April 1, 20251 yr Hello. I am working to set up an Unraid server for Plex media. I am now bummed and concerned because I recently came across posts on Reddit detailing how Unraid lacks security compared to Synology and Linux server setups. Users were also urging other users to not connect their Unraid to Internet. How do I best secure the Unraid server and the machine? Notes: The Unraid USB will be plugged into a machine that uses Linux Mint. Is it safe to connect the Linux machine to the web if the Unraid server lacks security?
April 1, 20251 yr Hello! Here are a few resources to start: https://unraid.net/blog/unraid-server-security-best-practices Depending upon your use case and what you mean by "connect Unraid to the internet", there are various safe to do this and some very unsafe ways. For more users, starting out with Tailscale is the way to go IMO. Definitely check out. https://unraid.net/use-cases/tailscale and the tutorial videos to learn more as we have recently natively integrated Tailscale into Unraid. More on the partnership: https://unraid.net/tailscale
April 1, 20251 yr Community Expert 1 hour ago, Newhost said: Unraid USB will be plugged into a machine that uses Linux Mint Unraid itself is an OS. Do you mean you intend to run the Unraid OS as a virtual machine under some other OS?
April 1, 20251 yr 3 hours ago, Newhost said: Unraid to Internet And this might also be misunderstood. This does not mean that you don't give your server internet access. This is about opening up services directly running on your server to the internet. IE: You wouldn't want to open up the ports on the server so that you can access your files directly via SMB, or to be able to log in to your webUI directly from the outside world. For this you would use TailScale so that you can allow outside connections in a secure manner. Plex is no problem and is perfectly fine to have it serve the files directly over the internet. It is not allowing direct connections to SMB, the webUI etc, but is handling the streaming of the files itself. There is no difference between Plex running on any system and Plex running on Unraid. The risks are akin to allowing any random Windows system to allow direct access to it's files and services over the internet without putting in place adequate security. Unless you are a security expert, I think that most people wouldn't even consider doing it. Unraid is not designed to be have services like SMB directly on the internet. TailScale (and other apps for Unraid) do allow you to remotely access your server's services in a safe and secure manner. Plex allows you to stream your files in a safe and secure manner without having the internet with direct access to the underlying system.
April 3, 20251 yr Author On 4/1/2025 at 4:16 PM, trurl said: Unraid itself is an OS. Do you mean you intend to run the Unraid OS as a virtual machine under some other OS? Linux will be the main OS while Unraid will run in the background. Is it possible to run Linux and Unraid at the same time?
April 3, 20251 yr Community Expert Unraid is a NAS OS that can host Dockers and VMs. You could run Linux and many other OS as a virtual machine under Unraid. This is probably the simplest and will get better support from the forum. https://forums.unraid.net/forum/45-vm-templates/ It is also possible to run Unraid as a VM under some other OS. This is not officially supported, but there is a subforum where users who want to do that can help each other. https://forums.unraid.net/forum/46-virtualizing-unraid/
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