Just throwing out an option, not saying it’s the best:
If you are comfortable with Linux (or you want to be come intimately familiar with it), then you can just run your favorite distribution. Running a couple of docker containers can be done on anything easily.
What you’re losing is usually the simple configuration GUI and some built-in features such as automatic backups. What you gain is absolute control over everything. That tradeoff is definitely not for everyone, but it’s what I picked and I’m quite happy with it.
Yeah already quite familiar, already got a server but looking for something more premium, but essentially deliver the most easy platforms for the rest of the family to use.
Also, you could run Linux off of a real CPU. My experience is that my DS916+ is way underpowered even with 8 GB memory. I use my NAS for actual storage, and an old Intel mainboard w/16GB RAM for actual CPU work.
Can definitely confirm this. I started with a Proxmox system which had a TrueNAS VM. TrueNAS just used a USB HDD for storage though. Setting everything up and getting the permissions set correctly so I could connect my computers was a pain in the ass though.
Later I bought a synology and it just works. Only thing I would recommend is getting good HDDs. I bought Toshiba MG08 16TB drives and while they work great, they are obnoxiously loud during read and write operations. They are so loud, that even though the NAS is in a separate room I have to shut it off at night.
Meanwhile the Seagate Ironwolf drive I used for TrueNAS was next to my bed for multiple months and was basically silent.
This is a great way to set this up. I’m moving over to this in a few days. I have a temporary setup with ZFS directly on Proxmox with an OMV VM for handling shares bc my B450 motherboard IOMMU groups won’t let me pass through my GPU and an HBA to separate VMs (note for OP: if you cannot pass through your HBA to a VM, this setup is not a good idea). I ordered an ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming motherboard as a replacement ($110 on Amazon right now. It’s a great deal.) that will have more separate IOMMU groups.
My old setup was similar but used ESXi instead of Proxmox. I also went nuts and virtualized pfSense on the same PC. It was surprisingly stable, but I’m keeping my gateway on a separate PC from now on.
If you can’t pass through your HBA to a VM, feel free to manage ZFS through Proxmox instead (CLI or with something like Cockpit). While TrueNAS is a nice GUI for ZFS, if it’s getting in the way you really don’t need it.
Oh sorry for some reason I read OMV VM and assumed the ZFS pool was set up there. The Cockpit ZFS Manager extension that I linked has good management of snapshots as well, which may be sufficient depending on how much power you need.
I’d love to find out more about this setup. Do you know of any blogs/wikis explaining that? Are you separating the storage from the compute with the HBA card?
This is a fairly common setup and it’s not too complex - learning more about Proxmox and TrueNAS/ZFS individually will probably be easiest.
Usually:
Proxmox on bare metal
TrueNAS Core/Scale in a VM
Pass the HBA PCI card through to TrueNAS and set up your ZFS pool there
If you run your app stack through Docker, set up a minimal Debian/Alpine host VM (you can technically use Docker under an LXC but experienced people keep saying it causes problems eventually and I’ll take their word for it)
If you run your app stack through LXCs, just set them up through Proxmox normally
Set up an NFS share through TrueNAS, and connect your app stack to that NFS share
(Optional): Just run your ZFS pool on Proxmox itself and skip TrueNAS
I already run proxmox but not TrueNAS. I’m really just confused about the HBA card. Probably a stupid question but why can’t TrueNAS access regular drives connected to SATA?
The main problem is just getting TrueNAS access to the physical disks via IOMMU groups and passthrough. HBA cards are a super easy way to get a dedicated IOMMU group that has all your drives attached, so it’s common for people to use them in these sorts of setups. If you can pull your normal SATA controller down into the TrueNAS VM without messing anything else up on the host layer, it will work the same way as an HBA card for all TrueNAS cares.
(TMK, SATA controller hubs are usually an all-at-once passthrough, so if you have your host system running off some part of this controller it probably won’t work to unhook it from the host and give it to the guest.)
This is 100% my experience and setup. (Though I run Debian for my docker VM)
I did run docker in an LXC but ran into some weird permission issues that shouldn’t have existed. Ran it again in VM and no issues with the same setup. Decided to keep it that way.
I do run my plex and jellyfin on an LXC tough. No issues with that so far.
