Thinking of switching from QNAP to Synology or Asustor

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Halp :pleading_face:

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Why do you need a specific operating system tailored around storage? Honestly they are just shiny frontends for a more complex backend and they often create more complications than doing things yourself in the terminal. (In my opinion)

I’ve never tried CasaOS or ZimaOS, but I did try TrueNAS when it was based on FreeBSD and just had constant issues with disks being detected correctly. (could have been hardware related idk)

If you’re not that familiar with handling operations in Linux, I would probably go for an encrypted cloud provider than a NAS tbh. It might be more expensive in the long run but you will save time on frustrations.

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I’ve been eyeing this case for a while, haven’t really seen anything like it before. Power consumption is usually pretty important with these sorts of setups so a Raspberry Pi actually makes a lot of sense.

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Thanks for your answer! I already have a QNAP NAS and I’m looking to migrate to a more privacy friendly option. What would you suggest as the easiest and most private option?

QNAP are not recommended here. You’re now obliged to buy Synology drives for Synology NAS and there seem to be a push towards more cloud integration as @Jonah stated.. I’m not sure about Asustor, but this could still be an option.

That pointed me towards the open-source equivalent TrueNAS.

I decided that I would not choose the hardware myself as it seems complicated and there are options for TrueNAS and CasaOS/ZimaOS.

TrueNAS:

  • R-Series, H-Series, M-Series and F-Series are all for enterprises.

  • TrueNAS Mini

    • TrueNAS Scale
    • 5 Bays SATA + 2x slots for M.2
    • 16 to 64GB RAM
    • 90 to 216 TB capacity
    • Price: 1759 to 2309 USD

Casa/Zima:

  • ZimaBoard, ZimaBoard 2 and ZimaBlade all have only 2x SATA ports with no cases.

  • ZimaCube

    • ZimaOS
    • 6 Bays SATA + 4x slots for M.2
    • 8 to 32GB RAM
    • 256 GB NVMe storage
    • 164 TB capacity
    • Price: 1099 USD and sold out at the time of this message

It’s more expensive than I thought


Is the ZimaCube really private enough? At that price point, it’s more interesting then the TrueNAS mini.

Any other recommendation are welcome.

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As Black Friday is around the corner, I would welcome any last minute recommendation on a open-source NAS all-inclusive package :stuck_out_tongue:

TrueNAS Mini vs ZimaCube vs other contender?

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Are those mini-PCs? Could you develop more? :slight_smile:

After watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-YxbQYn8vs

And reading this: https://nascompares.com/guide/build-your-own-nas-in-2024-should-you-bother/

I might be waiting more before switching afterall. TrueNAS is apparently much more complicated then a turnkey product. It will also depends on the deals I see next week.

Unraid also seem interesting, but is paid and proprietary: 8 reasons Unraid could be your best (or worst) NAS decision

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Depends on what you want: privacy respectful and you owning the whole hardware/software stack or ready to go product from a company.

There are plenty of different ways to get to your end goal, start by filtering the options:

  • what is my budget?
  • how tech savvy am I (or willing to learn)?
  • what are unique specs that I need (ZFS for example)
  • what’s the amount of space I need, 20 TB, more?
  • do I need to use Proxmox as a wrapper for my homelab?
  • how deep do you want to go into the rabbithole, 3d printing your case? learning NixOS to have a reproducible NAS config?

There are quite a few channels on YT that are quite good on the topic:

So yes, given some of those filters and how far you want to go, it could help you figure out where you are on the spectrum of building your NAS so that you can pick a path that suits you. :blush:

You can start small, with a limited budget and take some well known and trustworthy software to run on. After a few months you can always upgrade because you narrowed down your needs more precisely. :wink:
Takes some notes along the way to not get overwhelmed! :hugs:

If you don’t care about nothing and want a thing that “just works” then you buy from a company and look no further. :see_no_evil_monkey:

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I want both xD And the only real products that seem to deliver on this is the TrueNAS mini, but it’s way too expensive.

What I decided after watching lots of video is:

  • I won’t be using Unraid as it’s proprietary.
  • I finally decided on TrueNAS as what OS I will be using in the future.
  • I need a 4 bay NAS with 16 or 32 GB Ram with 2x20TB (new) and 2x4TB (what I currently have).
  • I won’t be using a computer to run the NAS as suggested by some as I don’t want to deal with failures (some hard drives are designed to run 24/7).

What is proxmox?

