This guest blog is by Stefano Partida of SPX Labs who has been using Unraid for over 3 years now for video editing and media storage.

The Dell T30 Remote VPN and Backup Server

This will be a lengthy blog about why I went with a Dell T30 instead of something like a Dell R710/720 and what the configuration ended up looking like. Trying to keep length and interests in mind, the reasons “why” we chose a Dell T30 will be towards the bottom and the more gritty details will be towards the top. We will break this into sections: The first being the Remote OpenVPN section, second being the Remote Backup section, and we'll finish up with the Why’s and other thoughts. Let’s dig in!

The Dell T30

Before we can talk about the configuration, we really need to lay out the hardware configuration and host operating system. It is important to understand how we got the Dell T30 to work for us when it isn’t the most ideal server. We got our Dell T30 on sale for $299, so this is the biggest reason why we went with it. This thing goes on sale all the time, maybe once a month, so you may have an opportunity to get one for this price as well.



Full Server Hardware List and Price Paid:

Dell T30 - $299 Xeon 1225 v5 4core/4threads 3.3GHz base, 3.7GHz boost clock



8GB DDR4 ECC RAM

1TB Seagate Barracuda

If you need to know more details, check Dell’s website.

Upgrades to the Dell T30:

FYI: The 10TB EasyStore White Label drive did not work with the Dell T30 due to a SATA 3.3V Pin issue.

Hard Drive Configuration:

Last but not least, an Unraid license. - $ Varies.

Unraid

We will be using Unraid as our OS because the T30 has limited drive space and it is important for me that the OS can run from a USB thumb drive. While there are other distros that can run off a USB thumb drive, there is just something about Unraid that allows you to go from a basic NAS to a server that can do pretty much everything in a few minutes.

Originally, I considered CentOS 7 for this project and doing all of the leg work to mimic Unraid as closely as possible. But, after getting the CentOS 7 webgui working and a container running, I realized just how lazy I have become and stopped. It took me about 3 hours (MAYBE) to get the Dell T30 completely setup with Unraid. That time includes setting up SMB and NFS shares, CentOS and Windows VMs, OpenVPN, and configuring the array and such. You really can’t beat that deployment time. So anyway, it didn’t take me an unreasonable amount of time to determine that I should just buy an Unraid license again.

Remote VPN

Let’s say I’m traveling or just working remotely and decide to connect to the “FBI Surveillance VAN 1” hotspot outside of my hotel. Well, after connecting to the hotspot and using an OpenVPN client, I can route ALL of my internet traffic through my OpenVPN server at home and it’s entirely encrypted. This is important because, let’s say I forgot to pay a bill or need to look at some document that contains personal identifiable information (PII). Having my own VPN helps me ensure that 1: a spoofed Wifi hotspot or shady hotspot isn’t going to magically get my PII, and 2: since I control my VPN I also don’t have to worry about my web crawling being harvested.

In the diagram below, our Client first connects to the Cafe Hotspot. Once the connection is established, we connect to our OpenVPN Server all the way at home. After the connection is established, all internet traffic is encrypted and routed through our OpenVPN Server. We can use the VPN to literally do everything I would normally do on the internet without worrying about any of the data being harvested.