So theoretically if someone has alrady set up their NAS (custom Debian with ZFS root instead of TrueNAS, but shouldn’t matter), it sounds like it should be relatively straightforward to migrate all of that into a Proxmox VM, by installing Proxmox “under it”, right? Only thing I’d need right now is some SSD for Proxmox itself.
Proxmox would be the host on bare metal, with your current install as a VM under that. I’m not sure how to migrate an existing real install into a VM so it might require backing up configs and reinstalling.
You shouldn’t need any extra hardware in theory, as Proxmox will let you split up the space on a drive to give to guest VMs.
(I’m probably misunderstanding what you’re trying to do?)
I just thought that if all storage can easily be “passed through” to a VM then it should in theory be very simple to boot the existing installation in a VM directly.
Regarding the extra storage: sharing disk space between proxmox and my current installation would imply that I have to pass-through “half of a drive” which I don’t think works like that. Also, I’m using ZFS for my OS disk and I don’t feel comformtable trying to figure out if I can easily resize those partitions without breaking anything ;-)
I have a qnap. I have had no issues. It runs its own qts OS so no need to figure out what you want to run. Make sure the hardware is x86. Plex runs better on x86.
This was the route I went with when I started, and I’ve never had cause to regret it. For people near the start of their self-hosting journey, it’s the no-hassle, reliable choice.
Synology is generally a great option if you can afford the premium.
Unraid is a good alternative for the poor man. Check this list of cases to build in. I personally have a Fractal R5 which can support up to 13 HDD slots.
Unraid is generally a better bang for your buck imo. It’s got great support from the community.
If you want a “setup and forget” type of experience, synology will serve you well, if you can afford it. Of you are more of a tinkerer and see yourself experimenting and upgrading in the future, then I recommend custom built. OMV is a solid OS for a novice, but any Linux distro you fancy most can do the job very well!
I’ve started my NAS journey with a very humble 1-bay synology. For the last few years I am using a custom built ARM NAS (nanopi m4v2), with 4-bays and running Armbian. All my services run on docker, I have Jellyfin, *arr, bitwarden and several other servicies running very reliably.
^ This. I have an M1 Mac mini running Asahi Linux with a bunch of docker containers and it works great. Run Jellyfin off of a separate stick PC running an Intel Celeron with Ubuntu Mate on it. Basically I just have docker compose files on those two machines and occasionally ssh in from my phone to sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y (on Ubuntu) or sudo pacman -Syu (on Asahi) and then docker compose pull && docker compose up -d
It’s fine, but it’s really only good as a NAS. BHyve is a terrible virtualization platform. With something like Open Media Vault you get access to KVM, which is a much better way to run a virt or two on the side.
You’re one of the few who mentioned OMV in the thread and I was wondering why, it works great for me as a VM on proxmox… the only gripe I have is that sometimes the GUI decides I’ve made changes to the configuration and asks me to apply them, only to fail and get stuck with the notification.
First I chose a Pi now am using a Nuc as a NAS.
Reason for why: The price was too much for a synology + transcode capable CPU as it wasmt clear what type of processor was being used.
I got burned pretty bad by QNAP. Their TS-453 Pro had an Intel manufacturing defect that basically caused it to die prematurely and QNAP has basically given up all responsibility for it. I built my own NAS after that experience.
I’m a big fan of unraid but I will admit it’s overkill for a simple media server.
A synology NAS should be plenty powerful enough for most streaming needs so long as you’re willing to let your media transcode first and you’re not streaming to too many devices at once.
I use my unraid NAS to run sonar/radarr/readarr/prowlarr, stable diffusion, myjdownloader, a few vms and at one point even my lemmy instance. But honestly aside from stable diffusion and the VMs a synology NAS should have enough power to run a handful of other apps in addition to plex/jellyfin
Do you have any old hardware that doesn’t have a job? That is a great place to start. Take some time try out different solutions (proxmox, unraid, casa OS). Then as you nail down your needs you can better pick hardware.
A NAS serves data to clients; I know this is tilting conventional wisdom on it’s head but hear me out: go for the most inexpensive, lowest power storge-only-NAS that you can tolerate, and instead…put your money into your data transport (network) and into your clients..
