Hi everyone, My Names Tyler
I’ve been looking at getting a True NAS Mini to replace my old DS416 Synology NAS I brought this second-hand last year and bought 4 brand new 4tb Seagate ion wolf hard drives to test out if my family liked using a NAS. It didn’t take long before the whole family started using it and the loved using the apps on their tablets and smartphones. We used it when we travelled overseas, and it was amazing, but I already feel we have outgrown the old DS416 everything starting to get really slow when we are all on it and I’m hoping to upgrade to something a bit more complex. So, i can see plex is easy to setup I’m not worried about 4k or 2k I’ll be using 720 to 1080P max and the plex app works amazing on all my devices. My family loves using the DS apps and that’s where I’m struggling as I don’t know what alternatives to setup on TrueNAS and what the apps you would use on their smart devices. So, we use DS Audio for music Synology Chat, Download Station for torrents and browser download via extension, And biggest one is Synology Photos which works really good on Idevices and Android and is simple to use. Im wanting to get into Virtual Machines just so i can have a play around see how things all work I’m wanting to setup some IP Cameras and have them connected to the NAS. I would really like something that’s like Office 365 but an opensource version that can run on the NAS. I’ve been looking at a TrueNAS Mini X+ just the bassline model but i am open to building one myself if it’s worth it. I hope that’s enough details I guess as I learn more ill Add more stuff to the NAS as time goes on thanks for reading
I would just suggest browsing the Documentation and the ZFS Primer. Get an idea of ZFS related terms and how things are set up. Maybe install Scale on an older computer just to gain experience with TrueNAS and see if you can run some apps or VMs like you want. I would hold off on a real setup as the next Scale version will have big changes for you usage. Just as a NAS you would be fine right now.
There is additional content at bottom of Documentation page too.
Compared to Synology, there is a very steep learning curve. Even the basics of setting up users, getting ACL permissions set, etc. is still a lot more complex in TrueNAS than Synology.
All of the Apps you’re after exist in one shape or form, but iXsystems is in the process of transitioning Apps from a kubernetes (k8) approach to using Docker (upcoming Electric Eel). While a allegedly-simple transition path for K8 → Docker was announced, I wonder whether in your use case it might make sense to hold off on making the switch to TrueNAS until Electric Eel is out?
Alternatively, you could use Jailmaker in the current version of SCALE Dragonfish to set up the necessary jails which should be Docker-compatible (which is what I am doing). I’d avoid VMs as much as possible since they are resource-hungry.