RNDU4000, use as external HDD?

[Ahrle]

Hello,

I have a RAID10 setup in my home PC, as well as in the basement's server + SAN. These are meant to back up each other on a weekly basis.

The problem is that the basement is about three kilometres away. As I don't feel like dragging the 20kg PC there, I wonder if a dust-collecting ReadyNAS Ultra 4 (RNDU4000) can act as a simple external hard drive? By raiding the RAID, or ghosting? The RNDU4000 runs OS 6, and all four systems have equal setups - 4x2TB in RAID10.

Thanks 

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

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@Ahrle wrote:

So it is possible to install VeraCrypt on the NAS? Is there an app or something? Tried several apps from https://apps.readynas.com/pages/?page_id=9, however all threw error messages and failed to install. 

Veracrypt itself is installed on the PC and the server,  The veracrypt container is on the NAS.  Since the encryption is client-side, stealing the NAS wouldn't compromise the data.

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@Ahrle wrote:
1. The PC. All information that should be backed up is offloaded to a RAID on the PC.
2. PC -> NAS. The NAS clones above mentioned RAID off the PC.
3. NAS -> Server. The NAS is physically brought to the basement for the server to clone (reverse version of the PC)
4. Server -> SAN. The SAN unit will then clone the server's backup. 
...
I really don't mind the Ultra4 taking its time. The basement is a hobby room full of retro junk to play around with. Besides, this is just a personal life backup, which isn't about to grow exponentially. It's currently 800GB, of which at least 300GB are uncut videos to be thrown away. We talk, perhaps, an increase of ~25MB a week on median, which can't really take that long to synchronize?

Incremental backup should only take a few minutes, so the approach should work.  You will need to be careful when transporting the NAS - at least checking that all the drives are fully seated before powering it up in the new location. There are some posts here from folks who've run into problems after tranporting their NAS.

Something along these lines would also do the job I think: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1113481-REG/apricorn_a25_3pl256_2000_aegis_padlock_usb.html  So if you are purchasing new drives for the NAS, you might consider that alrenative.

[StephenB]

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@Ahrle wrote:

I wonder if a dust-collecting ReadyNAS Ultra 4 (RNDU4000) can act as a simple external hard drive?  The RNDU4000 runs OS 6, and all four systems have equal setups - 4x2TB in RAID10.

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I don't understand what you mean by "acting as a simple external hard drive".  The volume already acts that way.

But you can certainly use the Ultra to backup any of these devices over wired ethernet.  You can't connect to to the server's USB port.

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@Ahrle wrote:

The problem is that the basement is about three kilometres away. 

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Not sure if this is intended literally or not.  

If everything is on the same wired network, then there is no need to move anything to make the backups.  There are several utilities out there that can do incremental backups over the network.  FreeFileSync is one free one (among others).  Even a full backup of 4 TB of data can be done in less than a day over gigabit ethernet.

If the home PC (and Ultra) are actually in different locations (on different networks), then it is still possible to back up the basement equipment to them - though it does depend on the internet upload/download speeds of the two networks.  You can set up a VPN connection for remote access (for instance using ZeroTier or OpenVPN).  If the server is running linux, then you could also set up rsync-over-ssh (forwarding ports in the routers).

[Ahrle]

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@StephenB wrote:

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@Ahrle wrote:

I wonder if a dust-collecting ReadyNAS Ultra 4 (RNDU4000) can act as a simple external hard drive?  The RNDU4000 runs OS 6, and all four systems have equal setups - 4x2TB in RAID10.

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I don't understand what you mean by "acting as a simple external hard drive".  The volume already acts that way.

But you can certainly use the Ultra to backup any of these devices over wired ethernet.  You can't connect to to the server's USB port.

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Thanks for reply. What I mean is that I'd like to mount it as a Windows local disk, just like a USB stick or external HDD. Then it's easily encryptable via VeraCrypt, ghostable via Norton Ghost/RAID etc.

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Not sure if this is intended literally or not.  

If everything is on the same wired network, then there is no need to move anything to make the backups.  There are several utilities out there that can do incremental backups over the network.  FreeFileSync is one free one (among others).  Even a full backup of 4 TB of data can be done in less than a day over gigabit ethernet.

