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requirements docs improved with missing information fixed
* Addressed and closed #131, requirements talk about installation, not updates (not manageable updates), so the wording is correct because later on there are points about that, but i handled the issue in this commit in better way for. * Improve the very vague requirements documentation, that is also ambiguous in some way. * Not all software requirements are handled by the OS, for example we need a valid network for communications, if the network is unreachable clients are unable to reach any shared resources. * OMV is the most flexible NAS system. Pointed that out and tried to clarify all the needs about hardware and software. * Separate software requirements and hardware requirements. Previous document was very mixed about it, maybe this commit featured a too long one. I'm open to suggestions and leave this PR open to the editors and maintainers for. * Pointed out that Debian OS is the main software requirement. So then hardware requirements will rely based on OS hardware support! * Pointed out that NIC is a missing hardware requirement and why. It's a NAS system and wrote about that terminology as well. * Software requirements are handled by the OS and depend on it, but some packages were pointed out that are important to it, so there will be no confusion about it * The page should be titled "requirements" because hardware is a prerequisite, but it depends on the core software - the Debian OS, if such hardware is not supported, OMV would not be able to be installed or would not be able to work properly... so prerequisites as a list are very confusing about it * Set the minimum requirements to be adequate and manageable: * A 1.5G root filesystem partition was sufficient using the netinstall iso and turning off recommendations, then sdisable auto-updates and create a cron job to clean up the apt package cache storage daily. This does not allow upgrades, but does allow updates. It means a 4G disk system drive is possible and valild. of course, these are for expert users... so I wrote sections of recommendations for novice users. * a 100M swap was sufficient. I configured Linux to not use swap at all... but novice users won't have the necessary skills, so... of course, these are for expert users... so I wrote sections of recommendations for novice users. * setting up a NAS system is easy with OMV, but a minimum of knowledge is required for inexperienced users, so I wrote such needs in each section. **Warning** I indicated that 1 disk is enough for both: system drive storage plus mixed with Data storage, that is basically true and officially supported, if you, as an expert administrator, simply install OMV on top of a fresh Debian setup customized with a free partition available for OMV data drive storage. This could be done by leaving a free partition already formatted also!
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| Original file line number | Diff line number | Diff line change |
|---|---|---|
| @@ -1,35 +1,250 @@ | ||
| Prerequisites | ||
| Requisites | ||
| ============= | ||
|
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| Before installing |omv| make sure your hardware is supported. | ||
| The |omv| system is the most flexible Network Attached Storage (NAS) on the market, | ||
| this is because it relies on the operating system Debian GNU/Linux [9]_ | ||
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| * **CPU**: Any x86-64 or ARM compatible processor | ||
| * **RAM**: 1 GiB capacity | ||
| * **HDD**: | ||
| Any system has software requirements and hardware requirements, also minimal | ||
| ones and recommended ones.. | ||
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| * **System Drive**: min. 4 GiB capacity (plus the capacity of the RAM) | ||
| * **Data Drive**: capacity according to your needs | ||
| Hardware requirements | ||
| --------------------- | ||
|
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||
| .. note:: | ||
| The whole disc will be occupied by the system and swap space [1]_, so size | ||
| doesn't matter so much. Data storage on the system disc is not supported. | ||
| ====== ================ ========= ========== ================================== | ||
| Item supported Minimal Best Recommendation | ||
| ====== ================ ========= ========== ================================== | ||
| DRIV SSD/HDD/USB... 1 disk 2 disk 2 disks: 128Gib HDD + 500Gib SSD | ||
| RAM 1Gib+ any 1Gib 4Gig 8Gib+ dual channel DDR4/DDR3 | ||
| NIC WiFi/Ether/USB any 10Mb NIC 1GiB NIC or 10Gb NICs: SFP fiber | ||
| CPU arm,x86,x64 32bit 64bit Intel Dual Core, AMD Ryzen | ||
| ====== ================ ========= ========== ================================== | ||
|
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| .. note:: | ||
| Take into account in your considerations about the size of the system disk | ||
| that various plugins such as `openmediavault-podman` or `openmediavault-k8s` | ||
| store their data (e.g. container images) on the system disk. | ||
| The storage drives (DRIV) | ||
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | ||
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| Spinning Harddisk, SSD [2]_, Disk-on-Module [3]_, CompactFlash [4]_ or USB thumb | ||
| drive [5]_ type drives can be used as system drive. | ||
