Home Server and NAS using Raspberry Pi

Mr. Amit Rakesh Shrivastava Prof. Jayant Gadge

M.E. Student, Department of Computer, Associate Professor, Department of Computer,
Thadomal Shahani Engineering College-Mumbai Thadomal Shahani Engineering College-Mumbai
University, University,
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
amitshrivastava1992@yahoo.com jayantrg@gmail.com

Abstract- The growing demand in the market for cloud service providers have benefitted a lot due to
increased storage capacity is mainly because of our this rise in the use of cloud computing services. The
dependency on the Internet. Network Attached Storage cloud service providers have access to a plethora of
(NAS) provides a dedicated file server to manage all data. The access right to this huge amount of data
kinds of files. It is an independent Storage device which comes along with a big risk of the data getting
is connected directly to the network. Due to its exposed either accidentally or purposely.
availability on the network it can be easily accessed by
any number of heterogeneous clients. The proposed approach will provide “Network
Attached Storage” along with functionalities of a
The Network Attached Storage devices readily available Web Server. The main advantage of using a NAS
in the market these days are highly overpriced and do device over a physical storage drive is that, many
not provide much scope for enhancements, another devices can access it at the same time. A USB Disk
aspect which is to be taken into consideration is that in drive provides finite access to only the device to
most instances these devices consume a fair amount of which it is connected; on the other hand the files
power. This proposed approach aims at providing a low which are available on NAS can be accessed by any
cost NAS system which is easy to use and configure. It
computer [3]. In addition to this hosting websites on
also comprises of added security features and Web
the webserver can be done with the help of Apache,
MySQL and PHP.
Server capabilities. It enables you to have round the
clock available storage device which is handy as well as
II. RELATED WORKS
power saving and allows accessibility to data on and off
the network. Due to the exceptional growth of Internet in the past
few years, computing resources are available
Keywords- Network Attached Storage (NAS), everywhere. The existing system uses cloud
heterogeneous clients, web server capabilities, backup computing for data storage. Cloud Computing
destination. Environment consists of two components.
a. Infrastructure Providers: Infrastructure providers
I. INTRODUCTION handle the cloud platforms and rent out resources
Nowadays the storage space in our PCs and Mobile according to usage
devices gets filled up very quickly and the main b. Service Providers: Service providers lease
reasons behind this are high-resolution photos and resources from infrastructure providers and make it
high definition video capture. With the help of an available to end users [4]. In spite of this technology
external storage device we can have a backup of our having many opportunities and applications in
data and also free some space in our hand held today’s world, there still exist a number of challenges
devices by moving data into the external storage. The which need resolution [5].
constraint would to carry the external storage device The biggest challenge faced is the open characteristic
at all times. So if the external storage device is not and multi-tenant nature of the cloud. This technology
available then the data cannot be accessed [1]. has a huge impact in the field of information security.
The various impacts are described in detail below.
Cloud Computing has developed as a new prototype (1) There is no security boundary in this technology
which offers great capabilities to store data remotely. due to features such as dynamic scalability, service
Now a days many companies use cloud for their local abstraction, and location transparency. In addition
data storage [2]. But the use of cloud computing has there is no fixed infrastructure for the applications
also raised some serious concerns on the privacy of and data making it difficult to keep the information
data, as its one of the most important aspects. The secure.

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978-1-5090-6367-3/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE 2270
 (2) There is a need for quick information processing
in this kind of storage because the platform will be
dealing with large amount of data. The security needs
to be in line with this high speed processing.
(3) In this type of system, it is difficult to have a
common security measure as the resources may
belong to multiple providers.
(4) There is a possibility of unauthorized user access
due to the openness of cloud and sharing virtualized
resources by multi-tenant [6].

