If you are thinking of reusing an old computer and turning it into a NAS server, or you have bought a specific hardware to mount your own NAS server, the OpenMediaVault operating system is one of the best options you can choose for it.
This operating system is based on Debian, but its administration is via the web to greatly facilitate the management of all network services, user permissions, and the possibility of installing additional software in an easy and fast way. OpenMediaVault 5 has been released recently, and today in this article we are going to tell you about all the changes introduced in this latest version.
What’s New in OpenMediaVault 5
This new operating system specifically oriented to NAS servers, is based on the latest version of Debian, specifically Debian 10 Buster, so we will have the latest updates to the Linux Kernel, as well as the latest security bug fixes. and improvements in overall system performance.
Some internal changes are that now we can use SaltStack to deploy configurations, using the command ” omv-salt stage run all ” will be in charge of deploying the entire system according to the configuration database, in this new version the command ” omv-salt ” replaces omv-mkconf that we had previously, this command will not only create the configuration files but it is also used to start / stop / restart the different services that we want. The omv-initsystem command has been replaced by omv-confdbadm populate , this command will check the state of the system and synchronize it with the database. Other changes at the internal level are the incorporation of systemd-logind to handle the action of the power button, in addition, we will always have to use systemd to restart, turn off or suspend the system, in addition to using it to configure the network. The ntpd has also been changed to chrony.
An important novelty is that now we will have use of trim for the management of the file system, instead of doing it “online”. Time Machine support with shared folders via SMB / CIFS has also been incorporated.
Main features of OpenMediaVault 5
If you have never used OMV, you should know that it is an operating system with a very intuitive graphical interface that will allow us to have a complete NAS server with a large number of services. We can configure in detail the network, the network services that we want to serve (Samba, FTP, FTPES, SSH, SFTP, Rsync, NFS v3 and NFSv4 among many others), we can also monitor in detail the state of the system, both at the level of hard drives or SSDs, like the full system. Other interesting features are that it allows you to use SNMP to monitor it externally, and even allows you to configure email notifications.
As if this were not enough, we will always be able to install a large number of plugins to increase the functionalities, such as LVM, LDAP directory, AFP, BitTorrent client, a UPS server to monitor the UPS that we have connected, built-in antivirus, Docker, and a host of additional software to get the most out of all the hardware possibilities.
We recommend you access the official website of OpenMediaVault 5 where you will find all the details, you can download OMV 5 from here .
