How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

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• Hacker News
• Stopped reading at "Debian".

  Running ZFS on anything but Solaris/Illumos/FreeBSD is asinine.

  ZFS is a permanent second-class citizen on Linux (due to usual open-source politics). This will never resolve.

  I don't want to trust my data to some half-assed out-of-tree solution that may or may not break in a week.

  FreeBSD ZFS support has matured and is outstanding. Quality-wise it has reached parity with Illumos.

  If you can afford Solaris then you're probably not building your own NAS from parts of lesser computers.

  by naturalmovement
• And yet TrueNAS is moving away from BSD towards … Debian!
  by nixgeek
• I run ZFS on Linux and FreeBSD and FreeBSD is less of a faff. If you don’t need docker on your NAS, I would go FreeBSD as well.
  by badgersnake
• If you run ZFS with an LTS kernel you're pretty much fine. Yes new Linux releases will break existing ZFS releases - but the LTS tree is in support for long enough that this is never an issue.
  by bpye
• > Running ZFS on anything but Solaris/Illumos/FreeBSD is asinine.

  > ZFS is a permanent second-class citizen on Linux

  Linux is the primary target of OpenZFS [0] [1], and has been since 2020 [2]. It may not be supported by the Linux kernel developers, but it's supported by the ZFS developers, and that's all that really matters.

  > I don't want to trust my data to some half-assed out-of-tree solution that may or may not break in a week.

  Sure, it's an out-of-tree module, but that doesn't mean that it will randomly break all the time; it just means that you may occasionally need to wait for a new OpenZFS release before upgrading your kernel.

  > FreeBSD ZFS support has matured and is outstanding.

  Agreed, but Linux and FreeBSD both use the same ZFS [3], so I don't really see how the ZFS in FreeBSD can be better than the one in Linux. The tooling and install procedure is certainly better on FreeBSD, but the actual filesystem code is the same (and is probably slightly more robust on Linux since that's going to be where most of the testing occurs).

  [0]: https://github.com/openzfs/zfs#supported-kernels-and-distrib...

  [1]: https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/pull/8987

  [2]: https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/releases/tag/zfs-2.0.0

  [3]: https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/zfs/

  by gucci-on-fleek
• Run ZFS backed filestore on FreeBSD, have migrated it to/from Debian. At work and home, not petabyte scale but certainly multi hundred terrabyte. Over 15 years, on over 50 hosts/NAS/SAN instances, different hardware.

  Run ZFS on Raspberry Pi, on home builds, on Intel, on AMD, on other ARM chipsets.

  I think you're over-stating things. Debian is fine for this. I do think FreeBSD is a better platform for myself.

  The code bases adhere (modulo ZFS version numbers) to a spec and you can safely migrate the pools between OS. I've done it multiple times both directions.

  You can not do this with BTRFS and other Linux things, I consider this feature of (Open)ZFS a killer-context for me: It's OS portable. I wish Mac OSX hadn't walked out of the room when Oracle went legal.

  by ggm
• Yeah no. When it comes to backups and data storage, I would rather use a proven reliable system that’s been used and tested by millions of other users, keep these hacky stuff for your hyperland set up.
  by tamimio
• > I would rather use a proven reliable system that’s been used and tested by millions of other users

  You're describing ZFS.

  by bakugo
• I've lost more data to "proven reliable systems" than to my homegrown hacked-up stuff (which may be because I trust the latter much less).
  by bombcar
• Very cool
  by crowd51
• I killed 2x 4tb Nvme drives on Pciexpress with ZFS raid1 under proxmox, got them replaced, tried again on both pci-express and usb adapter kept getting io problems there too with zfs, drive gets disconnected during scrub or high load, tried already kernel or power management options for pciexpress and usb without sucess, managed to reproduce with high load.

  or proxmox ( especially community edition) is fucked or zfs is still unstable, surprisingly with different drives on different interfaces I obtained same results, didnt swap proxmox for clean os, that might being some changes since modules and options would be different i guess. ( drives firmware etc are fine and performing well when inspected with proprietary windows tools)

  just search zfs nvme pcie or usb problema or disconnect and you see similar stability problem for different users in different cases (os, drives etc), but also unraid and others, maybe somewhere is rithe right combo of options/glitches but didnt find it yet

  by giov4
• > usb adapter kept getting io problems there too with zfs, drive gets disconnected during scrub or high load

  That's usually caused by the adapter chipset overheating. Don't use USB adapters for important data.

  by 6581
• this is really cool. I've been dealing with an aging Synology nas and this is something I can pick up, evaluate performance and how safe it is to serve as home for my data.
  by aligutierrez
• personally, after buying X380, using my old T430 as a mini NAS..(also immich) with a ZFS mirror. works wonderfully :3
  by sleepycatgirl
• Has anybody used unraid for his Home Server? Is it worth it?

  unraid.net

  by Beijinger
• I'm hardly a sysadmin and I think Unraid is great. My usecase is some Docker containers and media backups. The UI gets the job done well, whereas Synology tries to dumb things down and make things pretty.

