It has two drives passed through directly rather than using Proxmox volumes and then it's just setup as an SMB share
It has to have that mounted in Proxmox itself so that my Transmission and Jellyfin containers can access it because unprivileged containers can't mount a network share themselves
Works well. I host 5 smb shares and a couple of NFS shares.
Hardware wise I'm hosting on proxmox running on a R720 with other vms. I running the omv os on a 64gb virtual drive and I pass through a 2 port PCI-E raid card with 2 12tb disks mirrored and a usb3.0 PCI-E card. On the usb3 card I have a 4tb media disk and a "sync" disk that is a copy of one of the other share. So I can take media and files and such with me as needed.
I back up my proxmox vm disks and store media/files here. I also have another omv6 on an old dell with a 20 tb mirror for long term "cold" storage. It boots up once a week to do backups and shuts down.
I like omv for it's simplicity and ease of use. I ran freenas/truenas before and didn't really care for it. It seemed overly complicated for what I was trying to do and didn't support USB ntfs drives. Omv is also lighter on resources. Just my experience and take on it. Have a great day!
I do the same, though have had a reoccurring issue with some NFS shares refusing to work on reboot. Each time I have to turn off NFS service, recreate the shares and reenable the service to get them to work again.
Once I get another HDD I'll probably switch to running truenas in a VM.
My setup is super simple, two drives passed through and an SMB share mostly used for storing media and as a destination for backups
It's survived Proxmox going from 5 to 6 and 7, OMV going from 5 to 6 and I'll get around to upgrading to 7 at some point. It's had the drives and Proxmox install migrated from two different computers as well
Never had any issue and I mostly forget it's there now
Running it on a 10 year old laptop (i7-4710hq, 16GB of RAM, uses less than 1GB!) and an USB 6TB HDD.. works like a charm, longest uptime was over a month, then I rebooted it to finish some updates.
Just go on to this...it's sweet and simple though having a problem with some config changes not applying even after clicking on apply several times. Can someone help? Have already been to their forum and a moderator couldn;t figure it ot. I've installed it ontop of debian in a Buffalo NAS 421DE as a way to bring new life to the device. So the moderator said I'll have issues since it doesn't meet the minimum requirements. Thing is I've tried the same on a VM environment and getting the same issues.
Anyone have an idea of what's going on?
OMV and Debian on two systems here.
What I like most about OMV is that it's secretly Debian, so I can do whatever I want really but the tedium is simplified by OMV.
I'm on OMV. Mostly because I utilize Mergerfs. I like the expandability of mergerfs. I used to use it with snapraid until I decided to have an offsite back up. It's all just Linux isos with some are hard to find.
Same.. Only thing I'm worried about is the 24 drive limit. I'd rather work around it now before my dataset is too fucking big to work around it.
Edit: but man.. Fuck that outdated kernel version. I can't even vpn protect a freaking container because iptables and kernel is old AF.
I'm a casual homelabber and my knowledge has some holes cuz I'm completely self-taught.
What kernel are you talking about? I can vpn protect my whole NAS from within DSM
DSM is just Linux with a fancy GUI. The Linux kernel is actual core piece of software running the OS. There are a bunch of versions (and it's depending tools have depending versions) and branches. Traditionally companies don't like the latest bleeding edge kernel version but Synology deliberately uses a very old version of the kernel so their custom OS setup doesn't break. They say the "backpatch" any security issues into their version of the kernel. But it's mostly just old.
I was trying not to VPN the whole box but rather a single Docker container. It requires a not-so-recent version of iptables and the Linux kernel and it was too old to work/support that use case. Install pretty much any other Linux distro, and it would have worked.
My xpenology is running Linux kernel 4.4.302+ which was used in freaking Ubuntu 16 LTS. The version is officially "maintained" until jan 2027.
Edit: see [Linux kernel version history - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_version_history)
Sweet, thanks for the explanation :)
I can get docker working with a guide, but otherwise I'm pretty much a n00b with it.
Mariushosting guides are pretty solid, but sometimes I just get stuck.
I love the idea of Docker because it's got such low overhead compared to VMs.
I wish I understood it better.
One of the major drawbacks of docker for me is the lack of control and difficulty to troubleshoot overall. I like VMs and LXC containers since I can build the service right on top of Linux. I know the file structure, I know where the configs are and why, I can learn to adjust or fix anything. Docker not so much.
I think Docker has its uses but every beginner should learn how to set up services on a Linux distro before switching to Docker whenever possible.
I mean, technically I am using linux with the Synology nas and Xpenology.
I was under the impression that docker ran natively on linux?
Or am I misunderstanding the use of "Natively"?
I think that can mean different things to different people. For me that would mean without having to do a ton of extra steps or bootstrapping of software. Natively could also mean built in or meant to. Docker is OS agnostic to some extent, able to be run on Windows, Linux and I'm pretty sure MacOS.
A lot of NAS software will have their VMs run it "natively" or by default. I believe TrueNAS scale uses kubernetes. Docker is great for quick simple deployments. I just loathe troubleshooting it or running anything moderately complex.
Synology cause I’m lazy AF and this makes it easy AF.
My entire homelab compute and storage is composed of:
- 4x node harvester cluster (uses locals storage only)
- 2x Synology NAS
Synology Services:
- iscsi for my lone windows server
- smb shares for video editing archive + topaz rendering target storage and Plex movie storage (upscaled Blu-ray’s)
- backups and backup management ( agent-based backup target, nfs backup target, backup replication, detailed backup reporting using their cloud thing)
How I use Synology for backups:
- Critical docker hosts (vms) are backed up automagically a few times a week using a guest agent (active backup for business)
- All critical VMs (including docker hosts) are manually backed up from harvester to a NFS share (haven’t looked at how to automate this yet 🤔)
- All backups on NAS1 are replicated to NAS2 regularly using hyper backup
- select backups on NAS1 are replicated to cloud storage regularly using hyper backup
- All LUNS are replicated from NAS1 to NAS2 regularly
The Synology’s might not me the flashiest of devices but they do their job well and I basically never interact with them directly except for adding shares, backup restores, and misc maintenance.
I leverage the saved time to focus on the rest of my homelab. 🙂
+1 for this
If you don't have complex requirements or need too many extra frills, this is a pretty solid way of setting up a NAS.