As much as possible, simplify your life - move processing out of middle tiers, into client tiers.
I wouldn’t recommend a Synology NAS if you intend to stream content with Plex/Jellyfin. It simply lacks the horsepower most of the time. I should just go with a DIY solution, imo. If you just want to through components that you have lying around together, I would go with Unraid. Unraid doesn’t really care what you throw at it hardware wise.
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Just throwing out an option, not saying it’s the best:
If you are comfortable with Linux (or you want to be come intimately familiar with it), then you can just run your favorite distribution. Running a couple of docker containers can be done on anything easily.
What you’re losing is usually the simple configuration GUI and some built-in features such as automatic backups. What you gain is absolute control over everything. That tradeoff is definitely not for everyone, but it’s what I picked and I’m quite happy with it.
Yeah already quite familiar, already got a server but looking for something more premium, but essentially deliver the most easy platforms for the rest of the family to use.
Also, you could run Linux off of a real CPU. My experience is that my DS916+ is way underpowered even with 8 GB memory. I use my NAS for actual storage, and an old Intel mainboard w/16GB RAM for actual CPU work.
deleted by creator
Can definitely confirm this. I started with a Proxmox system which had a TrueNAS VM. TrueNAS just used a USB HDD for storage though. Setting everything up and getting the permissions set correctly so I could connect my computers was a pain in the ass though.
Later I bought a synology and it just works. Only thing I would recommend is getting good HDDs. I bought Toshiba MG08 16TB drives and while they work great, they are obnoxiously loud during read and write operations. They are so loud, that even though the NAS is in a separate room I have to shut it off at night.
Meanwhile the Seagate Ironwolf drive I used for TrueNAS was next to my bed for multiple months and was basically silent.
deleted by creator
I have the same SSD thought, except every time they come down HDD prices also go down.
deleted by creator
I have Iron wolves and I thought THEY were noisy.
You might have gotten a dud. I’ve got 4 in my NAS and they are silent.
I have proxmox on bare metal, an HBA card to passthrough to TrueNAS Scale. I’ve had good luck with this setup.
The HBA card is to passthrough to TrueNAS so it can get direct control of the drives for ZFS. I got mine on eBay.
I’m running proxmox so that I can separate some of my processes (e.g. plex LXC) into a different VM.
This is a great way to set this up. I’m moving over to this in a few days. I have a temporary setup with ZFS directly on Proxmox with an OMV VM for handling shares bc my B450 motherboard IOMMU groups won’t let me pass through my GPU and an HBA to separate VMs (note for OP: if you cannot pass through your HBA to a VM, this setup is not a good idea). I ordered an ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming motherboard as a replacement ($110 on Amazon right now. It’s a great deal.) that will have more separate IOMMU groups.
My old setup was similar but used ESXi instead of Proxmox. I also went nuts and virtualized pfSense on the same PC. It was surprisingly stable, but I’m keeping my gateway on a separate PC from now on.
If you can’t pass through your HBA to a VM, feel free to manage ZFS through Proxmox instead (CLI or with something like Cockpit). While TrueNAS is a nice GUI for ZFS, if it’s getting in the way you really don’t need it.
TrueNAS has nice defaults for managing snapshots and the like that make it a bit safer, but yeah, as I said, I run ZFS directly on Proxmox right now.
Oh sorry for some reason I read OMV VM and assumed the ZFS pool was set up there. The Cockpit ZFS Manager extension that I linked has good management of snapshots as well, which may be sufficient depending on how much power you need.
Good to know!
I’d love to find out more about this setup. Do you know of any blogs/wikis explaining that? Are you separating the storage from the compute with the HBA card?
This is a fairly common setup and it’s not too complex - learning more about Proxmox and TrueNAS/ZFS individually will probably be easiest.
Usually:
Proxmox on bare metal
TrueNAS Core/Scale in a VM
Pass the HBA PCI card through to TrueNAS and set up your ZFS pool there
If you run your app stack through Docker, set up a minimal Debian/Alpine host VM (you can technically use Docker under an LXC but experienced people keep saying it causes problems eventually and I’ll take their word for it)
If you run your app stack through LXCs, just set them up through Proxmox normally
Set up an NFS share through TrueNAS, and connect your app stack to that NFS share
(Optional): Just run your ZFS pool on Proxmox itself and skip TrueNAS
I already run proxmox but not TrueNAS. I’m really just confused about the HBA card. Probably a stupid question but why can’t TrueNAS access regular drives connected to SATA?