  Android is to Unraid as iPhone is to Synology.

  by joshmn
• To this day I still use a ZFS array for my critical backup storage. I've migrated over to using snap raid + mergerfs for my larger Linux iso storage array. Simple enough and I can pull a drive on it's own without any other stuff.
  by rexysmexy
• Also you can use zfs on a proxmox host and use that both for NAS duty and for the VMs.

  For some reason people insist on doing truenas on top of proxmox and then introducing a networking layer between everything they do. Noooo…

  by Havoc
• its probably dumb but what i do is use proxmox with a debian VM with docker installed and each docker container gets a virtual disk i make on the proxmox host. obviously more involved than running unraid or truenas but i think the complexity underneath is simpler.
  by lucasrufkahr
• Needs a 2024 in the title maybe.

  Also, are there neal.* besides .fun and .computer?

  I'll check all the other TLDs real quick...

  by thisisauserid
• One alternative for those who don't want any of the major NAS vendors, just use RHEL10. It's free up to 16 licenses, it's ultra stable, cockpit is a very mature gui for a lot of maintenance tasks.

  It's a set and forget OS that will run for years without requiring your attention. But these days it has decent container support for hosting services on.

  by INTPenis
• The problem with RHEL is that the free version exists at the sufferance of IBM, a company not well known for being motivated by keeping tech enthusiasts happy. I would use Debian, personally. Not as long of a support cycle as RHEL, but still quite stable and no possibility of corporate rug-pulls.
  by bigstrat2003
• Or rocky, which is a 1:1 clone of RHEL that doesn't require licenses. https://rockylinux.org/
  by theNotFractured
• A friendly reminder since it's probably relevant: when's the last time you tested disaster recovery for your own setup? If you haven't verified recovering it, you don't have an offsite backup.

  I had a cloud backup (Backblaze B2, using rclone and encryption) for my home NAS. Some unlucky drive failures later, I was getting ready to recover from my Backblaze backup... and then I couldn't find/remember where I saved the rclone encryption backup.

  I lost all data in that NAS, including irreplaceable personal/family photos, due to that mistake. My lesson to share: please verify you can indeed recover from backups.

  by dannyw
• To be totally honest, I don't think I can live without ZFS anymore. Deduplication and snaphots in 2026 are a must.
  by deeddy
• and checksums!
  by Maledictus
• Can anyone recommend a good server for a homelab to use for a storage purpose like this?
  by Khaine
• It's a horrible idea likely, but I have an ancient old Dell PowerEdge R510. Probably sucks way too much energy, but it does what it does and the price of SSDs have skyrocketed so I'm not touching it.
  by bombcar
• Not strictly a recommendation, but Terramaster is a good brand to look at if you want Synology-shaped hardware which can run TrueNAS or Proxmox or any flavour of Linux you want.

  Along with various other devices (including a large Synology which I wouldn’t buy today), I run Proxmox on a small two bay+two nvme Terramaster. I have a bare bones Ubuntu LXC running Samba configured for Apple Time Machine, an VM running Scrypyed, and PBS for Proxmox backups. Nothing on it is critical so I don’t bother with any storage redundancy.

  by simondotau
• I'm sure there's better options now but the HP ProLiant MicroServers (used).

  They support ECC ram, 4 caddies, one extra PCIe slot, and to my knowledge you're not cpu limited for a zfs file server usecase.

  Keep in mind though, all you need is linux* support, iDRAC, ECC if you're a snob, and drive bays ... and that's basically any free server.

  In my extremely opinionated opinion I would only get used enterprise server gear, because a zfs file server will just work unless hardware fails. And a UPS.

  *ZFS will be a more natural choice on FreeBSD. It's better documented, and will meet Linux 1:1 in hardware compatibility for this.

  by burner420042