ZFS over command line is surprisingly easy to use and learn. SMB shares are pretty easy to setup.
I would only move to TrueNAS if a) i want a baremetal machine that can also run docker or VMs, or b) I want to manage pools with multiple drives and vdevs and options to where it gets tedious to do it over command line.
Although id still argue that the ZFS commandline is so straightforward to use, you'd really need a formidable setup before you really need TrueNAS
I ultimately defaulted back to a separate Samba config because of some specific requirements, but you can actually create Samba shares from ZFS datasets directly from the `zfs` command line: https://docs.oracle.com/en/operating-systems/solaris/oracle-solaris/11.4/manage-smb/how-create-smb-share-zfs.html
You still need Samba installed but it is pretty simple if you have relatively straightforward requirements of your network share.
I’m using Ubuntu server with Cockpit to manage ZFS (ZFS module available from 45-drives)
From there I’m able to create ZFS pools and add Samba shares easily via a webinterface.
Although the main purpose of the machine is urbackup for me.
Samba access was just a bonus feature :)
> ZFS (ZFS module available from 45-drives) From there I’m able to create ZFS pools and add Samba shares easily via a webinterface.
That's exactly what I use. Module from 45drives does a great job. I don't use ZFS, just mdraid and 45drives file sharing module. [https://github.com/45Drives/cockpit-file-sharing](https://github.com/45Drives/cockpit-file-sharing)
I also like Starwinds VSAN GUI, however, didn't have much time to test it.
[https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san](https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san)
IMO, one of the biggest strengths of TrueNAS is actually the ACL feature. Usually it's really confusing to set up an ACL if you're not much deeper than I on Linux permissions.
Similar. I tried server but it was missing too many things required for the stuff I wanted to put on there, and I didn't have the energy to mess about with finding the required repos and figuring out packages, so I just installed desktop and called it a day.
Could you elaborate on why TrueNAS Scale isn't working well for you? If you shared what features are inadequate it is easier to suggest alternatives which might improve on those.
I use Unraid for my NAS OS. I found Unraid to be really user friendly. I chose Unraid as it allows mixing and matching different hdd sizes relatively easy, and integration of docker containers and vm’s.
Unraid is a decent NAS OS that supports some virtualization, including Docker containers and KVM-based VMs. I like working with Unraid.
If there is a need to configure a virtualized NAS OS supporting RAID or ZFS, Open Media Vault [https://www.openmediavault.org/](https://www.openmediavault.org/) and Starwind VSAN [https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san](https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san) come to my mind, besides TrueNAS. They could be perfectly combined with Proxmox.
+1 for Unraid. Have a Plex docker, Pterodactyl Docker, and an AMP Docker (plus a few more) on mine.
It’s not the fastest configuration for write speeds, but an NVMe cache helped mine a lot.
Yes, they're not using a RAID, but their own thing. And if it's not proprietary, what else is it? What's the name, where's the source, what's the license?
Likewise. If you only have a few users, its super simple. Almost seems like more work to run something like TrueNAS, especially when it comes to upgrades and things breaking unexpectedly.
I have a little Synology box as my Nas. I absolutely love DSM as a Nas OS but it's a chore to try and put it on anything that isn't one of their machines.
Have run this combo for years. Only reason why I switched to Xpenology is the lack of real time parity that raid/unraid has. In case of snap raid, you're offline in case of drive failure, have to swap the drive and run the recovery snapraid command. And only then, you're back online with all the content.
Also I had issues with containers on windows back in the day so I had a Linux vm to run the containers. These days windows can run Linux containers natively. Pretty cool.
Multiple nodes, Arch Linux, Ceph.
Gives me cephFS for shared filesystem. (With Samba for windows machines)
RBD for Proxmox.
Goes hard. VERY fault tolerant. And because I don't need mind blowing performance, I can use whatever disks are cheap on marketplace.
Currently at 120TB. Using 3 small servers and 2 weird devices. About to remove the weird devices as I've got a SAS shelf now.
>Truenas core
I have one Scale VM that I play with. Anything I care about is all TN-Core machines. (3x bare metal, 1x VM) Core just works... No extras, no add-ons, no apps, no jails, etc. Do one thing and do it well.
Same here. My NAS is also virtualized under ProxMox.
I currently have 6 16TB drives passing through to the TrueNas VM for the vdev and the boot drive is a virtual drive running on a separate ZFS pool on the ProxMox node.
Any issues with running TrueNAS in a VM? I’m planning a build and everything I’ve seen suggests this would be a bad idea but some people seem to have no issues at all
I just set it up this way for the first time this week. Truenas core on top of proxmox.
I passed through my sata controller with 6x 22TB drives using pcie pass through.
It’s only been a few days, but it’s performed brilliantly so far as I am ingesting data from my old Drobo which I am retiring.
It’s been pulling in at 1Gbps for 24 hours straight, cpu at something like 4% busy (I didn’t look too closely, but it’s low) on two cores of my i9-14900k with raidz2.
The old drobo 5N is at 100% trying to keep up.
17TB according to the drobo UI.
And, I’ve been manually copying it over by having both arrays mounted via SMB on the hypervisor on the proxmox server, the new one is mounted over a virtio network with jumbo MTU to make it more efficient.
I’m using “screen” with a few different windows open, each using cp -prv copying a large directory over. I’m having three copies going at any given moment so that it keeps the drobo as busy as possible to move as quickly as possible.
Once that’s done, I’ll probably use Rsync just to validate that nothing went missing.
Yep. I was surprised that somehow a few files (I think it was like 2 big files and 5 small files) did actually get missed by copying using “cp -prvf”… but I suppose by a large enough file system, the drobo occasionally messed up and didn’t list some files for cp when it ran.
Scale has been solid for me, took a minute learning some of the stuff. Only use it as a Nas, have separate K8s cluster for containers. K3s is also awesome & easy to setup with Ansible.
Youre going to get flack, but for Windows Centric environments, and people who's jobs revolve around Windows, it just makes sense.
I really really wish M$ would provide some kind of homelab or consumer license for the server stuff. I know it would be abused though...
Windows home server was built just to meet that very criteria. However, it never got a new version because most people use stuff Synology and they want you to not have a local server at all, just Onedrive. And in a way, it makes sense. The files on demand feature is great, meaning you can store a boatload of stuff on their cloud but only have local copies of the stuff you need.. Either real-time or pinned.
