Hi, I am new to the forum. I have had a search around and cant quite find the answer to my question.
I had a QNAP Nas which has become faulty and need to replace it. I dont really want another QNAP or Synology as they seem really expensive and I wasn’t happy that my QNAP only lasted 6 years and I paid £700 for it so im looking for something different.
Can anyone give me a little advise please on what I should be looking for please and can I just run TrueNAS Core?
I currently have 4 x 4tb WD Red Drives which I can use and it will be used at home to backup photos, files, Movies and possibly run Home Assistant.
I dont really want to build my own but wondered what options I have.
If anyone can give me some pointers to get started it would be very much appreciated.
Depends on many parameters, especially how much you want to be involved.
TrueNAS requires a little more involvement than turn key solutions as QNAP and Synology, but not a lot more.
I had both QNAP and Synology in the past and I moved to TN 2-3 years ago. Of note also is that I have no academic or proffesional IT background. On the other hand I like to spent my very little free time on computer things.
TrueNAS has everything that has to do with a NAS, such as data protection, backup, recovery etc. In some cases it is easier to do things than QNAP or Synology because of their closed systems. I had no success in trying to backup my Linux PC to Synology with Backintime because of the SSH implementation on Synology. It was very easy to be done on TN.
On the other hand apps on TN is a more complex story, so for a noob like me the easy way to have apps was with another micro PC that runs Proxmox.
Anyway I think that the best that one has to do is to setup a test TrueNAS machine an any old or spare PC or in a VM just to see what it is and if can manage it. Just use an old usb stick for boot pool and any old HDD or SSD as a data pool, 6-8 gb of RAM are OK (these for testing purposes only and keeping in mind that the experience will not be optimal).
Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I dont have a spare pc around so will watch a few TrueNAS core YouTubes and setup videos to get a feel for it.
If I was to just buy something second hand to run it could you make any recommendations? hopefully not too expensive.
Microservers are nice pieces of kit, though the gen 8 models are a little long in the tooth at this point–but I have a Gen 8 running CORE 13 for my parents for the past four years or so, and it works well. The Gen10+ is quite nice (and even more compact), but pricey. The problem is booting them–with only four drive bays, you’re pretty well stuck using a USB SSD as a boot device. I’ve heard rumors of a hacked BIOS for the gen8 that would make the ODD SATA port bootable, but I wasn’t able to find it for my parents’ unit.
It’s not a real hack. Basically you put some SSD in the ODD bay (you need an adaptor for the power cable FDD to SATA in the Gen8) and some kind of old SD-Card in the SD-Card reader.
Yes, you can use the old 128 GB SSD and that 1 GB SD card from an old cellphone.
Install Truenas on the SSD and move it to the ODD bay. Then install Grub on the SD-Card and make a config that tells Grub to start what’s in bay 5. Tell the MIcroserver to boot from the SD-reader.
After the Grub from the SD the Grub from the SSD gets loaded. And then Truenas starts.
I’ve posted this in the old forum a few months ago. Works great.
P.S.: Just retired my Gen8 and replaced it with a Ugreen DXP6800 Pro. Feels great so far. 64 GB RAM feel so much better than the maximum 16 GB of the Gen8.
Sure, until you add more hard drives–then your boot device that used to be hd2 is now hd4, or something like that. But that can be done without BIOS modification.
What I’ve heard of, though not seen in the wild myself, is a modified BIOS that can actually boot from the fifth SATA port (the ODD port). And that really would be the Holy Grail here.
It is what it is; none of the Microservers is going to be a speed demon. But if you’re looking for basic NAS duties, you should be fine. If you’re also wanting to run Windows Server as a VM and several apps, then you maybe should plan for something a bit beefier. But the Microservers are proper server-grade hardware, with remote management, support for ECC RAM, etc.
I think that model has 4 cores vs. 2 for the other one, so I’d say it’s a worthwhile improvement. And I think the Gen 10 supports up to 32 GB of RAM, so you can upgrade that if necessary.
Would you mind clarifying something for me? The plan is to have the device connected to my switch in the cabinet and connect through ip login like on my qnap. Is this possible because I am also reading about iLO which the gen 10 does not support and I cant stretch to a gen 10 plus.
It doesn’t? That’s a bummer (and surprising to me), but that means you wouldn’t have remote access to the console. TrueNAS main interface, just like QNAP’s, is its web interface, so you wouldn’t be losing anything compared to the QNAP.