| This is the key of the system. |omv| supports any drive hardware and any drive | ||
| interface (SATA, ISE, SCSI, USB, SERIAL) but information and management will | ||
| depend on the disk drives supported by the Debian operating system. | ||
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| Modern hard disks drives have firmware inside that reports several attributes, | ||
| Any hard disks drives is supported but |omv| only supports SMART for those | ||
| disks that are connected to an HBA in pass-through mode. | ||
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| The system manages two types of storage unit classification: | ||
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| System drive storage | ||
| The Storage Disk Drive(s) used to put the system program files (by partitions), | ||
| **this system drive (that is in fact a couple or more partitions) | ||
| cannot officially be used for shared resources or as data drive**. | ||
| What supported brands and sizes are covered in the software requirements section below. | ||
| The recommendation for the System drive(s) hardware could be older spinning | ||
| Hard Disk Drives (HDD), Disk-on-Module [3]_, CompactFlash [4]_ or thumb drives (USB), | ||
| the Solid State Disks (SDD [2]_) must be managed. | ||
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| Data drive storage | ||
| The storage disk drive(s) where the data for the defined or used shares resources | ||
| wil be stored. **Cannot be the same of the system drive(s) and sizes will | ||
| depends of the usage of the resources**. Shared resources are managed over | ||
| partitions, which is discussed in the software requirements topic below. | ||
| The recommendation for the Data drives must be Solid State Disks (SSD [2]_ disks) | ||
| for best performance or spinning Hard Disk Drives (HDD). | ||
|
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| The memory (RAM) | ||
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | ||
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| Enough RAM is vital to maintaining peak performance. There are several combinations | ||
| of installation sizes but the **recommendation is at least 4Gib for novice administrators**. | ||
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| For best practice you should have 8GiB of RAM for basic operations in default installation. | ||
| and no matter the size, RAM must be configured in Dual Channel mode [8]_ | ||
| inclusivelly if there are little amount of, it will improve performance. | ||
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| Unless other NAS systems the |omv| system can run in at least 1Gib of RAM, but | ||
| of course will need expertise. | ||
|
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| The communication card (NIC) | ||
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | ||
|
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| A NAS system as means is a network oriented system, of course |omv| is the | ||
| most flexible NAS system in the world and allows multiple ways of communication, | ||
| this is becouse |omv| offers several modes of shared resources like RSYNC that | ||
| do not depends on networking. But there are few key points: | ||
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| - The NAS write speed to storage is limited to the speed of your NAS computer NIC card | ||
| - The NAS write speed to storage is limited to the speed of your network | ||
| - Speed of writing to the storage depends on ratio of the number of users accessing it. | ||
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| Full-duplex NICs are recommended, half-duplex NICs typically offer 10/100 Mbit/s | ||
| and storage drives far exceed those speeds but are of course supported by |omv|. | ||
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| Any supported NIC vendor is determined by the support of the operating system | ||
| where |omv| system resides and runs, which is Debian GNU/Linux. | ||
|
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| The architecture (CPU) | ||
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | ||
|
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| We have already denoted in the requirements table the supported architectures or | ||
| processors (which reduces and determines which computers can be used) but this is | ||
| really a reference since it is determined by the support of the operating system | ||
| where |omv| system resides and runs, which is Debian GNU/Linux. | ||
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| Any computer system supported by the common requirements of Debian operating | ||
| system could be an |omv| system installation target. **Currently we supports | ||
| amd64 (x66 64bits), i386 (x86 32bits), ARMv7+ARMv8 (arm64/armel/armhf)**. | ||
|
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| Software requirements | ||
| --------------------- | ||
|
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||
| ====== ================= ============== ============== ======================================= | ||
| Item Software Minimal Best Recommendation | ||
| ====== ================= ============== ============== ======================================= | ||
| OS Debian Linux oldoldstable stable Current stable (plus 1 month released) | ||