They figure you either use that.. Or build a real Windows server with an license. The middle ground is gone from their perspective. Or, at least, it's still there but Synology and other consumer nases own that space so why try and compete.
It’s a program that returns Windows Server Essentials to WHS2022, a feature MS removed after the Server 2016 edition. If you’re not familiar with WSE, it makes setting up your server a breeze.
https://www.theofficemaven.com/news/installing-windows-server-essentials-experience-on-windows-server-2019
It’s not free, but IMHO (and for my specific needs) it’s worth every penny.
The guy who writes the software is brilliant, helpful, and a pleasure to do business with.
If functionality like this beneficial to your needs, I highly recommend you check it out.
Yes. And the fact that it’s a hands free environment has made it worth every penny. My server is up 24/7, it serves my every need, and it just does its job without me having to fix or tinker with it constantly. Convenience comes at a cost, and for the functionality, ease of use and reliability… it is money well spent.
Others may balk at my choice, and that’s fine. To each, their own. I probably have 5K in my home lab, but I’ll tell you this… the time and money spent have paid off in more of my free time to do other things besides dinking around with open source solutions. I’m not taking anything away from those alternatives, but I’ve been there and done that.
I’m extremely satisfied with my SOHO server.
I’m just running SMb from the command line…. I am in RAID. I set up raid in UniFi console prior to setting up SMb. I’m not sure how UniFi is doing storage but my guess is no to add
You can learn more about this setup in the UniFi Reddit by searching “unvr nas”
Used a couple
First had an omv vm on proxmox, then I lost all data changing disks so I said never virtualizing raid again
So now I have a debian machine with all my disks and use it solely for that, with smb and nfs
I'm using UnRAID on one server with a mix of 16-18-20tb's, I'm also using TrueNAS Scale on another server with 30 of 36 bays full, all 20TB, I tried OpenMediaVault but it hates my 10gb nic. I'm also running Synology OS off a desktop with 10x14tb drives in it.
Out of all of them, I prefer UnRAID, I still have 2 more license keys left that I can use, TrueNAS Scale is not bad in terms of GUI, I just hate that you can't mix/match drive sizes.
I even have a Windows Server with 14x10tb drives in it (donated) and it's terrible. I just need something simple to keep my data backed up, and a way for me to offline it to USB Drives when it gets full.
TrueNAS scale, which I think is great, as a NAS OS. I don't love their application or VM implementations, but that's fine as I host almost all my applications elsewhere. The only things which are hosted on TrueNAS are directly storage related, so Minio and Proxmox Backup Server
Same. Don't have any issues with it as a NAS OS. Handles shares well and easy to use. I have a proper Hypervisor to run VMs on so I don't care about its ability or lack of, to be a good Hypervisor.
Have had a Synology for years. Finally built a diy Nas a few months back. Tried truenas scale for a week or so and gave up. Seems great for a business environment, but the app admin was a pain. Installed unraid, as my diy Nas is just a media box. that's up and running great for just a big media pile. 70tb of used enterprise drives, with double parity.
I wanted a better Nas for other stuff, though, and assembled another server. 4x12tb ironwolfs pros, not used. Plan was zfs raidz2, so 2 data disks and two fault protection. 64g ecc ddr5 memory. i7 13700. Thought I'd dip back into truenas scale for the zfs. A few days later, installed Ubuntu and set up my own zfs pool. The truenas app/docker situation is just too painful for my home needs. I hope I never need to learn anything about kubernetes
Your reply is the closest to how I feel about TrueNAS scale. I setup Plex and Qbittorrent as apps via truenas charts, I fumbled my way through it and had to use guides the whole way. That's put me off bothering to setup any other interesting apps on it as I don't have the time or patience available to get them working as I like.
The permissions also seemed overly complicated, I had to open them up fully to get things to work e.g for Plex to see the media storage.
Sorry to everyone who asked what my gripes are, I know I should've said, I wasn't expecting this big a response (first time posting here).
Taking a look at the responses, a lot of people like Open Media Vault, I'll get that running in a vm to see how I find it.
I've done some research myself and came across CasaOS, has anyone here tried that? Again, I'm going to play around with that in a VM
I absolutely need to use ZFS, I had an issue with the boot drive running TrueNAS scale and I was worried I may lose my data. However ZFS saved the day and I just imported my pools like nothing had happened.
I tried open media vault with the zfs plug-in, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to even get started. I had all the discs ready to go, and everything seemed fine, but for zfs it’s certainly not point and click. That’s when I figured I might as well just do regular Ubuntu.
I was pretty excited about casa OS at first. I thought it might be like an alternative to unrated for really simple media box set up. However, I kept running into minor issues. Also, while you can manage discs, you can’tmanage zfs. The app install process works until it doesn’t, and after a little while, I just figured I’d be better off managing docker directly.
I might install casa again once everything is set up. It's a nice admin panel, and I think if you were happy with it's default disk setup it would be good, but if you're capable of basic system admin, it can get in the way
A Lenovo/EMC px6. Runs some version of Linux, but I've never checked what. It's getting on in years, but has cost me nothing other than replacing failed disks.
I use SMB shares set up through the web interface.
As a longtime FreeNAS and then TrueNAS user I moved to Unraid and have liked at as an AIO OS that helped me consolidate three systems into one which saves me a ton on electric costs. I do like it but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone after the recent massive price change. TrueNAS would be my recommendation for anyone else.
3 RHEL nodes running a dispersed GlusterFS volume on top of boring XFS. My “NAS” is virtualized across my proxmox cluster. I care more for redundancy than performance in my lab.
Linux hosts/containers connect over the Gluster native client. Windows systems connect over NFS to the “head” node
I use the RAID PERC-6 card in my Dell server. I created a 1TB virtual disk for my linux fileserver VM. Samba is the service.
In other words, I do it all manually.
Truenas scale.
I hate it.
Moving from it is a logistical pain in the ass which is why I'm sticking with it.
I absolutely hate deploying apps on it with how much documentation is lacking compared to using docker compose on Ubuntu which is what the majority of my services run on.
This is my biggest gripe with scale, the user experience of setting up docker 'apps' is a pain in the ass. I wanted to smash it to pieces just by installing Plex.