If the home PC (and Ultra) are actually in different locations (on different networks), then it is still possible to back up the basement equipment to them - though it does depend on the internet upload/download speeds of the two networks.  You can set up a VPN connection for remote access (for instance using ZeroTier or OpenVPN).  If the server is running linux, then you could also set up rsync-over-ssh (forwarding ports in the routers).

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Well, it's always good to point out that the NAS has to be brought down three stairs, carried about 75 m. to the car, getting the car warmed up, driven to the basement storage, getting unloaded after buying a ticket, carried down and all in reversal order; before getting irrelevant comments that I shouldn't be lazy and just bring the 10x heavier PC there. I'm asking because it's either this, or purchasing an external HDD cabinet I have in mind.

Sadly there's no network at the basement at all, and I don't intend to put one up either (partly because it's only for personal backups, and partly because it's in two different apartment complexes, so I guess it'll be outrageously expensive to install fibre network there). That's why I need the NAS to move the infomation physically. 🙂

Ahrle

[Ahrle]

Thanks for removing my clarifications. That's certainly helpful for answering my question and keeping up Netgear's reputation.

Guess I'll try my luck with an Icy Box IB-3740 or Promise SmartStor DS4600, i.e. an external HDD enclosure (DAS), which is what I was asking for.

Ahrle

[Sandshark]

Given you will be setting up the Ultra4 from scratch, you may want to look at upgrading it to OS6 before you get started.  As the older protocols the RAIDiator 4.2.x software supports become more and more depreciated and the OS just gets older, that will give the NAS new life with current OS updates.  You will want to increase the memory to at least 2GB before you do, as there are reports where that seems to be a necessity for the latest 6.10.x versions.  Of course, just used as a backup, the use of outdated protocols isn't quite as critical, but I updated all my legacy NAS that could be updated to OS6 and got rid of the rest.

I store next to nothing data wise on internal hard drives and no longer use USB ones at all.  Everything is on a primary NAS, which backs up to a pair of backup NAS (because their volumes are smaller and it takes two to hold it all) with the most critical data also backed up three states away at my brother's house via a ZeroTier VPN.  I made the initial backup on the NAS at my brother's locally since the data has to go over the internet, but it's not been back in my hands since.  He uses it as a primary NAS and his data backs up to one of my backup ones.  I administer it remotely through the VPN.  All these units are legacy devices running OS6.

[Ahrle]

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@Sandshark wrote:

Given you will be setting up the Ultra4 from scratch, you may want to look at upgrading it to OS6 before you get started.  As the older protocols the RAIDiator 4.2.x software supports become more and more depreciated and the OS just gets older, that will give the NAS new life with current OS updates.  You will want to increase the memory to at least 2GB before you do, as there are reports where that seems to be a necessity for the latest 6.10.x versions.  Of course, just used as a backup, the use of outdated protocols isn't quite as critical, but I updated all my legacy NAS that could be updated to OS6 and got rid of the rest.

I store next to nothing data wise on internal hard drives and no longer use USB ones at all.  Everything is on a primary NAS, which backs up to a pair of backup NAS (because their volumes are smaller and it takes two to hold it all) with the most critical data also backed up three states away at my brother's house via a ZeroTier VPN.  I made the initial backup on the NAS at my brother's locally since the data has to go over the internet, but it's not been back in my hands since.  He uses it as a primary NAS and his data backs up to one of my backup ones.  I administer it remotely through the VPN.  All these units are legacy devices running OS6.

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Thank you.

It's already upgraded to 6.10.1 unofficial software.

The PC, NAS, server and SAN are in my case, all permanently offline. All data that should be saved is moved to the PC's RAID, using an encrypted USB stick. This RAID is what I want the NAS to clone, so the NAS is all that's needed for the server + SAN for also cloning the information. This will make 8 copies on 4 devices at 2 locations, which should protect from everything but town-wide disasters. 

[StephenB]

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@Ahrle wrote:

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The PC, NAS, server and SAN are in my case, all permanently offline. All data that should be saved is moved to the PC's RAID, using an encrypted USB stick. This RAID is what I want the NAS to clone, so the NAS is all that's needed for the server + SAN for also cloning the information. This will make 8 copies on 4 devices at 2 locations, which should protect from everything but town-wide disasters. 

