TrueNAS might not be for you, if you are home user.

[Davvo]

If that happens, I do hope someone forks it and keeps maintaining it.

I personally see this as the natural (inevitable) evolution of CORE.
I am really interested in seeing what will iX do in 2025 with the EOL of plugins... That will be the turning point I believe. Will we see a CORE 14? Having declared plans for 13.2 I guess that release will accompain us for all 2024.

 

[Constantin]

If you are not very technical, you are probably better off with Synology or QNAP.
Now that I think about it, looking at the Synology users I know and how many times they lost data, most of them are probably better off with Dropbox or OneDrive \

Agree 100%. My oldest child is out of the house and using iCloud as a backup for that exact reason. Not everyone likes to nerd out with one of the best backup solutions out there and hence the $10/month 2TB option is the best way forward. At the same time, when something does go wrong, I do like the option of repairing the issue myself. Never mind the issues associated with leaving all your eggs in one centralized basket, etc.

 

[Ericloewe]

It'd be nice, Intel or AMD allowing, to see a small NAS that is competitive on price without giving up what we all consider to be the essentials for a server (reliable hardware, ECC memory in a generous amount, etc.). Synology and QNAP seem to hit the ultra-cheap price points by cutting exactly the corners you'd expect them to cut (low-end Atom CPU, 2 GB of non-ECC memory). Taking a DS224+ as an example, it seems to be available at 360 bucks. 16 GB of EEC DDR4 might add 50-100 bucks to the retail price (not BOM, retail price), a C3558 might be anywhere from 100-200 bucks more, depending on how much the J4125 actually costs (C3558 needs a better heatsink and power delivery, but the J4125 needs external NICs whereas the C3558 only needs a PHY, so let's say the ancillaries are a wash).
That gets us to a 600 buck NAS unit with 16 GB of ECC DDR4 and a competent little processor. That's substantially less than the TrueNAS Mini X, which seems to cost 1150 bucks with no disks, and there are a few things to keep in mind:

1. TrueNAS Mini X has a local video console and IPMI, which probably adds something like 100 bucks to the price between hardware and licenses:
   1. There's the BMC itself
   2. 64-128 MB of DDR4
   3. BMC power delivery
   4. BMC firmware QSPI EEPROM
   5. Realtek NIC for the BMC
   6. Ethernet magjack plus VGA output
   7. License for AMI's MegaRAC software
2. TrueNAS Mini X has a larger chassis that allows for three more disks, plus SSDs, plus breathing room, but it's also fairly expensive (at least in terms of list price). Maybe 20-50 bucks of extra cost, depending on the PSU situation. An el-cheapo power brick would save a few bucks extra.
3. There may be a loss leader component, with the talk of rejecting non-Synology disks. Maybe 20 bucks directly for two disks at time of purchase?

Just a thought experiment I thought I'd share, don't read this as TrueNAS Mini being overpriced or a super-low price point being easily achievable.

(The meme answer to all this is "Btrfs is so bad they need to discount their units", but that's far too simplistic a take. Yes, btrfs is bad and no, I would not want it anywhere near me, but the people in the market for these things would stare at you blankly and ask "butter-what?")

 

[danb35]

but that's far too simplistic a take.

Agreed, and if Syno really thought it were an issue, they could use a different filesystem. I think we have to assume that they're selling these units at a price that's, if not as profitable as they'd like it to be, at least profitable.

In terms of off-the-shelf NAS hardware (with a view toward installing some flavor of TrueNAS on it), I think I've heard the best feedback about the Terramaster units. But I don't think they do ECC either, and still don't have room for a ton of RAM. But coming up with a device that has:

• Compact chassis
• Adequate ECC RAM
• Adequate CPU
• Reasonable number of (ideally hot-swap) drive bays
• Decent cooling for those drives
• Oh, and remote management would be nice

seems to be really tough. The closest thing I've been able to find is the HPE MicroServer Gen 10 Plus v2 (enough qualifiers on that model number?). They cheat a bit on the chassis--the PSU is an external brick--and they don't have hot-swap. But 4x 3.5" bays, decent remote management (including remote media via HTML5--I'm looking at you, SuperMicro), Xeons or Pentia with ECC support, up to 64 GB RAM isn't too bad. It isn't as compact as a 4-bay Synology, but still pretty small. Looks like one of the Xeon models is just under US$800 right now on Amazon, including 16 GB of RAM (but no drives).

But you need to boot via USB; there are only 4 SATA ports available. A small USB-NVMe adapter lets you put the boot device on a SSD and keep it internal to the chassis.

 

[Ericloewe]

Pentia

Pentiums please. (I still don't have 100 GB of RAM in my machine, though my desk as a whole does have 100+ GB these days)

seems to be really tough. The closest thing I've been able to find is the HPE MicroServer Gen 10 Plus v2

Yeah, to some extent it's a matter of volume. You need enough volume to justify a custom chassis and custom motherboard and get the unit cost down, otherwise you're stuck with a complement of things that are nice, but add cost:

• Serial ports! (the literal port, in sheet metal and plastic)
• SuperIO chips, because some designs still have separate SuperIOs despite the ASpeed BMCs implementing UART functionality. For some reason. So serial ports again!
• More DIMM slots
• All sorts of somewhat-superfluous headers
• Extra USB ports
• Unused fan headers
• Extra 1 GBase-T ports if you're desperate and four of them sounds like overkill
• Standard ATX power header
• Cut enough features and you may be able to spare a pair of layers on the PCB

 

[danb35]

Pentiums please.

If Weird Al isn't an authority, who is?

 

[Constantin]

But coming up with a device that has:

• Compact chassis
• Adequate ECC RAM
• Adequate CPU
• Reasonable number of (ideally hot-swap) drive bays
• Decent cooling for those drives
• Oh, and remote management would be nice

seems to be really tough.

100% agree and the above points to a fundamental issue: what constitutes a ideal platform is very much in the eye of the beholder. What Synology, QNAP, and ReadyNAS nail are the small enclosures for the maximum # of disks, a low price point, and decent performance for the price point. You better have good backups as BTRFS is still losing data far too often for my taste, never mind silent corruption. MacOS support can be rather spotty also. My experience re: disk temperatures under heavy workloads were not positive either.

That said, many people don't want a large case that offers excellent cooling with low-noise fans. Never mind the niceties associated with ECC RAM, SFP+, IPMI, etc. Or folk who want to transcode their content before it is distributed.

Anyhow, the closest thing to perfection re: entry-level cases I have ever found is the Q26A from Lian Li (especially with the right backplanes). Regular ATX PSU, excellent cooling for the drives in there, with the only downside being that the case just a hair too small for the Flex-ATX motherboard I love. But with the C2758 from the Mini, it's a performant file server.

 

[Ericloewe]

Q26A from Lian Li

Too bad they discontinued those half a decade ago....

 

[Whattteva]

Too bad they discontinued those half a decade ago....

My Q25B is still alive and kicking though it is no longer being used for NAS duties (it's a media center PC connected to a TV now). Sad that they're discontinued. They're great cases