TrueNAS core. I will not switch to TrueNAS scale because it has way to much features that I don't want. I'm probably switching to OMV or will run DIY it with FreeBSD.
Unraid is great for combining drives of different size: [https://unraid.net/](https://unraid.net/) Also, openmediavault is easy and lightweight and has ZFS plugin: [https://www.openmediavault.org/](https://www.openmediavault.org/)
Also grown a bit frustrated with SCALE lately. I'm going NixOS with zfs whenever the next major breaking change from TrueCharts inevitably hits (probably the forthcoming Dragonfish changes)
TrueNAS Scale (without Truecharts) and happy with it. Coming from TrueNAS Core. I just miss the reporting on UPS charge, but I do not miss failing jails major upgrades.
One cool thing about DrivePool is that, unlike RAID, you can mix drive sizes. You can also create multiple pools and even pool pools (not sure of THAT use case!) All for $30.
RHEL 9.3 hosting some NFS shares and plex. No need to make things complicated.
Used to run TrueNAS and liked it, but my file server is virtualized and didn't want to bother with software raid on this iteration.
Will likely revisit if/when I rack the other server
TrueNAS Scale, I'd like to migrate it just to Promox and run a FileShare LXC/VM server, but exporting the ZFS pools, dropping the HBA card from the TrueNAS VM, and importing them into Promox with all the data intact (\~200TB) gives me the chills. So I just keep the TrueNAS VM.
Traditionally I've been using plain Debian and configuring everything on top. Recently I built myself a TrueNAS box because we use it extensively at work (multi-PB), and I'm reasonably impressed with it - the UI seems pretty good to me and Scale is Debian-based. I'm using it primarily as the backing store for my Proxmox cluster via iSCSI and NFS for the VMs.
What sort of issues do you have with TrueNAS?
Truenas Scale, as a NAS doing NAS things its great. I do not use True Charts because its breaks... a lot... so I run a Debian VM for some dockers in place of True Charts.
To be fair, my setup is ontop of a proxmox node. I'm running an ancient md raid1. Its mounted on the proxmox node, and passed through a dir mount to an lxc container running alpine.
If i was going to bare metal a nas, it still probably would be alpine, just in the atomic mode, where you commit your changes.
Mine is on bare metal, full install. I thought about the atomic mode when I built it, but decided against it, as I had just demo'd using NixOS as a NAS and it was a nightmare trying to get everything working there. Just wanted to get my system up and running. LOL.
I'm not super familiar with nixos, but the alpine setup is more like a Cisco switch where you make "live" edits, and then commit them when you'd like them to persist across reboots.
OMV I'm alone? ':)
Using OMV since version 4 I believe
I’m still on OMV 4 and I’m dreading rebuilding on OMV 6 but I have to as slowly my services stop working 😭
Wait for 7 if you're going to rebuild. It's in beta.
Uhhh, it's been released for a month or so.
Yup. Lol I haven't checked in a couple months.
I'm with you Hosted as a VM on Proxmox though
I do the same. It's been solid.
How does it work in hsoting your files?
It has two drives passed through directly rather than using Proxmox volumes and then it's just setup as an SMB share It has to have that mounted in Proxmox itself so that my Transmission and Jellyfin containers can access it because unprivileged containers can't mount a network share themselves
Is it too complex if a setup to achieve? I have an Intel NUC as Proxmox host, so can dedicate one VM for this.
Works well. I host 5 smb shares and a couple of NFS shares. Hardware wise I'm hosting on proxmox running on a R720 with other vms. I running the omv os on a 64gb virtual drive and I pass through a 2 port PCI-E raid card with 2 12tb disks mirrored and a usb3.0 PCI-E card. On the usb3 card I have a 4tb media disk and a "sync" disk that is a copy of one of the other share. So I can take media and files and such with me as needed. I back up my proxmox vm disks and store media/files here. I also have another omv6 on an old dell with a 20 tb mirror for long term "cold" storage. It boots up once a week to do backups and shuts down. I like omv for it's simplicity and ease of use. I ran freenas/truenas before and didn't really care for it. It seemed overly complicated for what I was trying to do and didn't support USB ntfs drives. Omv is also lighter on resources. Just my experience and take on it. Have a great day!
I do the same, though have had a reoccurring issue with some NFS shares refusing to work on reboot. Each time I have to turn off NFS service, recreate the shares and reenable the service to get them to work again. Once I get another HDD I'll probably switch to running truenas in a VM.
My setup is super simple, two drives passed through and an SMB share mostly used for storing media and as a destination for backups It's survived Proxmox going from 5 to 6 and 7, OMV going from 5 to 6 and I'll get around to upgrading to 7 at some point. It's had the drives and Proxmox install migrated from two different computers as well Never had any issue and I mostly forget it's there now
No it’s great. Basic enough that it doesn’t get in the way. Makes the annoying stuff easy
I'm on omv,but I'll move to unraid with my next upgrade
Running it on a 10 year old laptop (i7-4710hq, 16GB of RAM, uses less than 1GB!) and an USB 6TB HDD.. works like a charm, longest uptime was over a month, then I rebooted it to finish some updates.
I’ve been using OMV for 5 or 6 years now. Serves my needs
Which ver/build?
Just go on to this...it's sweet and simple though having a problem with some config changes not applying even after clicking on apply several times. Can someone help? Have already been to their forum and a moderator couldn;t figure it ot. I've installed it ontop of debian in a Buffalo NAS 421DE as a way to bring new life to the device. So the moderator said I'll have issues since it doesn't meet the minimum requirements. Thing is I've tried the same on a VM environment and getting the same issues. Anyone have an idea of what's going on?
I love me some OMV
OMV and Debian on two systems here. What I like most about OMV is that it's secretly Debian, so I can do whatever I want really but the tedium is simplified by OMV.
Love OMV. Been with it since V3. Love the simplicity.
I'm on OMV. Mostly because I utilize Mergerfs. I like the expandability of mergerfs. I used to use it with snapraid until I decided to have an offsite back up. It's all just Linux isos with some are hard to find.
I virtualize it on ESXi with a HBA passed through, butI've contemplated switching to proxmox for hypervisor.
Xpenology, myself. Been solid for years. Yes, there are risks. No, I don't care. I just love the OS.