| BOOT BIOS,UBOOT,UEFI BIOS,mbr BIOS,gpt Disable Secure boot, gpt table | ||
| SDS HDD,SSD,USB... 2 partitions 3 partitions Root with 120G size, 8G swap size | ||
| DDS HDD,SSD,USB... 1 partition 1 per share One disk or part per shared resource | ||
| NET LAN,WAN,SAN,VPN LAN SAN,PAN,LAN Fiber ipv4, or at least cable LAN | ||
| ====== ================= ============== ============== ======================================= | ||
|
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| The operating system (OS) | ||
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | ||
|
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| The |omv| is a piece of software, it resides and runs under a key software OS | ||
| named Debian GNU/Linux as "the universal operating system" [9]_ | ||
|
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| Supported Debian OS versions can be checked in the :doc:`releases section </releases>` | ||
|
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| While possible to deploy in a virtual environment, depending of the nature of | ||
| virtualization it will degrade the performance access in various ways. Installation | ||
| in LXC or any other container based solution is not supported. | ||
|
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| Whatever the situation, the |omv| assumes that target operating system does not | ||
| have any previous installation of any of the programs used by |omv| dependencies: | ||
|
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||
| ============= ============== ================= ========================================== | ||
| software package related to Observations | ||
| ============= ============== ================= ========================================== | ||
| http server nginx |webui| port 80 must be free at installation | ||
| http system php |webui| only OS php packages wil be used! | ||
| display GUI lighdm,xdm.. Desktop install **Conflicts, any will be deinstalled** | ||
| network man netplan.io Networking network is managed by |omv| with netplan | ||
| ssh server ssh Remote access any configuration will be managed | ||
| mbs server samba Shared drives any configuration will be managed | ||
| quota man quota Quota manage any configuration will be managed | ||
| ============= ============== ================= ========================================== | ||
|
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| The device boot (BOOT) | ||
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | ||
|
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| |omv| will install on any kind of boot device and this will relies on the | ||
| operating system that is Debian. The downloable ISO image ready to use from | ||
| the oficial web page only supports at the moment amd64 with BIOS mode boot. | ||
|
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| The System drive storage (SDS) | ||
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | ||
|
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| The system storage disk will be fully managed and taken over by the |omv| after | ||
| installed. Any brand is supported as is also supported by the Debian system. | ||
| For Flash Drive type storage devices as well as solid state drives being used as | ||
| system storage drives please refer to the last section for technical details. | ||
|
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| In case of the official ISO instalation, will automatically partition the system | ||
| storage disk drive into 3 partitons. Consult the next table for. | ||
|
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| In case of a manual installation on a previous Debian operating system, this | ||
| **drive must have at least two partitions**. Consult the next table for. | ||
|
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| ============ ========== =========== ======================================= | ||
| Partition Min size Best size Mandatory | ||
| ============ ========== =========== ======================================= | ||
| ``/boot`` 256Mib 500Mib Optional, partition used to boot | ||
| ``/`` 4Gi 120Gib Yes, the partition were system install | ||
| ``swap`` 100Mib 16Gib Yes, the partition for virtual ram | ||
| ============ ========== =========== ======================================= | ||
|
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| The Data drive storage (DDS) | ||
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | ||
|
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| The data storage disk will be partially managed by the |omv| after installed, | ||
| and only in customized installation can be a partiton of the same system drive | ||
| storage. | ||
|
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| Each data storage drive will be managed, but regardless of the partitioning | ||
| scheme, all data drive partitions will be mounted at the ``/srv/`` path. | ||
| The **data storage drive must be a different disk drive than the system disk drive** | ||
| where the operating system is installed. **One partition of each data | ||
| drive can handle one or many shared resources.** | ||
|
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||
| ============== ========== =========== ======================================== | ||
| Partition Min size Best size Mandatory | ||