---

As I said before, the NAS requires a gigabit ethernet connection.  But it doesn't require being connected to the internet.

You could connect the NAS to the server (either through the local network or by directly connecting it to the server's NIC card).  Then you could run any of several utilities on the server to copy the SAN contents to the NAS.  You could also use a NAS backup job on the NAS itself, but that would require sharing the SAN folders on the local network. 

If you leave the NAS in place, this could be run on a schedule, so it could be unattended. You could up the cadence on the backups to daily, which would reduce the loss if the SAN fails.  I suggest that someone verify the backups are actually happening in-person, and periodically look at NAS logs - since there is no way to monitor remotely via email notifications.  If the server is running linux, then you could disable SMB on the NAS, and use rsync - that would give you a bit more protection from malware hitting the local server network somehow.  If it is running Windows, then I'd suggest installing SMB plus on the NAS - then set the minimum protocol to SMB 3 and make encryption mandatory.  Also disallow anonymous connections.

Not sure if disk encryption on the NAS is a requirement or not.  If it is: while you could use volume encryption on the NAS, I'd suggest using Veracrypt instead.  Volume encryption has some significant drawbacks - in particular, you have no way to access the volume if the NAS fails (other than to purchase another ReadyNAS).  If you do use Veracrypt, be sure to disable strict sync on the NAS share holding the Veracrypt container.

If you don't use veracrypt, you should consider enabling custom snapshots on the NAS - you can use them to get some rollback capability in case files are lost due to user error.  Limit retention, to make sure the snapshots won't result in a full volume on the NAS.  You want to keep the free space on the NAS at 15% or more.

BTW, you seem to think that I work for Netgear.  I don't (and neither does @Sandshark).

[Sandshark]

There are a lot of options here, and @StephenB went over some of them.  I'm confused, however, on how an offline PC can copy data to offsite locations, so I think something is amiss with your most recent description.

Going back to the original, where you have to carry the NAS to the basement location, the Ultra 4 can do that, but I really don't think you'll be happy with it.  I'm assuming that you wait around for the data transfer to complete, and that's going to be slower via Ethernet than USB3.  And the Ultra4 isn't the most portable device out there.   Assuming your encrypted USB device needs software on the PC to unlock it, then you can't gain somewhere else by eliminating the PC and copying directly to the NAS.  Plus, the Ultra only has USB2.

If you have line-of-site capability between the two locations, there are wireless solutions you could use to re-think the whole approach.  The Ubiquiti LiteBeam line is one I know of, but not from personal experience.  Their NanoBridge is another option.  And, of course, there are other manufacturers; but I've found Ubiquitry to be one of the best with this type of equipment when you have a small budget.  Netgear has their AirBridge, but 3km is at the far end of it's stated range.

[Ahrle]

@StephenB wrote:

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@Ahrle wrote:

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The PC, NAS, server and SAN are in my case, all permanently offline. All data that should be saved is moved to the PC's RAID, using an encrypted USB stick. This RAID is what I want the NAS to clone, so the NAS is all that's needed for the server + SAN for also cloning the information. This will make 8 copies on 4 devices at 2 locations, which should protect from everything but town-wide disasters. 

---

As I said before, the NAS requires a gigabit ethernet connection.  But it doesn't require being connected to the internet.

You could connect the NAS to the server (either through the local network or by directly connecting it to the server's NIC card).  Then you could run any of several utilities on the server to copy the SAN contents to the NAS.  You could also use a NAS backup job on the NAS itself, but that would require sharing the SAN folders on the local network. 

Yes, direct NIC connection is what I use for the PC, and want to use with the server as well (then as you probably suggest, make the SAN clone that NAS synced partition on the server). 

If you leave the NAS in place, this could be run on a schedule, so it could be unattended. You could up the cadence on the backups to daily, which would reduce the loss if the SAN fails.  I suggest that someone verify the backups are actually happening in-person, and periodically look at NAS logs - since there is no way to monitor remotely via email notifications.  If the server is running linux, then you could disable SMB on the NAS, and use rsync - that would give you a bit more protection from malware hitting the local server network somehow.  If it is running Windows, then I'd suggest installing SMB plus on the NAS - then set the minimum protocol to SMB 3 and make encryption mandatory.  Also disallow anonymous connections.

