Looking for compact nasbook recommendations

[ninze]

Hi,

I am looking to buy a nasbook similar to QNAP tbs-453a, which would be capable of running TrueNAS OS. The priorities would be as follows:

- compact, designed for SSDs
- quiet, preferably fanless
- low power consumption

QNAP tbs-453a seems to be a nice device, but after googling around for a bit, I haven't found any indications that it would be able to run TrueNAS.

Would appreciate your recommendations.

thanks

 

[elvisimprsntr]

Looks like the TBS-453A has a Realtek switch, which may not be supported, but there is a an Intel I210 NIC which is.

The ASMedia ASM1062 might be a bit sketchy.

QNAP TBS-453A 4-Bay M.2 SSD NASbook Review

During our last stay at CES, QNAP surprised us with the TBS-453A NAS, an incredibly small NAS since it only takes M.2 SSDs. While not a NAS for the average user, it does have some really cool features we are going to explore in this review.

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Arwen]

That QNAP tbs-453a has only a 4GByte flash device for the OS. TrueNAS needs at least 16GBytes. (People can get away with 8Gbytes at times, but it might be tight.) You would need to see if it can boot off a USB port. Otherwise you may need to dedicate a M.2 slot to a boot device.

In general, all the extra I/O, HDMI, Audio, and Ethernet switch, are indications that this is not a NAS server device. Most reliable TrueNAS installations use server type hardware. That said, people can and do use both desktop hardware and smaller server boards, (that sometimes are labeled IoT boards). It's a mater of risk and reliability. Actual server boards tend to be more reliable and have less users complaining they have problems, (or worse, they have lost data).


As for other small, quiet, low power boards or complete systems that can be used with SSDs, I don't know of any. Further, except for specialty devices like this QNAP device, what you may find is ones that support 2.5" SATA devices. Which of course you can install SATA SSDs.