| ============== ========== =========== ======================================== | ||
| ``/srv/<*>`` 100Mib bigger Yes, size as need! example 128Gib | ||
| ============== ========== =========== ======================================== | ||
|
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| Technical notes | ||
| --------------- | ||
|
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| Take into **consideration that as more exquisite the customization as less supported | ||
| could be.**. | ||
|
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| |omv| allows for minimal deployment and use of the system with very minimal | ||
| hardware/software requirements, at the cost of the key knowledge, but other NAS | ||
| systems allow ease of use at the cost of high requirements. |omv| allows both as | ||
| well in a well balanced use cases! [7]_ | ||
|
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| About minimal or custom setups | ||
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | ||
|
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| It can be noted that |omv| system can be installed on just 4Gib of system partition, | ||
| with no more than 1Gib of RAM and using a WiFi or USB connection to access it | ||
| remotely (cos is a NAS system of course), on any small device such as Raspberry | ||
| ones which are ARM, or old i386s machines no matter is those are 32 or 64 bits, | ||
| but of course as more exquisite the configuration more knowledge will be need | ||
| as per `issue comment #131 <https://github.com/openmediavault/openmediavault-docs/issues/131#issuecomment-2546765841>`_. | ||
|
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| Technically OMV can be installed on a single storage disk, this is possible if | ||
| it is done on a previously configured Debian system, with a free partition apart | ||
| from the 3 necessary system partitions, previously formatted and configured. | ||
| Of course this is only possible for skilled linux users. | ||
|
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| Drive Storage technical details | ||
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | ||
|
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| System Drives are not managed as same of Data Drives. System drives are not so | ||
| intensively used, but Data Drives will need triks to extend the useful life. | ||
|
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| If you use a Flash Drive, select one with static wear leveling 6, without this | ||
| the drive will have a very short lifetime. It is also recommended to install and | ||
| activate the Flash Memory plugin. | ||
|
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| In the same Solid State Disk, or rather Drive (SSD) for x86 architectures, is | ||
| usually only recognized properly by the BIOS or UEFI, when in the BIOS/UEFI the | ||
| feature AHCI has been activated for SATA (instead of IDE). Modern computers has | ||
| as default, so that's fine. But on old machines the default might/could be IDE. | ||
| About ARM based computers this are not a problem, when used SATA interfaces, but | ||
| EMMC ones could need tune up cos are threated as Flash drives. | ||
|
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| On SSDs, the cleaning action TRIM is recommended for the good performance in | ||
| the long run. Otherwise it might become slow after some time. Very old SSD's from | ||
| before 2010 usually don't support TRIM. | ||
|
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| On SSDs Hibernation (suspend-to-disk) causes a huge amount of write actions, | ||
| |omv| is a server system so xpected to stay always on or off. | ||
|
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| Partition table technical details | ||
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | ||
|
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| Of course, the supported partition tables will depend on the installation mode, | ||
| and |omv| can handle any type of partition table supported by the Debian operating | ||
| system. This is because to manage shares on new or uninitialized storage drives | ||
| it will need to create partitions or at least read structure of thems. | ||
|
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| If you use a Flash Drive, select one with static wear leveling [6]_, without | ||
| this the drive will have a very short lifetime. It is also recommended to | ||
| install and activate the :ref:`Flash Memory plugin <plugin_3rd_party>`. The | ||
| entire disk is used as system disk and can not be used to store user data. | ||
|
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| .. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paging | ||
| .. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive | ||
| .. [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive#DOM | ||
| .. [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompactFlash | ||
| .. [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_flash_drive | ||
| .. [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_leveling | ||
| .. [7] https://forum.openmediavault.org/index.php?board/29-guides/ | ||
| .. [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-channel_memory_architecture | ||
| .. [9] https://www.debian.org/intro/about.en.html#what |