local backup via borg. Once my hot storage needs to increase, I replace the backup drive with a larger one and use it to increase the RAID storage. Is one backup sufficient? Or should I keeping multiple versions of the data. Daily, weekly, monthly backups? What is your experience with it?

  4. Another 2 TB HDD for an offsite backup, LUKS encrypted, backed up once a year (that’s the goal for now).

Does that sound good?

  • Mylk@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    131·
    4 days ago

    Lot to unpack, just a quick answer:

    1. Don’t do that, forget the USB hub it’s unreliable, if you absolutely want to go with the USB route get something like a HDD multi bay enclosure: https://sabrent.com/collections/hard-drive-accessories/products/ds-sc4b But if you don’t want to fiddle with things get a ready made solution (qnap, synology, ugreen, etc) you get the hardware and the software, just insert the disks and you are ready to go.
    2. If you are doing DIY look into ZFS, or use the solution from the software you are using, Unraid for example.
    3. The usual advice is to do the 3-2-1 backup (three copies of your data across two different storage types with one off-site), but entirely depends on you and your data, keep at least a separate copy of your most important things.
    4. Sounds good.