Single-Board Computers like the Raspberry Pi may not have the same performance as your behemoth of a gaming PC, but their small form-factor and low power consumption make them perfect for less demanding projects. Heck, you can even build a standalone NAS with your Raspberry Pi – one that can be accessed remotely thanks to its LTE module. If that sounds intriguing, then read on! Here’s a step-by-step guide on how you can put together a remote OpenMediaVault NAS with your Raspberry Pi.

What you’ll need for this project

Although OMV has extremely low system requirements out of all NAS operating systems, you’d want to go with one of the recent mainline Raspberry Pi modules to avoid running into performance bottlenecks. I’ve used my trusty Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB), but you should choose a model with more than 4GB memory if you want to use the ZFS plugin in OMV.

Speaking of, OpenMediaVault technically doesn’t have an ISO file you can flash on the newest member of the Raspberry Pi family. Instead, you’ll have to flash a CLI distro such as Raspberry Pi OS Lite and run some scripts to deploy OMV on top of the operating system.

Considering the Raspberry Pi boards lack SATA connectors, you’ll have to go with external drives for your NAS, though you can technically convert HDDs/SSDs into portable USB drives. For a truly standalone NASberry Pi, you can pair the SBC with an LTE SIM card, and there are a couple of ways to do so.

For instance, you can grab a HAT with an LTE slot, though you’ll have to set up a portable hotspot on the Raspberry Pi to configure OMV. Or, you can take the easy way out and go for a USB dongle like I did.

  • Raspberry Pi 5
    CPU
    Arm Cortex-A76 (quad-core, 2.4GHz)
    Memory
    Up to 8GB LPDDR4X SDRAM
    Operating System
    Raspberry Pi OS (official)
    Ports
    2× USB 3.0, 2× USB 2.0, Ethernet, 2x micro HDMI, 2× 4-lane MIPI transceivers, PCIe Gen 2.0 interface, USB-C, 40-pin GPIO header
    GPU
    VideoCore VII
    Starting Price
    $60
  • Samsung PRO Endurance MicroSDXC Memory Card
  • WD My Book External Hard Drive
  • NFHK WWAN USB Adapter Card

Installing the OpenMediaVault package

Once you’ve acquired all the components, you can start things off by installing OpenMediaVault. I’ve written a detailed guide on configuring the OS, but here’s a quick rundown of the process.

  1. Install PuTTY on a PC before connecting it to the same network (portable hotspot or the WLAN created by the dongle) as your Raspberry Pi.
  2. (Optional) Use the ip addr command to check the IP address of your Raspberry Pi and use it to connect to the SBC over SSH. 
    ip addr
    Alternatively, you can connect a display and keyboard to the Raspberry Pi.
  3. Use the wget command followed by sudo bash to grab and run the OMV preinstall script. 
    wget -O - https://github.com/OpenMediaVault-Plugin-Developers/installScript/raw/master/preinstall | sudo bash
  4. Restart the Raspberry Pi with this command: 
    sudo reboot
  5. If you’re using SSH to access the RPi, reconnect to it and execute this command to install the main OMV package: 
    wget -O - https://github.com/OpenMediaVault-Plugin-Developers/installScript/raw/master/install | sudo bash

Configuring OpenMediaVault

When the script finishes executing, your Raspberry Pi will restart for a second time. Once it does, you’ll notice the OpenMediaVault UI at the top of the interface. However, you’ll have to use another system to access the OMV web UI, which is where the WLAN created by a USB dongle becomes more useful than an LTE module.

Again, I’ve created another tutorial on configuring OpenMediaVault. But if you want a quick breather, here’s a list of things you need to do to make your Raspberry Pi ready for your NAS workloads.

  1. Type the IP address of the Raspberry Pi into your favorite web browser and add admin as the Username and openmediavault as the Password.
  2. Wipe the USB drives you wish to use with your OMV NAS inside the Disks tab.
  3. Use the Storage tab to set a File System for your newly-flashed drive before selecting it inside the Mount section.
  4. Set the same File System as a Shared Folder and enable the SMB Share.
  5. Switch to the User tab and create a new profile for your NAS.
  6. Make sure the new User has the correct privileges for your SMB Share.

Establishing a remote connection with Tailscale

With that, your NAS is ready for your file-sharing needs – as long as you’re on the local network. Services like Wireguard and Tailscale provide an easy means to access your offsite NAS. In fact, there are two ways you can configure Tailscale on your OpenMediaVault setup.

The first method involves setting up a Tailscale container on OMV, which involves enabling the Docker repo inside the omv-extras tab, installing the Compose plugin, and using a .yaml file to deploy the container. Or, you could take the easy way out by setting up Tailscale on top of Raspberry Pi OS. To do so,

  1. Execute the following command inside the Raspberry Pi interface (preferably over SSH). 
    curl -fsSL https://tailscale.com/install.sh | sh
  2. Once the Installation complete message shows up, you can run tailscale up to start the server: 
    sudo tailscale up
  3. Paste the link from the terminal and sign in to your Tailscale account.
  4. You’ll find the newly added Raspberry Pi node under the Machines section alongside the IP address to access the OpenMediaVault NAS.

Assembling an offsite NASberry Pi

By now, you may have noticed that we’re relying on Tailscale’s servers to connect to the Raspberry Pi. I’ve been managing some remote machines using Tailscale’s free tier without any issues, but it might not be the perfect option for privacy-conscious users. Considering the extra hurdles created by CG-NAT when port forwarding your LTE connection, I recommend sticking to Tailscale. So, if you want a completely self-hosted solution, you can try running a Wireguard or Headscale server on your NASberry Pi.