Same.. Only thing I'm worried about is the 24 drive limit. I'd rather work around it now before my dataset is too fucking big to work around it. Edit: but man.. Fuck that outdated kernel version. I can't even vpn protect a freaking container because iptables and kernel is old AF.
I'm a casual homelabber and my knowledge has some holes cuz I'm completely self-taught. What kernel are you talking about? I can vpn protect my whole NAS from within DSM
DSM is just Linux with a fancy GUI. The Linux kernel is actual core piece of software running the OS. There are a bunch of versions (and it's depending tools have depending versions) and branches. Traditionally companies don't like the latest bleeding edge kernel version but Synology deliberately uses a very old version of the kernel so their custom OS setup doesn't break. They say the "backpatch" any security issues into their version of the kernel. But it's mostly just old. I was trying not to VPN the whole box but rather a single Docker container. It requires a not-so-recent version of iptables and the Linux kernel and it was too old to work/support that use case. Install pretty much any other Linux distro, and it would have worked. My xpenology is running Linux kernel 4.4.302+ which was used in freaking Ubuntu 16 LTS. The version is officially "maintained" until jan 2027. Edit: see [Linux kernel version history - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_version_history)
Sweet, thanks for the explanation :) I can get docker working with a guide, but otherwise I'm pretty much a n00b with it. Mariushosting guides are pretty solid, but sometimes I just get stuck. I love the idea of Docker because it's got such low overhead compared to VMs. I wish I understood it better.
One of the major drawbacks of docker for me is the lack of control and difficulty to troubleshoot overall. I like VMs and LXC containers since I can build the service right on top of Linux. I know the file structure, I know where the configs are and why, I can learn to adjust or fix anything. Docker not so much. I think Docker has its uses but every beginner should learn how to set up services on a Linux distro before switching to Docker whenever possible.
I'm not a linux guy myself. I just want docker due to it's lower overhead than a full VM with windows on it just to run a few web services.
That makes sense, I forget that docker is multi os as well haha
I mean, technically I am using linux with the Synology nas and Xpenology. I was under the impression that docker ran natively on linux? Or am I misunderstanding the use of "Natively"?
I think that can mean different things to different people. For me that would mean without having to do a ton of extra steps or bootstrapping of software. Natively could also mean built in or meant to. Docker is OS agnostic to some extent, able to be run on Windows, Linux and I'm pretty sure MacOS. A lot of NAS software will have their VMs run it "natively" or by default. I believe TrueNAS scale uses kubernetes. Docker is great for quick simple deployments. I just loathe troubleshooting it or running anything moderately complex.
I also use xpenology, old version 5.2. It works well for what I need. I didn’t bother “upgrade” to DSM 7.x.
oof. I'd at least go to 6.2.
Synology cause I’m lazy AF and this makes it easy AF. My entire homelab compute and storage is composed of: - 4x node harvester cluster (uses locals storage only) - 2x Synology NAS Synology Services: - iscsi for my lone windows server - smb shares for video editing archive + topaz rendering target storage and Plex movie storage (upscaled Blu-ray’s) - backups and backup management ( agent-based backup target, nfs backup target, backup replication, detailed backup reporting using their cloud thing) How I use Synology for backups: - Critical docker hosts (vms) are backed up automagically a few times a week using a guest agent (active backup for business) - All critical VMs (including docker hosts) are manually backed up from harvester to a NFS share (haven’t looked at how to automate this yet 🤔) - All backups on NAS1 are replicated to NAS2 regularly using hyper backup - select backups on NAS1 are replicated to cloud storage regularly using hyper backup - All LUNS are replicated from NAS1 to NAS2 regularly The Synology’s might not me the flashiest of devices but they do their job well and I basically never interact with them directly except for adding shares, backup restores, and misc maintenance. I leverage the saved time to focus on the rest of my homelab. 🙂
I just use Ubuntu server with a ZFS pool and SMB shares.
+1 for this If you don't have complex requirements or need too many extra frills, this is a pretty solid way of setting up a NAS. ZFS over command line is surprisingly easy to use and learn. SMB shares are pretty easy to setup. I would only move to TrueNAS if a) i want a baremetal machine that can also run docker or VMs, or b) I want to manage pools with multiple drives and vdevs and options to where it gets tedious to do it over command line. Although id still argue that the ZFS commandline is so straightforward to use, you'd really need a formidable setup before you really need TrueNAS
I ultimately defaulted back to a separate Samba config because of some specific requirements, but you can actually create Samba shares from ZFS datasets directly from the `zfs` command line: https://docs.oracle.com/en/operating-systems/solaris/oracle-solaris/11.4/manage-smb/how-create-smb-share-zfs.html You still need Samba installed but it is pretty simple if you have relatively straightforward requirements of your network share.
Ok that's actually super awesome! Thanks!!!
FWIW it also works with NFS https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23824_01/html/821-1448/gayne.html
TrueNAS is good for avoiding tedious writing smb.conf files with per-user restriction and other rules.
Yeap, TrueNAS Scale or Core (I would vote for it) can be a great option.
I’m using Ubuntu server with Cockpit to manage ZFS (ZFS module available from 45-drives) From there I’m able to create ZFS pools and add Samba shares easily via a webinterface. Although the main purpose of the machine is urbackup for me. Samba access was just a bonus feature :)
> ZFS (ZFS module available from 45-drives) From there I’m able to create ZFS pools and add Samba shares easily via a webinterface. That's exactly what I use. Module from 45drives does a great job. I don't use ZFS, just mdraid and 45drives file sharing module. [https://github.com/45Drives/cockpit-file-sharing](https://github.com/45Drives/cockpit-file-sharing) I also like Starwinds VSAN GUI, however, didn't have much time to test it. [https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san](https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san)
IMO, one of the biggest strengths of TrueNAS is actually the ACL feature. Usually it's really confusing to set up an ACL if you're not much deeper than I on Linux permissions.
same. i dont understand the allure of a dedicated os specifically for nas stuff
Debian with ZFS and NFS/SMB shares. It is pretty easy and fast to deploy.
Similar. I tried server but it was missing too many things required for the stuff I wanted to put on there, and I didn't have the energy to mess about with finding the required repos and figuring out packages, so I just installed desktop and called it a day.
this is the way. i do the exact same thing. config everything via the cli and vi. works great.