III. THEORETICAL CONCEPTS

Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level Fig. 1: NAS Layers
computer data storage device that is connected to a
computer network to provide shared drives or folders. 3.2. Storage Network Elements
It is a combination of CPU, Memory, Disk Storage
and Operating System. NAS systems are usually The storage network elements are responsible for
accessed over an IP network. The various concepts establishing direct and indirect connection between
related to the proposed system are as follows: multiple servers and storage devices. There are two
main types of storage elements:
1. Network Attached Storage
1. Hardware Elements
2. Storage Network Elements
2. Software Elements
3. Web Server

Each of these concepts is further explained in detail 3.2.1. Hardware Elements

below.
Hardware elements comprises of three major
3.1. Network Attached Storage (NAS) components:

The most impressive feature about Network Attached A. Host systems

Storage is that the storage of data can be centralized B. Storage systems
even while using heterogeneous operating systems. C. Storage switches.
Fig. 1 shows the various NAS Layers which comprise
of mainly 4 layers: Storage, File System, Networks A. Host Systems:
and Applications. The File System used by NAS is
called Network File System (NFS). The application The Host System is any computer device that is
layer of NAS comprises of various software’s with attached to the storage network to access the storage
the help of which we can connect to the internet. In resources over the network. Fig. 2 describes the host
NAS there is no need for storage devices to be system architecture along with its various
connected directly to a computer instead they can be components. The storage network is connected to the
accessed over a network via TCP/IP, this allows various storage resources via the Network Interface
multiple computers to utilize the same storage space Card. The CPU, main memory and the video adapter
at any given time, thus reducing overhead through are connected on the north bridge whereas the other
centralized management of hard disk. The purpose of peripheral devices are connected on the south bridge.
NAS is to overcome the drawbacks associated with
DAS [7]. They provide data sharing across various
platforms which help organizations to automate and
ease the management of data.

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 Network Attached Storage devices work on the micro
kernel operating system. POSIX (Portable Operating
System Interface) standard has provided a level of
commonality to key operating system components
and has become important as NAS devices expand
beyond UNIX [9].

Fig. 2: Host System Architecture

B. Storage Systems: Fig. 3: Network Storage Components

The basic function of Storage systems is to provide
B. The NAS File System:
storage resources to the network for primary data
store, mirror data store or backup data store. The NAS uses Network File System (NFS). The NFS
storage devices include RAID (Redundant Array of makes use of Remote Procedure Calls (RPC), with
Independent Disks) disk arrays, Just a Bunch of Discs the help of these RPC’s the communication between
(JBOD), tape systems, Network Attached Storage the UNIX Operating System takes place. The system
Systems, optical storage systems, etc. The various encapsulates these functions to allow remote users on
types of interfaces provided by these devices are a network to issue commands to the server’s file
SCSI, Fiber Channel, and Ethernet [8]. system.

C. Storage Switches: C. Storage Software

Storage switches are basic building blocks of storage The storage drivers mainly comprise of the Device
network topology. Each switch consists of several Drivers. This is equally important as it provides
ports interconnected by a switch construct. The basic flexibility to upgrade and support new types of
function of a storage switch is to forward frames devices.
among the ports according to the protocol supported
by the storage network. 3.3. Web Server
The Web Server is hosted using LAMP, named as an
3.2.2. Software Elements acronym because of its four open source components
The Software elements consist of three major which are Linux, Apache, My SQL and PHP. With
components which are discussed in detail below: the help of these components we can easily host a
web server and configure the server as and when
A. The micro-kernel OS required. Linux is an open source operating system
B. NAS file system which forms the heart of the system. Apache acts as
C. Storage software the Web Server, which is also the most widely used
web server software. My SQL is the world’s most
A. The micro-kernel OS: popular open source database which will act as a
backend for our web server. PHP stands for
The main functionalities of an operating system are Hypertext Preprocessor which is a widely used
stored inside the kernel. Fig. 3 describes the various scripting language; it is mainly used for web
network storage components amongst which micro development and can easily be set up with HTML.
kernel is considered to be the most important. Micro
kernel operating systems are usually based on UNIX.

