I would use a Raspberry Pi for this purpose with an USB stick for mobile internet access, USB drives for storage, with aggressive power management.
(The Pi has IO pins, so with some external circuit, it can unpower external parts of the system too.)
TrueNAS cannot run on an RPI, not yet at least.
I agree, but why using TrueNAS for this purpose?
It is what the OP was asking for.
OK, and is it not allowed to propose other, maybe better suited ideas?
How about a virtualized Truenas using QEMU emulating a x86 machine ?
@Farout I was thinking about that as a possible reply, now I laugh.
@Gyula_Masa you can suggest but I just wanted to ensure the OP knows the compatibility issue. Rpi most certainly could be a NAS if configured correctly.
OK, because, I have a suspicion, that the original idea would not really work for him…
There is even a 5 SATA hat for SBCs. But that would be with OMV, or directly managing storage on your favourite distro for ARM.
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/radxas-sata-hat-makes-compact-pi-5-nas
I appreciate everyone continuing this thread. I’m going to start by testing with the Atom C2758 and go from there.
As I’m a fan of SuperMicro, I was looking at some of their embedded options, and there is a system that runs on only 6W, but that would certainly come with limitations.
As for the reason to run TrueNAS, it’s because I’ve already got it running at home, and would like the simplest backup route between the two systems. Having both running TN means I don’t have to learn and manage two NAS softwares, and I’m already familiar with TN, although I was excited to download Fangtooth this morning.
That’s awesome, but when I consider four 8GB QVO drives (new) comes to over two grand when factoring in the RP5 and paraphernalia I really do question if there isn’t a better option like 5G and a reverse proxy.
In the world of low power ARM wins
As to intel systems I’d look at platinum or titanium psu as starting point - at least 96% efficiency at 50% load, and 90% at both 20% and 100% load and you need every watt
Ideally you don’t want to be doing a DC - AC - DC conversion as you loose power on each step (The PI has an option the PICO PSUs for PCs say the aren’t suitable for batteries)
This is one of the alternatives I was speaking of: 12 watts, 4 cores, 8 threads, up to 32gb ram. It gets a Passmark score of 3686, with room inside for one SSD, but two SATA ports for options:
I’m still holdiing out for the Atom C2758 to come back from RMA.