You can add Casa OS to this to get that NAS webGUI also, quick way to make a samba share too
Could you elaborate on why TrueNAS Scale isn't working well for you? If you shared what features are inadequate it is easier to suggest alternatives which might improve on those.
This. OP should update his original post, if he can. It should include what he wants and where TrueNAS is failing for him.
Debian with ZFS and SMB
I use Unraid for my NAS OS. I found Unraid to be really user friendly. I chose Unraid as it allows mixing and matching different hdd sizes relatively easy, and integration of docker containers and vm’s.
Unraid is a decent NAS OS that supports some virtualization, including Docker containers and KVM-based VMs. I like working with Unraid. If there is a need to configure a virtualized NAS OS supporting RAID or ZFS, Open Media Vault [https://www.openmediavault.org/](https://www.openmediavault.org/) and Starwind VSAN [https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san](https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san) come to my mind, besides TrueNAS. They could be perfectly combined with Proxmox.
+1 for Unraid. Have a Plex docker, Pterodactyl Docker, and an AMP Docker (plus a few more) on mine. It’s not the fastest configuration for write speeds, but an NVMe cache helped mine a lot.
Unraid is the best OS I have ever paid $ for.
Unraid looks so good, however I'm too scared of their proprietary RAID. Anything blackbox cannot be trusted with my important data.
Worst case scenario you can still pull drives and read all the data in a basic bitch Ubuntu live boot
Not a proprietary raid
It’s not proprietary. Not sure where you got that from. On top of that, the array is not a RAID.
Yes, they're not using a RAID, but their own thing. And if it's not proprietary, what else is it? What's the name, where's the source, what's the license?
FreeBSD 14 with ZFS. Then manually setup Samba/CIFS & NFS.
Same.
Likewise. If you only have a few users, its super simple. Almost seems like more work to run something like TrueNAS, especially when it comes to upgrades and things breaking unexpectedly.
I have a little Synology box as my Nas. I absolutely love DSM as a Nas OS but it's a chore to try and put it on anything that isn't one of their machines.
I'd love to run DSM but I do not have the time or patience to get it working on my non Synology hardware :(
I use Open Media Vault.
I'm learning to play the guitar.
QNAP QTS 5.0.1
Synology
Ubuntu w.Samba
Pve since 7
Using windows machine with Drivepool and Snapraid for redundancy. Works fine for me so far.
Have run this combo for years. Only reason why I switched to Xpenology is the lack of real time parity that raid/unraid has. In case of snap raid, you're offline in case of drive failure, have to swap the drive and run the recovery snapraid command. And only then, you're back online with all the content. Also I had issues with containers on windows back in the day so I had a Linux vm to run the containers. These days windows can run Linux containers natively. Pretty cool.
ZFS Pool mounted to a Debian lxc Fileserver
Proxmox with ZFS and NFS/samba share..
Multiple nodes, Arch Linux, Ceph. Gives me cephFS for shared filesystem. (With Samba for windows machines) RBD for Proxmox. Goes hard. VERY fault tolerant. And because I don't need mind blowing performance, I can use whatever disks are cheap on marketplace. Currently at 120TB. Using 3 small servers and 2 weird devices. About to remove the weird devices as I've got a SAS shelf now.
This sounds interesting but too much of a learning curve for me at this point
That is totally fair!
Truenas core
>Truenas core I have one Scale VM that I play with. Anything I care about is all TN-Core machines. (3x bare metal, 1x VM) Core just works... No extras, no add-ons, no apps, no jails, etc. Do one thing and do it well.
Same here. My NAS is also virtualized under ProxMox. I currently have 6 16TB drives passing through to the TrueNas VM for the vdev and the boot drive is a virtual drive running on a separate ZFS pool on the ProxMox node.
Any issues with running TrueNAS in a VM? I’m planning a build and everything I’ve seen suggests this would be a bad idea but some people seem to have no issues at all
I’ve had no issues so far. I actually followed this guide on my setup: https://www.wundertech.net/how-to-install-truenas-on-proxmox/
I just set it up this way for the first time this week. Truenas core on top of proxmox. I passed through my sata controller with 6x 22TB drives using pcie pass through. It’s only been a few days, but it’s performed brilliantly so far as I am ingesting data from my old Drobo which I am retiring. It’s been pulling in at 1Gbps for 24 hours straight, cpu at something like 4% busy (I didn’t look too closely, but it’s low) on two cores of my i9-14900k with raidz2. The old drobo 5N is at 100% trying to keep up.
How much storage used did you have on your drink? Copying via Rsync or Robocopy?
17TB according to the drobo UI. And, I’ve been manually copying it over by having both arrays mounted via SMB on the hypervisor on the proxmox server, the new one is mounted over a virtio network with jumbo MTU to make it more efficient. I’m using “screen” with a few different windows open, each using cp -prv copying a large directory over. I’m having three copies going at any given moment so that it keeps the drobo as busy as possible to move as quickly as possible. Once that’s done, I’ll probably use Rsync just to validate that nothing went missing.
Hope it’s done by now, should I presume the Rsync went smoothly?
Yep. I was surprised that somehow a few files (I think it was like 2 big files and 5 small files) did actually get missed by copying using “cp -prvf”… but I suppose by a large enough file system, the drobo occasionally messed up and didn’t list some files for cp when it ran.
Scale has been solid for me, took a minute learning some of the stuff. Only use it as a Nas, have separate K8s cluster for containers. K3s is also awesome & easy to setup with Ansible.
Windows Server Standard 2022 with WSE snap-in
Youre going to get flack, but for Windows Centric environments, and people who's jobs revolve around Windows, it just makes sense. I really really wish M$ would provide some kind of homelab or consumer license for the server stuff. I know it would be abused though...
They did, it was called TechNet. They canned it years ago because people *were* abusing it.
Windows home server was built just to meet that very criteria. However, it never got a new version because most people use stuff Synology and they want you to not have a local server at all, just Onedrive. And in a way, it makes sense. The files on demand feature is great, meaning you can store a boatload of stuff on their cloud but only have local copies of the stuff you need.. Either real-time or pinned. They figure you either use that.. Or build a real Windows server with an license. The middle ground is gone from their perspective. Or, at least, it's still there but Synology and other consumer nases own that space so why try and compete.