Well as I said, the server + SAN are offline permanently. It will never, ever be connected to any type of network, except direct NIC/serial connection with the NAS and SAN. The reason I purchased a rack server was primarily because it supported a large number of front accessible hard drives. 

The NAS will be primarily at home, so all work that ever need backing up will be instantly mirrored to it. 

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Not sure if disk encryption on the NAS is a requirement or not.  If it is: while you could use volume encryption on the NAS, I'd suggest using Veracrypt instead.  Volume encryption has some significant drawbacks - in particular, you have no way to access the volume if the NAS fails (other than to purchase another ReadyNAS).  If you do use Veracrypt, be sure to disable strict sync on the NAS share holding the Veracrypt container. 

If you don't use veracrypt, you should consider enabling custom snapshots on the NAS - you can use them to get some rollback capability in case files are lost due to user error.  Limit retention, to make sure the snapshots won't result in a full volume on the NAS.  You want to keep the free space on the NAS at 15% or more.

---

So it is possible to install VeraCrypt on the NAS? Is there an app or something? Tried several apps from https://apps.readynas.com/pages/?page_id=9, however all threw error messages and failed to install. 

I do encrypt the PC's RAID with VeraCrypt, that the ReadyNAS is supposed to clone; so it would be perfect to use VeraCrypt for the NAS as well. The wonder is how to sync them. Tried syncing with AOMEI Backupper (Windows 7, D:\ to Network -> NAS), but only got two invalid filenames like ?!I)¤("()/#(/!%)!#!) before the program considered it completed...

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BTW, you seem to think that I work for Netgear.  I don't (and neither does @Sandshark).

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Heh, apologies, it was more an exaggeration toward whatever happened to my replies... Two of them disappeared for a day, but are somehow back again. Using older stuff like the ReadyNAS, sometimes requires a good community and a lot of research, yet frustration can take over, sorry for that. I certainly appreciate both of your time and willingness to help 🙂

[Ahrle]

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@Sandshark wrote:

There are a lot of options here, and @StephenB went over some of them.  I'm confused, however, on how an offline PC can copy data to offsite locations, so I think something is amiss with your most recent description.

Going back to the original, where you have to carry the NAS to the basement location, the Ultra 4 can do that, but I really don't think you'll be happy with it.  I'm assuming that you wait around for the data transfer to complete, and that's going to be slower via Ethernet than USB3.  And the Ultra4 isn't the most portable device out there.   Assuming your encrypted USB device needs software on the PC to unlock it, then you can't gain somewhere else by eliminating the PC and copying directly to the NAS.  Plus, the Ultra only has USB2.

If you have line-of-site capability between the two locations, there are wireless solutions you could use to re-think the whole approach.  The Ubiquiti LiteBeam line is one I know of, but not from personal experience.  Their NanoBridge is another option.  And, of course, there are other manufacturers; but I've found Ubiquitry to be one of the best with this type of equipment when you have a small budget.  Netgear has their AirBridge, but 3km is at the far end of it's stated range.

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Well, this is how I want it to work:

1. The PC. All information that should be backed up is offloaded to a RAID on the PC.
2. PC -> NAS. The NAS clones above mentioned RAID off the PC.
3. NAS -> Server. The NAS is physically brought to the basement for the server to clone (reverse version of the PC)
4. Server -> SAN. The SAN unit will then clone the server's backup. 

What I mean with prev. reply is that at least eight disk failures, four hardware failures or two physical location failures (break-ins, fires, electrical faults etc) are simultaneously needed to lose any information. 

I really don't mind the Ultra4 taking its time. The basement is a hobby room full of retro junk to play around with. Besides, this is just a personal life backup, which isn't about to grow exponentially. It's currently 800GB, of which at least 300GB are uncut videos to be thrown away. We talk, perhaps, an increase of ~25MB a week on median, which can't really take that long to synchronize?

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

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@Ahrle wrote:

So it is possible to install VeraCrypt on the NAS? Is there an app or something? Tried several apps from https://apps.readynas.com/pages/?page_id=9, however all threw error messages and failed to install. 

Veracrypt itself is installed on the PC and the server,  The veracrypt container is on the NAS.  Since the encryption is client-side, stealing the NAS wouldn't compromise the data.

