What I run on my NAS / Home Server

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Published on September 6, 2023 12:00:00 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DekUrSZ58fc

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#homelab #nas #linux

00:00 Intro
00:28 Sponsor: Join a free webinar on data center automation
01:20 My NAS
02:34 Virtual machines
04:02 Plex
05:11 VPN
06:34 Cloud Photo Storage
07:56 Drive & backups
09:10 Shared Storage
10:12 What I want to setup
12:41 Settings
14:02 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux
15:01 Support the channel


The first thing I recently started doing on the NAS is virtual machines. I installed Virtual Machine manager, and it's pretty easy to use, you just create a VM, you select how many CPU cores and how much RAM you want, you create a virtual disk, and you select an ISO from the NAS storage, and you're good to go.

Another thing I run is Plex. It's a media server. I store movies and TV Shows in there, and I play these from my TV, with the Plex app. Plex was available as a one click install from the package center of Synology DiskStation manager.

I also use my NAS to run my own VPN. Of course, you do lose the access to a foreign IP, and some privacy, since, well the VPN gets your home Ip address, so the same that your computer might have had.

I use the VPN server app from the NAS's package manager, and I used OpenVPN. Setting things up was super easy, I just had to export the config file, and import it in GNOME's settings, after modifying the file to add the domain name that my NAS uses as the IP, and I also had to open the relevant port in my router's config, of course.

Another thing I use my NAS for is to stop paying for cloud photo and video storage. I use SYnology Photos here. It's a nice little app that you can run on your NAS and on your mobile devices. What it does is basically the same thing as Apple Photos, or GOogle Drive: you open the app, it backs everything up to your NAS, and you can access them from any web browser, manage albums

Now, for the most original use of a NAS: file storage and backups. To do that, I use the SYnology Drive client, which is available on Linux.

I use this app to create a backup of my /home directory, to my NAS storage. I also created a sync task to sync the photos that came from my phone, to my NAS, to my computer.

I also use my NAS as a file exchange thingy. When I record something on a test laptop for a video, I store all the recordings on the NAS, and I download them back from the computer I'll do the editing on.

All the storage is also accessible through Samba, so I can connect to it easily from my local network.

Now there are a few things I would like to try and setup here as well. The first one is Nextcloud. I'm planning to use the Container Manager app to use Docker and install Nextcloud with that, on the NAS.

Another thing I'd like to do is automating a download of the latest videos from my youtube subscription feed, and to create an RSS feed for that so I can use any podcast client or app to watch just these videos.

Another thing I'd like to try is to setup Kasm Workspaces: it's a self hostable solution to run desktops, operating systems, or apps remotely, and stream them to a web browser.

I'm pretty sure I can install that using Docker on the NAS, and replace the Virtual Machines manager that Synology offers with something open source. It probably won't change my workflow all that much, but open source solutions are just more my jam, and it's a fun project to try and tackle.