No, I want a device for sure. I will probably buy either a UGOS NAS and install TrueNAS on it. Unless there is a good deal on the mini.

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I don’t see a company giving away an amazing product, for a cheap price and caring about it’s customers. Venn diagram would be quite unique on this one. :sweat_smile:

Alright, now see if you want to buy a built NAS, or build one with recommended parts from people, or just find your own combo given your budget.

Regarding

Failures will happen anyway, this is just how hard drives are. The best devices are probably for companies and hella expensive anyway.
But it’s fine, you can always swap the dead hard drives and rebuild the RAID array. :+1:t2:

Give it a search, some tool to be able to have virtualization for potential Linux distros etc. Might be helpful for things like HomeAssistant OS.

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Thanks! :slight_smile:

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So UGreen doesn’t void warranty when you install TrueNAS on it.

BUT.

UGOS is out of the picture after reading this.

However, the breaking point came when several Chinese products were found to contain spyware and malware that was hard-baked into the hardware and allowed for remote collection of user data. Numerous brands were implicated, and the fact that there is a degree of ambiguity between numerous Chinese brands in the eyes of the world—regarding how many of them cross over at the point of manufacture and how many of them are on the same production line filtering toward various brands—all added up to increased tensions and, eventually, several companies and organisations being barred from sale in the US.

The aforementioned spyware, when it has been recognised—have been hard-baked into the hardware components and physical controllers, which means that regardless of the NAS software you use, some of these devices still have the potential to contain security vulnerabilities.

despite instances of systems with inbuilt vulnerabilities decreasing all the time—they do crop up more frequently in products made in China than anywhere else in the world.

Therefore, the only device that would seem to work is TrueNAS mini-R which is way too expensive.

This is a pain. I’ll write to TrueNAS to see if they ever do pricedrops.

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Why not building your own computer or buying 2nd hand from companies? :hugs:
Plenty of people on YT recommend various setups.

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It seems like a huge pain lol.

I wrote to TrueNAS, I’ll see what they reply. If they don’t have any sort of solutions, then either I buy the Mini-R (but ughh that’s too expensive) or I just wait it out.

I didn’t find a good deal on hard drives either.

Right now I have a 2-bay NAS which is pretty full.

The goal is to buy 2 new drives and switch at the same time to a 4 bay.

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Not sure what’s worse:

  • have the pain of building the computer once but knowing it all around and being able to upgrade/fix it down the road
  • buying something off the shelf but then being stuck if something shows up, while also paying an extra for it

Of course they will not sell it for cheap because this is how they are sustainable with their business.

Hard drives, you have plenty of choice so maybe look in nearby countries’ online stores? Otherwise business 2nd hand is also a safe bet. :+1:t2:

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So there was no good deal for a NAS this black friday.

I was so stuck on getting a NAS, but I talked with someone and they asked why I wanted a NAS. I thought NAS was necessary to use NAS hard drives and raid, but apparently not?

So now, since I’ll be getting a steam machine, I’m thinking of using it as well to install jellyfin, ente and what not and do raid on a device similar to this: Amazon.com: JONSBO N3 Mini-ITX NAS PC Chassis, ITX Computer Case, 8HHD+1-SSDD isk Bays NAS Mini Aluminum with Steel Plate Case, Built-in 2x10cm Fan, Power Support: SFX105mm, Support 130mm CPU Cooler : Electronics

Would that work? Can you really do raid on anything? Is it as safe as a NAS in terms of data lost? Pinging @kissu :slight_smile:

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I haven’t read the thread, but how about the Minisforum N5 Air NAS? You can install TrueNAS on it.

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There is no such thing. An HDD is just a piece of hardware so it can run on any system/computer. :+1:t2:
Raid can be hardware or software. Not sure about the hardware variant but again, software runs on pretty much everything.

A dedicated AOOSTAR, TrueNAS mini or else is just an optimized version pre-assembled by a company. You can indeed fetch the components individually yourself.
You might not get all the bells and whistles like ECC, OCULINK, lots of PCIE lanes etc at a reasonable price or even at all because not everything is purchasable over the counter as a regular consumer.

But if you don’t need it, you can probably run TrueNAS or alike on a regular piece of hardware.
Overall, a home server = NAS = regular computer running 24/7. Specifics of hardware + software on it might make it “more NAS” than “just a PC”.