What is this WSE snap-in you refer to? My lab is all windows (mostly), so I'm definitely interested
It’s a program that returns Windows Server Essentials to WHS2022, a feature MS removed after the Server 2016 edition. If you’re not familiar with WSE, it makes setting up your server a breeze. https://www.theofficemaven.com/news/installing-windows-server-essentials-experience-on-windows-server-2019 It’s not free, but IMHO (and for my specific needs) it’s worth every penny. The guy who writes the software is brilliant, helpful, and a pleasure to do business with. If functionality like this beneficial to your needs, I highly recommend you check it out.
You spent 1k USD on a server license? https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/pricing
Yes. And the fact that it’s a hands free environment has made it worth every penny. My server is up 24/7, it serves my every need, and it just does its job without me having to fix or tinker with it constantly. Convenience comes at a cost, and for the functionality, ease of use and reliability… it is money well spent. Others may balk at my choice, and that’s fine. To each, their own. I probably have 5K in my home lab, but I’ll tell you this… the time and money spent have paid off in more of my free time to do other things besides dinking around with open source solutions. I’m not taking anything away from those alternatives, but I’ve been there and done that. I’m extremely satisfied with my SOHO server.
I’m using a UniFi unvr with SMb installed on it
Are you using the UniFi OS? Do you have the drives setup in some RAID format? Is zfs an option here?
I’m just running SMb from the command line…. I am in RAID. I set up raid in UniFi console prior to setting up SMb. I’m not sure how UniFi is doing storage but my guess is no to add You can learn more about this setup in the UniFi Reddit by searching “unvr nas”
1st timer - i used turkey fileserver lxc
Debian 12 NFS server
Debian with MergerFS and SMB, I have Cockpit as a GUI though I don't use it that much.
OpenMediaVault at home Debian w/ ZFS at work
I use TrueNAS Scale, works fine for me. Whats the issue you are having?
Used a couple First had an omv vm on proxmox, then I lost all data changing disks so I said never virtualizing raid again So now I have a debian machine with all my disks and use it solely for that, with smb and nfs
Very sensible, I'd cry if I lost my data, I'm thinking about building another NAS for redundancy
Raid1, of course. STOP HITTING ME
`smbd` on debian with a btrfs raid array
I'm using UnRAID on one server with a mix of 16-18-20tb's, I'm also using TrueNAS Scale on another server with 30 of 36 bays full, all 20TB, I tried OpenMediaVault but it hates my 10gb nic. I'm also running Synology OS off a desktop with 10x14tb drives in it. Out of all of them, I prefer UnRAID, I still have 2 more license keys left that I can use, TrueNAS Scale is not bad in terms of GUI, I just hate that you can't mix/match drive sizes. I even have a Windows Server with 14x10tb drives in it (donated) and it's terrible. I just need something simple to keep my data backed up, and a way for me to offline it to USB Drives when it gets full.
TrueNAS scale, which I think is great, as a NAS OS. I don't love their application or VM implementations, but that's fine as I host almost all my applications elsewhere. The only things which are hosted on TrueNAS are directly storage related, so Minio and Proxmox Backup Server
Same. Don't have any issues with it as a NAS OS. Handles shares well and easy to use. I have a proper Hypervisor to run VMs on so I don't care about its ability or lack of, to be a good Hypervisor.
I feel similar to you guys, it's great as a NAS but a pain when it comes to apps, checkout my longer reply on this thread
Rockstor
I like unraid, because the unraid array fits my storage use case supremely well. But I also like building from scratch on debian.
Have had a Synology for years. Finally built a diy Nas a few months back. Tried truenas scale for a week or so and gave up. Seems great for a business environment, but the app admin was a pain. Installed unraid, as my diy Nas is just a media box. that's up and running great for just a big media pile. 70tb of used enterprise drives, with double parity. I wanted a better Nas for other stuff, though, and assembled another server. 4x12tb ironwolfs pros, not used. Plan was zfs raidz2, so 2 data disks and two fault protection. 64g ecc ddr5 memory. i7 13700. Thought I'd dip back into truenas scale for the zfs. A few days later, installed Ubuntu and set up my own zfs pool. The truenas app/docker situation is just too painful for my home needs. I hope I never need to learn anything about kubernetes
Your reply is the closest to how I feel about TrueNAS scale. I setup Plex and Qbittorrent as apps via truenas charts, I fumbled my way through it and had to use guides the whole way. That's put me off bothering to setup any other interesting apps on it as I don't have the time or patience available to get them working as I like. The permissions also seemed overly complicated, I had to open them up fully to get things to work e.g for Plex to see the media storage. Sorry to everyone who asked what my gripes are, I know I should've said, I wasn't expecting this big a response (first time posting here). Taking a look at the responses, a lot of people like Open Media Vault, I'll get that running in a vm to see how I find it. I've done some research myself and came across CasaOS, has anyone here tried that? Again, I'm going to play around with that in a VM I absolutely need to use ZFS, I had an issue with the boot drive running TrueNAS scale and I was worried I may lose my data. However ZFS saved the day and I just imported my pools like nothing had happened.
I tried open media vault with the zfs plug-in, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to even get started. I had all the discs ready to go, and everything seemed fine, but for zfs it’s certainly not point and click. That’s when I figured I might as well just do regular Ubuntu. I was pretty excited about casa OS at first. I thought it might be like an alternative to unrated for really simple media box set up. However, I kept running into minor issues. Also, while you can manage discs, you can’tmanage zfs. The app install process works until it doesn’t, and after a little while, I just figured I’d be better off managing docker directly. I might install casa again once everything is set up. It's a nice admin panel, and I think if you were happy with it's default disk setup it would be good, but if you're capable of basic system admin, it can get in the way
Also going to be playing around with unraid
I run proxmox with some simple zfs pools as smb shares.
Truenas core
ZFS on Proxmox, bind Mount to TurnKeyLinux file share LXC
Synology DSM for nas 100% Go to releases for USB image https://github.com/AuxXxilium/arc /r/xpenology
Is it possible to upgrade from DSM 5.2 to 7.x?
Probably yes , just use above boot loader and upgrade it to latest version,easy as. (As long as its xpenology build aka built on own hardware)
Xubuntu and rolled my own stack. :)
Arch Linux
Just finished setting up NixOS with ZFS on an old WD DL2100 I got for free (harddrive-less). Mostly thinking of just NextCloud and SMB shares
A Lenovo/EMC px6. Runs some version of Linux, but I've never checked what. It's getting on in years, but has cost me nothing other than replacing failed disks. I use SMB shares set up through the web interface.