---

@Ahrle wrote:
1. The PC. All information that should be backed up is offloaded to a RAID on the PC.
2. PC -> NAS. The NAS clones above mentioned RAID off the PC.
3. NAS -> Server. The NAS is physically brought to the basement for the server to clone (reverse version of the PC)
4. Server -> SAN. The SAN unit will then clone the server's backup. 
...
I really don't mind the Ultra4 taking its time. The basement is a hobby room full of retro junk to play around with. Besides, this is just a personal life backup, which isn't about to grow exponentially. It's currently 800GB, of which at least 300GB are uncut videos to be thrown away. We talk, perhaps, an increase of ~25MB a week on median, which can't really take that long to synchronize?

Incremental backup should only take a few minutes, so the approach should work.  You will need to be careful when transporting the NAS - at least checking that all the drives are fully seated before powering it up in the new location. There are some posts here from folks who've run into problems after tranporting their NAS.

Something along these lines would also do the job I think: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1113481-REG/apricorn_a25_3pl256_2000_aegis_padlock_usb.html  So if you are purchasing new drives for the NAS, you might consider that alrenative.

[Ahrle]

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@StephenB wrote:

---

@Ahrle wrote:

So it is possible to install VeraCrypt on the NAS? Is there an app or something? Tried several apps from https://apps.readynas.com/pages/?page_id=9, however all threw error messages and failed to install. 

Veracrypt itself is installed on the PC and the server,  The veracrypt container is on the NAS.  Since the encryption is client-side, stealing the NAS wouldn't compromise the data.

---

@Ahrle wrote:
1. The PC. All information that should be backed up is offloaded to a RAID on the PC.
2. PC -> NAS. The NAS clones above mentioned RAID off the PC.
3. NAS -> Server. The NAS is physically brought to the basement for the server to clone (reverse version of the PC)
4. Server -> SAN. The SAN unit will then clone the server's backup. 
...
I really don't mind the Ultra4 taking its time. The basement is a hobby room full of retro junk to play around with. Besides, this is just a personal life backup, which isn't about to grow exponentially. It's currently 800GB, of which at least 300GB are uncut videos to be thrown away. We talk, perhaps, an increase of ~25MB a week on median, which can't really take that long to synchronize?

Incremental backup should only take a few minutes, so the approach should work.  You will need to be careful when transporting the NAS - at least checking that all the drives are fully seated before powering it up in the new location. There are some posts here from folks who've run into problems after tranporting their NAS.

Something along these lines would also do the job I think: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1113481-REG/apricorn_a25_3pl256_2000_aegis_padlock_usb.html  So if you are purchasing new drives for the NAS, you might consider that alrenative.

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Oh yea, this is absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much! Problem was I had encrypted the entire RAID drive, instead of making a file container. Now it's mountable like an external Windows Explorer device, and working excellent through RealTimeSync. All I could ask for. Thanks! 

[Ahrle]

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@Sandshark wrote:

Going back to the original, where you have to carry the NAS to the basement location, the Ultra 4 can do that, but I really don't think you'll be happy with it.  I'm assuming that you wait around for the data transfer to complete, and that's going to be slower via Ethernet than USB3. 

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Just have to unmark the solution for a sec, if somebody else get the same idea. This indeed took an absolute horrendous amount of time. A full 48 hours are now spent with only ~80GB copied yet (mainly large files). These 900GB will hence take about 2-3 weeks to complete. Perhaps filling the NAS to 99% was a mistake (Truecrypt virtual HD), and not upgrading the RAM, but it still seems to get about 10 Mbit/s (1,25 MB/s)... 😕

[StephenB]

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@Ahrle wrote:

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Just have to unmark the solution for a sec, if somebody else get the same idea. This indeed took an absolute horrendous amount of time. A full 48 hours are now spent with only ~80GB copied yet (mainly large files). These 900GB will hence take about 2-3 weeks to complete. Perhaps filling the NAS to 99% was a mistake (Truecrypt virtual HD), and not upgrading the RAM, but it still seems to get about 10 Mbit/s (1,25 MB/s)... 😕

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Did you remember to disable strict sync on the NAS share?  That will kill the write performance with TrueCrypt/VeraCrypt.