It all comes down to your filters of: budget + specific needed features + key hardware specs that you’re targeting. If you can do with less, then go. :+1:t2:

Quite a well-known name yes. :grin:

Which brings me back to how you would pick between those. It mostly comes down to how trustworthy is the brand in terms of RMA/support in case of something happening.
If you don’t mind swapping defective components yourself, you might not even need to get a popular name and can even 3D print your own enclosure + find a fitting motherboard for it.
But it might also pay back big time if the computer you’re buying is reliable, with a good platform, nice temperatures etc etc.

Again, a matter of range and where you want to land on the spectrum of DIY/ready to go.
And which things you do care the most about. Some people don’t want to ever touch a CLI, hence will go Synology. Some other are more powerusers and will tinker with TrueNAS.

But all of this is mostly software, consider your hardware needs in the first place because this is harder to swap. Double-check that the software you need will run on the hardware then (like do you want Intel’s transcoding capabilities or is it not critical?).
Then pull the trigger and burn that damn earned money! :money_with_wings:

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Thank you so much for this! So here are my detailed needs:

  1. Media server like Jellyfin playing 4K videos locally
  2. Photo management (Ente)
  3. Accessing the server outside my local network (Netbird or Headscale)
  4. Private online shareable video game stream (Owncast)
  5. Solution for music server that manages ID3 tags like airsonic
  6. Create a Monero server

Since I will be buying the Steam Machine, regardless, I’m wondering if also using it as a NAS replacement would work. I would only need to buy a NAS-hard drive enclosure (at least 4-bay) and then be able to migrate from QNAP.

What I mean by NAS hard-drive is for example WD Red instead of Blue. My understanding for those type of hard drives is that is more then just marketing and that there are benefits to choosing WD RED instead of blue.

In my use case, would there be any benefit at all if I would buy a TrueNAS-Mini instead for instance?

In other words, are there any benefits to buying a dedicated NAS device instead of running TrueNAS on a mini-PC (or in my case the steam machine)?

ECC, OCULINK, lots of PCIE lanes

I don’t know what those are lmao :sweat_smile: :rofl:

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Media server like Jellyfin playing 4K videos locally

Depends on:

  • do you plan on transcoding? aka send a smaller quality (like 1080p) to mobile devices from your 4k content? codecs, compressions and other things come into play if you want to stream such thing on your LAN. Because the official docs recommend to go with an Intel CPU for QSV. Given the specs of the Steam machine, it will not be really fitting for that role. Quoting the docs Apple ≄ Intel ≄ NVIDIA >>> AMD
    • at the same time, if you plan on directly playing the content from it while having an HDMI cable wired to it, there should be no issue at all :+1:t2:
      • Alternatively, you can also encode the files ahead of time and not on the fly. Might take a bit of time and CPU resources but perfect if not in a hurry.
    • another thing to consider is also HDR, if you have the files + TV + device in between support it, then it’s perfect and you can enjoy it. If it is in SDR and want to do the extra conversion, consider that too.
    • got some fancy home theater setup? double-check how it fits with the codecs + your living room hardware and if all the ports are there as expected (with the required minimal specs needed like HDMI 2.1 etc)
    • all of this assumes that you want to use Jellyfin for your server of course
  • if you feel like you really need transcoding but the CPU you’re going with is not enough, consider an external dedicated GPU for the job
  • planning to RIP some old DVDs of yours? consider what you’ll need for that one too
  • if you do not plan on transcoding, there is already quite less stuff to do
  • good news is, there are several FOSS clients to consume the Jellyfin server and they integrate Jellyfin quite well :confetti_ball:
  • good news tho, you can use this receiver to be able to have a universal receiver for your remote/HTPC workflow :ok_hand:t2:
  • consider also if you want to go with Kodi (and its fully fledged Linux distro) or something more simple like LibreELEC where you only want the TV-friendly experience of it but then don’t forget to see what’s the architecture of your hardware: x86, Rockchip etc


Ente

If it can run Docker, it is able to do just that. This one shouldn’t pose too many problems IMO besides maybe storing the files somewhere with enough space.

I mean, this is where the entire NAS comes into play so that you could have 10, 100 or enough TBs for your needs in a friendly and fast RAID config. :+1:t2:

Also depends on if you want to share access to people outside of your LAN or not.

Accessing the server outside my local network

This is more of a router’s job. You could have it running on your NAS, homelab server or else but I would personally split it into several devices so that each can focus on 1 single task and do it right.

