From buying high-end NAS enclosures to putting together a backup-cum-file-sharing system, there are plenty of ways to build a storage server. If you're particularly fond of tinkering, you can even virtualize your NAS using a dedicated home server platform like Proxmox.
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But what if you don't want the extra performance overhead caused by virtual machines? Thanks to its built-in support for ZFS and the Debian roots underneath the platform, Proxmox lets you put together a NAS without relying on VMs or containers.
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Creating the ZFS pool
Before you can configure the network shares, you'll have to mount the drives on your Proxmox machine. Since ZFS has amazing RAID support, snapshot utility, and self-repair provisions, we'll use Zpools in our makeshift NAS.
Plug your drives into the Proxmox server and head to the web UI once it boots up. Open the Disks tab of your Proxmox node and press the Wipe button to prepare your drives for the ZFS pool.
Switch to the ZFS tab and tap the Create ZFS button.
Enter the Name of your ZFS pool, choose your preferred RAID Level, and hit Create.
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Setting up an Samba share
With the ZFS pool ready, it's time to install the Samba packages and set up the network share.
Navigate to the Shell tab of your preferred Proxmox node and run the following command to download the Samba packages. apt install samba smbclient -y
Create a new directory for your network share inside the ZFS pool you created earlier with the mkdir command. mkdir /zfs_pool_name/share_name
Set up a new user for the network share before creating a password for it.useradd -m user_name passwd user_name
Create an SMB password for the user with this command: smbpasswd -a user_name
Use the nano editor to access the smb.conf file in the terminal. nano /etc/samba/smb.conf
Head to the bottom of the config file, enter the name of the network share within square brackets ([]), and enter the following fields in the proper indentation.path = /zfs_pool_name/share_name read only = no valid user = user_name writeable = yes
Hit Ctrl+X followed by Y and Enter to save and exit the smb.conf file. Run the chmod command to grant full privileges to your network share directory. chmod 777 /zfs_pool_name/share_name
Restart the SMB share using the following command: systemctl restart smbd.service
Accessing the share on another device
Now that the SMB share is up and running, you're free to access it on your PC. We've demonstrated the steps to do so on Windows 11, but the overall process is the same for most operating systems.
Launch the File Explorer. Type the IP address of your Proxmox machine (without the port number) into the Address bar.
Enter the Username and Password you'd set earlier into the pop-up window to access the network share.
Building a storage server using Proxmox
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Once you've transferred your files to the Proxmox-powered NAS, you can perform the scrub, trim, and resilver tasks using the Shell window of your node. That said, it's hard to deny the convenience of a dedicated NAS OS, especially since you can perform all the tasks inside web UIs instead of running circles inside a command-line interface. Fortunately, you can run most NAS operating systems inside Proxmox virtual machines and expect decent performance after allocating enough cores, memory, and storage provisions to said VMs.
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