Setting Up a NAS Solution Running in Debian Linux

Recently, I setup a secondary network-attached storage (NAS) solution at home using a virtual machine rather than a bare metal PC/server as a test platform. The process for setting this up is rather easy and anyone can do it. As I stated here, this is a secondary NAS solution since I already have a 5TB WDMyCloud Personal Cloud which I have had in place in my home running on my LAN now for several years.

I have Virtualbox 6.0 Manager running on my Windows 10 Pro main PC from which I created my virtual environment of an application called OpenMediaVault. This application runs on Debian Linux and can be downloaded from OpenMediaVault's download page. There is a link on this page to the ISO images that you can select from to get started. In my particular test case in Virtualbox 6.0 Manager, I selected the 5.0.5 image. If, however, you are electing to install OpenMediaVault on a Raspberry Pi 3 or 4 device, then you will want to elect to download and install the Raspberry Pi Images onto an SD Card and insert it in the Pi to install and utilize your Raspberry Pi device for this purpose. Since this is a test project for me so I can see how OpenMediaVault works and decide whether I want to use it as a secondary NAS solution, I chose the former rather than the latter ISO image.

Rather than describe all the necessary steps that I used to download, install, and configure OpenMediaVault as a VM in Virtualbox 6.0 Manager on my Windows 10 Pro platform, I will, instead, point you to the video that walks you through the entire process. If you have questions about this process after watching the video, then please leave a comment below this article and I will attempt to answer any questions as I get to them.