Netbird can even run directly on an OpenWrt router as a package. They do have an official support and it barely uses any resources at all.
I would consider this as an objectively far better solution all around VS Headscale where it feels like a very hacky way to achieve a given task. Also, the Netbird’s team is shipping a lot of cool features on a weekly basis hence this sounds like a no brainer to me (everything is also fully FOSS). :+1:t2:

Zerotier is also available there, same for Adguard Home.
Hence I would put all the networking/security part isolated on a small dedicated device.

Private online shareable video game stream

If you do not have the bandwidth and machine power to do your own multi-streaming, you can use services like Restream or StreamYard (last one is the service that the PG team is currently using).

But if you can or want to stream to only 1 place, I would recommend renting out a cheap VPS. That way, you will isolate everything properly because you otherwise need to get into how to share the endpoint to the public Internet.
You indeed can do that with Cloudflare Tunnels but it sounds like quite some extra work.

While if you have your own brand with a domain name like shading.com, you can always pipe it easily from the VPS to your viewers on a stream.shading.com or alike.
Their docs are quite well made regarding that topic. :+1:t2:

Solution for music server

Airsonic is unmaintained as of currently, I also do not have any clue about this kind of tool. But if there is a Docker instance, it should be very much achievable as usual. :+1:t2:

Monero server

Same here, not a lot of experience on that topic but this guide looks quite straightforward when it comes down to set it up once you do have a working TrueNAS server. :money_bag:

Given my points above, I do think that you can now get an idea of what’s achievable and potential shortcomings of using the Steam machine. If am not sure what you’re planning to run on the Steam machine nor what is the bandwidth that you do expect out from there but if USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 is enough for you, then why not?

I would still be careful when it comes down to the wiring tho so that the cable doesn’t get unplugged while syncing/alike because of a cat or something. :joy:
Also, I think that you will hit some limitations (or maybe not?) depending on what you’re trying to achieve there. Would have been nice to have a Thunderbolt 4 for example.

Oh yes, NAS-specific HDDs are very much recommended and are better suited for that use-case rather than usual consumer ones. You can go one step further: get a 2nd hand enterprise grade HDD. Even used, those are built like a rock and reach even higher peaks of stability long term.

Of course, you need to consider the speed, noise, temperature and electric consumption because most of those enterprise environments are meant to work in such conditions but your homelab cabinet might be a bit differently built there. :grin:

As seen with what I listed above, there are a lot of things that go into having the perfect setup, it is also very subjective/personal. Everybody’s needs/wishes are different, hence there are definitely benefits yes but maybe they do not matter to you.
The more you go into the hobby, the more you’ll find out how dense it can be but maybe none of this is important to you. So, will there be any benefits? Yes and no, depending on you. :slight_smile:

This means that either you won’t need them because your needs are basic
or you haven’t made enough research on the topic (yet) and will hit a wall at some point.

I meanwhile think that taking it slow and incremental is perfectly fine. If you realize that you need ECC or OCULINK for example, you can always upgrade later on.
Or you could make your entire research now so that you don’t end up “buying things twice”.

It’s up to you to know if you need more or if it’s enough as is. :folded_hands:t2:

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WOW! Thank you for this amazing answer!!

I initially thought I would for remote access via Netbird, but then I thought it would be much simpler to plan ahead and just download the files I need for those rare instances instead of accessing the media remotely.

So no transcoding needed.

Amazing! I’ll look into it!

I’m currently using Plex, but since I’m changing setup to FOSS with TrueNAS I figured might as well switch to Jellyfin as well.

Yes via Netbird, which as I understood works well as a replacement of tailscale.

I would want eventually to switch to OpenWRT router as well, but this will probably in 3 to 4 years realistically. Unless you’re saying I would actually save time switching now? Or should I even set up Netbird on my Asus router (is that even doable?) instead of setting up on the new TrueNAS OS on the steam machine?

Also, if I do go that route, should I dual boot SteamOS + TrueNAS? Would that mean that if I’m gaming on SteamOS, accessing media on the TrueNAS server would not be possible? Or is there a solution to that?

I’m not sure what bandwidth is necessary to be honest :upside_down_face: The goal of this is akin to what the Nintendo Switch 2 does. The goal is not to be a youtuber or anything like that, but rather stream to maybe max 5 people at a given time.

I’d like the simpler way to do that, as long as it is private (preferably FOSS). Does Restream or Streamyard achieve that?

:joy: I should be good there :stuck_out_tongue:

Let me reformulate :stuck_out_tongue: Given my needs, is the Steam Machine enough or would the TrueNAS mini provide any additional benefits that is not overkill for me?