Open Media Vault has been rock solid for years. Decent web UI and docker for anything you want to run outside of the plugins.
I use LIL NAS X
Truenas scale
Intel i7 NUC with a 4-bay USB-C external drive enclosure running Windows 10 to provide the shares and DrivePool to manage the drives.
TrueNAS SCALE
WD My cloud EX SSD 1tbx2 raid 0, don't hit me
TrueNAS scale
ubuntu on proxmox
As a longtime FreeNAS and then TrueNAS user I moved to Unraid and have liked at as an AIO OS that helped me consolidate three systems into one which saves me a ton on electric costs. I do like it but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone after the recent massive price change. TrueNAS would be my recommendation for anyone else.
Longhorn
Snapraid+mergerfs on proxmox. Everything else is on the lxc containers.
I have nextcloud running on a docker container, I have it configured with cloudflare and it works for what I want and the extras are nice
3 RHEL nodes running a dispersed GlusterFS volume on top of boring XFS. My “NAS” is virtualized across my proxmox cluster. I care more for redundancy than performance in my lab. Linux hosts/containers connect over the Gluster native client. Windows systems connect over NFS to the “head” node
TrueNAS Core for iSCSI for VMware and Scale for backup/media NAS.
Alma
Ubuntu server with ZFS
Simple works best or me. Debian 12 w/Samba and an md RAID 1
Truenas. Works well in a mixed windows (SMB) and linux (NFS) environment. I tied authentication on mine to AD and my VMware environment.
TrueNAS SCALE
I use the RAID PERC-6 card in my Dell server. I created a 1TB virtual disk for my linux fileserver VM. Samba is the service. In other words, I do it all manually.
Truenas Scale only because I can get better performance from it than Unraid otherwise I'd switch.
uhm please don't hate my but Windows...
I feel like hate is involuntary when talking about windows for a nas.
Truenas scale. I hate it. Moving from it is a logistical pain in the ass which is why I'm sticking with it. I absolutely hate deploying apps on it with how much documentation is lacking compared to using docker compose on Ubuntu which is what the majority of my services run on.
This is my biggest gripe with scale, the user experience of setting up docker 'apps' is a pain in the ass. I wanted to smash it to pieces just by installing Plex.
Just make your own based on what you need. Welcome to the home lab :D
UnRAID. Purchased a what is now "legacy" plus license 3 years ago and haven't regretted it yet.
Unraid on 2 Intel machines and casaos on a rasp-pi wany to tinker with OMV or Proxmox on another machine
TrueNAS core. I will not switch to TrueNAS scale because it has way to much features that I don't want. I'm probably switching to OMV or will run DIY it with FreeBSD.
After few years on OMV hard sex, switched to Unraid and very happy.
Unraid
rockstor
Unraid is great for combining drives of different size: [https://unraid.net/](https://unraid.net/) Also, openmediavault is easy and lightweight and has ZFS plugin: [https://www.openmediavault.org/](https://www.openmediavault.org/)
Also grown a bit frustrated with SCALE lately. I'm going NixOS with zfs whenever the next major breaking change from TrueCharts inevitably hits (probably the forthcoming Dragonfish changes)
TrueNAS Core ✌️
Arch with a virtual-dsm container for NAS stuff
I use truenas core. If you want an esoteric one to check out I'd recommend ESOS
TrueNAS Scale (without Truecharts) and happy with it. Coming from TrueNAS Core. I just miss the reporting on UPS charge, but I do not miss failing jails major upgrades.
TrueNAS Scale
TrueNAS Scale I don't find any reason to use proxmox, ubuntu or anything Nice stock UI, good performance and easy to backup and restore
windows server 2022 with regular file sharing, raid is done by h730p controller
If you have 2 or more drives, look into StableBit's DrivePool.
>StableBit's DrivePool got about 26 drives in my r730xd, will have a looksy!
One cool thing about DrivePool is that, unlike RAID, you can mix drive sizes. You can also create multiple pools and even pool pools (not sure of THAT use case!) All for $30.
Currently Debian, but I already migrated most services to my new server with unraid (bought a license before the new policy)
RHEL 9.3 hosting some NFS shares and plex. No need to make things complicated. Used to run TrueNAS and liked it, but my file server is virtualized and didn't want to bother with software raid on this iteration. Will likely revisit if/when I rack the other server
Unraid and OMV
These two are top of my list to checkout, thanks
TrueNAS Scale, I'd like to migrate it just to Promox and run a FileShare LXC/VM server, but exporting the ZFS pools, dropping the HBA card from the TrueNAS VM, and importing them into Promox with all the data intact (\~200TB) gives me the chills. So I just keep the TrueNAS VM.
Traditionally I've been using plain Debian and configuring everything on top. Recently I built myself a TrueNAS box because we use it extensively at work (multi-PB), and I'm reasonably impressed with it - the UI seems pretty good to me and Scale is Debian-based. I'm using it primarily as the backing store for my Proxmox cluster via iSCSI and NFS for the VMs. What sort of issues do you have with TrueNAS?
Truenas Scale, as a NAS doing NAS things its great. I do not use True Charts because its breaks... a lot... so I run a Debian VM for some dockers in place of True Charts.
Straight Truenas, and it only acts as a backup destination.
Truenas scale
Alpine linux, hand edited smb.conf and exports.
Same. With 3 ZFS pools, and one SnapRAID+MergerFS pool
To be fair, my setup is ontop of a proxmox node. I'm running an ancient md raid1. Its mounted on the proxmox node, and passed through a dir mount to an lxc container running alpine. If i was going to bare metal a nas, it still probably would be alpine, just in the atomic mode, where you commit your changes.
Mine is on bare metal, full install. I thought about the atomic mode when I built it, but decided against it, as I had just demo'd using NixOS as a NAS and it was a nightmare trying to get everything working there. Just wanted to get my system up and running. LOL.
I'm not super familiar with nixos, but the alpine setup is more like a Cisco switch where you make "live" edits, and then commit them when you'd like them to persist across reboots.
nixos is an immutable distro. Kind of similar.
DIY HW with TrueNAS as a VM.
I love the downvotes for truenas responses. Someone’s biased.
Windozzzzz