Introduction
You have old hardware laying arount? Maybe a fully functional but old pc?
Ever thought about setting up a “Network attached Storage”? What about running docker images on your own hosted server?
If you are slightly like me, you cannot throw away old hardware. Harddrives in boxes (cause you “have to format those drives”), old PCs (maybe for a relative) or unused GPUs, since you needed to upgrade your personal setup.
I faced the same issue. I heard about a Server OS called UNRAID and want to talk about it!
Hardware
Before looking into the details of that operating system I want to talk about my hardware: I had an old machine equipped with
- ASUS Z170-K
- Intel i7-6700K CPU
- 16 Gb DDR4 RAM
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970
- 256 Gb of SSD.
Instead of looking at it over and over I decided I wanted a backup system for my personal machine. When it comes to backups, it is recommended to follow the 321 strategy:
- 3 copies of your important files
- 2 different media types
- 1 offsite backup.
Even if you know this strategy, you have to get active to use this strategy… Hence, lets work on the next system for my backups!
Software
There are a lot of options when it comes to server operating systems: You could go with Windows Server, some Linux OS (like Debian) or use software designed for backup and server tasks like UNRAID. I heard about Unraid before (from Linus at Linus Tech Tips for example) and wanted to try it. So instead of researching, if Unraid was any good or not, I tried it (knowingly that I might have to bite the bullet and switch to another system).
Lo and behold I opened the official site to Unraid and searched for the installation guide (you can find it here). The installation was quite fast (about 2h after finding an USB Stick and including waiting for the harddrives to format).
Now lets take a look at some features of Unraid and how we can get those most out off it!
Features
To see an overview of use cases provided by Unraid, see this link. I found this website inspiring, however it was not quite what I had in mind, when playing with Unraid. Hence, here is a list of my use cases I was interested in:
NAS
Obvious one first: You are able to use your Unraid server as network share. Unraid supports the Windows standard SMB as well as NFS (which is mainly used by Linux distributions). I have Windows and Apple machines at home and settled on SMB, as Unraid supports “Enhanced macOS interoperability” (see Unraid -> Settings -> SMB Settings) which seems to enable SMB for Apple devices (it even shows up on mobile devices as network share).
Data Backup
My main concern was backing up MacBook. Hence, I needed a method to connect my “Time Machine” to my Unraid server. After creating a new share (click of 3 buttons) and exporting it for Time Machine (a setting you have to toggle), you can configure you Mac to store its backup on your new server! What a breeze! And it is even encrypted! If you want to do it yourself, you can find a tutorial here. There is even a tutorial on how to setup Windows backups to Unraid here.
Docker images
The world of Docker is huge! If you have never dove into this topic here is a very basic overview: Docker images are like virtual machines but with stripped down operating systems build with a specific purpose (an image could for example provide a database, another could host and expose a website and another could run some machine learning program).
Writing your own image is straigt forward but a topic for itself. For this project and my server I primarily focused on running some open source images to help me in my day to day life.
Here are some fun images I wanted to share!
Home Automation
Running your Home Automation software on your own hardware and within your network, you can enforce some privacy concerns for yourself.
I am using Apples Home Automation. It is quite accessible but does not provide all features I was interested in. Hence I wanted to run an instance of Homebride which supports communication with Apples Smart Home. I was delighted to find, that Unraid supports Docker out of the box and has even some community images for Homebride: It is as easy as selecting installing and running your own docker images!
NG-Paperless
Some time ago I learned about Paperless-NG, which promisses to minimize paper at home by providing your own Document Management System (DMS). If you never heard about it, I recommend you check it out! And Unraid didn’t disappoint here either: Some community member ported the original docker image for Unraid and we can simply install and run it! Fantastic!
Pi Hole
Tiered of ads while browsing the web? Pi Hole is your own DNS server where you can block certain websites (and hence reduce ads on your machines). There exists an docker image for the Unraid Server and now my machines are more protected and show less ads! Nice!
Virtual Machines (VMs)
The last feature I wanted to point out is that Unraid supports running your own virtual machines. Your hardware has to support it, but when it does, you can manage and deploy your own VMs from within Unraid
Summary
Unraid seems to be a great server! I am really happy with it and if you have some hardware dusting in a corner, I’d suggest you check it out!
With that said: keep exploring and see you next time!