SOLVED Architecting Scale Networking

[MurtaghsNAS]

I need some help architecting the networking around my Scale server. I am of a technical level that I academically understand what is going on, but I lack the experience or wisdom to know I am choosing the right solution. Once I have a solution where I at least know where the gotchas are, I should be able to teach myself the details of the implementation. In other words, I know there are things I don’t know, and I want to minimize loss of work due to something I don’t know at the start invalidating my planning, such as NFS needs a networking bridge to connect a VM with storage.



TL;DNR What are the best network settings and design for a Scale server with a VM that requires access to the Truenas storage via NFS and access to network devices with intense UDP streams?



Situation: I am in a home network with a /24 network address space. All clients are Linux, Android or misc. IOT devices. The network attaches to the internet and is administered (DHCP, DNS, etc) through a DD-WRT router. The Scale server is standalone, with no HA applications expected. Scale server currently has a single NIC.



Scale server has following roles

• Centralized data storage. Primary access is through NFS shares, though I do use secondary methods of DNLA and Nextcloud file access for case-by-case accesses.
• Media Server. Much of the data stored is video, music, and photos. My primary media clients are Kodi boxes accessing the centralized storage via NFS. I also have a DVR powered by MythTV that is currently an external box accessing storage via NFS, but I want to convert this to a virtualized solution on the Scale. During this transition, I may change softwares to something more modern such as Jellyfin, but I am still exploring whether Jellyfin’s PVR solution meets my needs. Regardless of software, there will be a virtualized media server accessing storage via NFS, attached to clients on the local network via IP, and being fed media streams from a HDHomerun networked TV tuner. For those not familiar the HDHomerun is an OTA Antenna to IP transceiver that uses UDP to send its video streams across the local network. A secondary capability of the media server is to serve files to a couple of DNLA clients.
• Nextcloud server. I plan on installing a virtualized instance of Nextcloud, primarily as a contacts management server, and a last resort access-to-storage server. I am not sure if I am going to use the k8s Nextcloud or spinup a full VM, but I am leaning towards the k8s. It is networked only to the local network, not the internet.
• Future expansion. Let’s assume I will find another virtualized app or two I will want to host on the Scale server. I can’t specify these yet obviously, but let’s assume they will happen. I do not see a large number of apps, or anything intensive like a Minecraft server, but let’s assume something will be added.

Design considerations

• I am fairly open to how servers are addressed on the network. Ideally I think giving each app its own IP address is best to minimize port-mapping headaches, but specifying ports in URLs is not an obstacle of concern.
• If possible, keeping things on a single network would be nice to avoid routing headaches. But I am not adverse to multiple networks or VLANs if that is the best solution.

Known design challenges

• Scale has (as far I know) an issue with connecting Virtualized (VMs, K8s) clients with NFS. The known solution is to setup a bridge. Does this apply to SMB shares as well? While I would dislike converting to SMB, it is a valid solution.
• HDHomerun does not like internetworking. I believe because of its reliance on intense UDP streams, it is recommended that the HDHomerun and the client be on the same network. For K8s, when HDHomeruns are involved, I usually see the option networking=host is invoked. For this reason, and a general inexperience with K8s, I have been expecting to put the media server function in a VM, not a K8s. But I am starting to feel the above virtualized NFS issue may be an issue solving this.
• DNLA is a desired option, but suffers from similar constraints to the HDHomerun.

 

[morganL]

SMB and NFS (and iSCSI) have the same bridge needs.. its all about setting up IP networking.

I'd suggest outlining what you plan to do and see if anyone can see any flaws or make suggestions.

 

[MurtaghsNAS]

I got myself through the issues I was having. I got hung up on a combination of missing a detail or two in the NFS/VM documentation and a couple different parts of the setup not reacting in failure as I expected.

Honestly, this thread is near zero archival value. If policy permits it, moderators should feel free to delete.