Has anyone set up Unraid in a remote setting.  I am being offered an opportunity to store my box in a data center and want to make sure it is both secure and accessible. As long as I can VPN into it I feel the access part is covered but I am concerned about security.  I am a bit of a newbie when it comes to VPN and don't fully understand if that happens at the box or the network. 

 

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

VPN can happen at the network level or at the endpoint (unRAID).  Another option is using SSH and SSH tunnels to connect.  I have ssh set up on my router, using a password protected encrypted key file (so anyone trying to access it needs a copy of my keyfile, and the password to open it).  I then use tunnels to access computers behind my router.  It works well, and I am pretty confident in its security.

 

 

Has anyone set up Unraid in a remote setting.  I am being offered an opportunity to store my box in a data center and want to make sure it is both secure and accessible.

Anyone with local access to the box or the network will be able to access your unraid. If you are not comfortable with that, and judging from the way you asked the question, I would recommend you not proceed without either educating yourself much more on network security, or hire someone with the appropriate skills to secure it for you. My suspicion is that you will end up wanting at least a router with your own VPN insulating unraid from the rest of the data center. Another thing to consider is physical access. If something needs to be done at the local console, or hardware needs to be fiddled with, are you comfortable not being able to immediately deal with it, or pay someone onsite to deal with it.

 

This is a very complex topic with lots of options and permutations, so I doubt a simple answer will suffice. Unraid was never intended to be used in this manner, so a stock unraid would be a definite no go.

I currently have unRAID deployed in a datacenter environment.  If you're concerned about security and accessibility you need to familiarize yourself with different compliance categories for datacenters and ask simple questions to the provider.

 

Additionally, if you're going to be tagged on your own VLAN with a separate subnet that you manage than I wouldn't worry much about network security as long as you ... actually now that I am typing this..

 

I wouldn't do it if you're not familiar with firewall, ACL, routing and managing a remote server.. not just at a homebrew level.  No onsite remote hands is going to want to hand hold you because you can't get to your television shows..

As has already been said in more than one way -- Don't.

 

In addition to the network security issues and maintenance issues;  the performance may be an issue as well -- especially writes.    What kind of upload speed do you have on your internet connection?  [Most of us have very good download speeds; but MUCH slower upload speeds]    Folks complain frequently about the write speed of UnRAID -- that's the whole reason cache drives are so popular -- but with this scenario your write speed will be limited by your upload speed ... probably MUCH slower than the 30-35MB speeds UnRAID typically provides.    Read speeds will also be much slower than you're used to, but probably fast enough for streaming [This is primarily throttled by the Datacenter's upload capability, but is probably much higher than yours].

 

Bottom line:  This simply doesn't seem like a good idea.