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 IV. ARCHITECTURE OF PROPOSED SYSTEM
The proposed approach makes use of Raspberry Pi 3
device for the implementation of NAS and Web
Server. It is a very tiny general purpose computer
which can be used to do anything that can be done on
a normal computer.
The features and the specification of the Raspberry Pi
3 are mentioned in the Table I below [10]:

TABLE I. RASPBERRY PI 3 CONFIGURATION

Features Specifications
Release Date 29th February 2016
Operating Systems Raspbian, Ubuntu MATE,
Snappy Ubuntu Core,
Windows 10 IoT Core,
RISC OS, Debian, Arch
Linux ARM
System on- chip used Broadcom BCM2837 Phase II
CPU 1.2GHz 64-/32- bit quad-
core ARM Cortex- A53
Phase I
Memory 1 GB LPDDR2 RAM at
900MHz
Storage MicroSDHC slot Fig. 4: Block Diagram for step by step
Graphics Broadcom VideoCore IV implementation of NAS
Power 800 mA (4.0W)
Phase I: Configuring the Raspberry Pi
The architecture of the proposed system can be
Step 1: Install a Linux based operating system (the
described in mainly two phases:
list of operating systems compatible is mentioned in
• Phase I: Configuring the Raspberry Pi
Table I) on the Raspberry Pi device and assign a
• Phase II: Configuring the Router static IP address to it.
Step by step detail of the Architecture is shown in
Fig. 5. Step 2: Installing and configuring Apache, MySQL
PHP and Owncloud on the Linux Operating System.
• Apache is open source web server software.
• My SQL is an open source database.
• PHP is an open source scripting language
which is widely used for web development.
The combination of these software’s together helps
us in facilitating the web server capabilities. We can
additionally also install phpMyAdmin.
• Owncloud is software which helps us in
syncing our files between the Web Server
and the External Storage. It also provides
universal access to the files through a web
interface.

Step 3: Once the previous steps are completed

successfully our web server should be up and
running. In order to verify, open the browser and type
http://127.0.0.1 in the address bar. This will open the
default Apache Default Page. This successfully
completes the Phase I.
Phase II: Configuring the Router

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 Step 1: Sign up on No-ip.com. No-ip.com provides us There are various parameters such as bandwidth
with a free desired hostname just by signing up on usage, jitter, traffic congestion on the network, etc.
their website. This will provide us with a domain which have a direct impact on the speed of internet
name which can be accessed from anywhere on the connection.
Internet. The proposed approach provides security to the
physical drive on which data is stored. It allows the
Step 2: Access the Router’s Configuration Page. In user to access and manage their data from any place
order to make the device accessible from outside remotely.
networks Port forwarding has to be done. The files are kept in sync with the actual Storage i.e.
the changes made in the external storage are updated
Step 3: Dynamic DNS entry to be made on the on a timely basis so that the data which is being
Routers configuration page as per the hostname shown is consistent. Security of data is achieved by
which has been created on No-ip.com. using multiple hard disks to keep a backup of the data
using various levels of RAID. In the proposed system
Once both the phases are completed successfully we the files are uploaded, downloaded and synced via
would be able to access our Webserver along with the Internet, so the transfer speed can only be as fast
NAS and also use the storage space available on it as the upload speed of your Internet connection.
from anywhere.
VI. CONCLUSION
V. RESULTS
The main advantage of having a NAS device which is
The access speeds to the data on NAS have been powered-on 24/7 is that, it becomes very easy to have
calculated for two different internet connections in access to the data from any computer irrespective of
order to compare the upload and download speeds. it being within the network or outside it. By making
The upload and download speeds of the internet use of the proposed system the user is also
connection play a vital role as it determines how fast consuming less amount of power for the
the data can be transferred over the internet. For convenience.
experiment purpose internet connection speed of 2
MBps(megabytes per second) and 10 MBps are REFERENCES
considered. The Tables II and III below shows the
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