The main problem is just getting TrueNAS access to the physical disks via IOMMU groups and passthrough. HBA cards are a super easy way to get a dedicated IOMMU group that has all your drives attached, so it’s common for people to use them in these sorts of setups. If you can pull your normal SATA controller down into the TrueNAS VM without messing anything else up on the host layer, it will work the same way as an HBA card for all TrueNAS cares.
(TMK, SATA controller hubs are usually an all-at-once passthrough, so if you have your host system running off some part of this controller it probably won’t work to unhook it from the host and give it to the guest.)
Makes sense, thanks for the info
That was one of the things I got wrong at first as well. But it totally makes it much easier in the long run.
This is 100% my experience and setup. (Though I run Debian for my docker VM)
I did run docker in an LXC but ran into some weird permission issues that shouldn’t have existed. Ran it again in VM and no issues with the same setup. Decided to keep it that way.
I do run my plex and jellyfin on an LXC tough. No issues with that so far.
So theoretically if someone has alrady set up their NAS (custom Debian with ZFS root instead of TrueNAS, but shouldn’t matter), it sounds like it should be relatively straightforward to migrate all of that into a Proxmox VM, by installing Proxmox “under it”, right? Only thing I’d need right now is some SSD for Proxmox itself.
Proxmox would be the host on bare metal, with your current install as a VM under that. I’m not sure how to migrate an existing real install into a VM so it might require backing up configs and reinstalling.
You shouldn’t need any extra hardware in theory, as Proxmox will let you split up the space on a drive to give to guest VMs.
(I’m probably misunderstanding what you’re trying to do?)
I just thought that if all storage can easily be “passed through” to a VM then it should in theory be very simple to boot the existing installation in a VM directly.
Regarding the extra storage: sharing disk space between proxmox and my current installation would imply that I have to pass-through “half of a drive” which I don’t think works like that. Also, I’m using ZFS for my OS disk and I don’t feel comformtable trying to figure out if I can easily resize those partitions without breaking anything ;-)
That should work, but I don’t have experience with it. In that case yeah you’d need another separate drive to store Proxmox on.
I have a qnap. I have had no issues. It runs its own qts OS so no need to figure out what you want to run. Make sure the hardware is x86. Plex runs better on x86.
My Synogy NAS was super easy to set up and has been very solid. Very happy with it. I’m sure there’s other solutions though.
This was the route I went with when I started, and I’ve never had cause to regret it. For people near the start of their self-hosting journey, it’s the no-hassle, reliable choice.
Synology is generally a great option if you can afford the premium.
Unraid is a good alternative for the poor man. Check this list of cases to build in. I personally have a Fractal R5 which can support up to 13 HDD slots.
Unraid is generally a better bang for your buck imo. It’s got great support from the community.
this. Op, look for a used Synology. It Just Works ™️
:)
If you want a “setup and forget” type of experience, synology will serve you well, if you can afford it. Of you are more of a tinkerer and see yourself experimenting and upgrading in the future, then I recommend custom built. OMV is a solid OS for a novice, but any Linux distro you fancy most can do the job very well!
I’ve started my NAS journey with a very humble 1-bay synology. For the last few years I am using a custom built ARM NAS (nanopi m4v2), with 4-bays and running Armbian. All my services run on docker, I have Jellyfin, *arr, bitwarden and several other servicies running very reliably.
And if you’re not sure how much of tinkering you want to do a Synology with docker support is a good option.
^ This. I have an M1 Mac mini running Asahi Linux with a bunch of docker containers and it works great. Run Jellyfin off of a separate stick PC running an Intel Celeron with Ubuntu Mate on it. Basically I just have docker compose files on those two machines and occasionally ssh in from my phone to
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y(on Ubuntu) orsudo pacman -Syu(on Asahi) and thendocker compose pull && docker compose up -dDo people not like TrueNAS?
It’s fine, but it’s really only good as a NAS. BHyve is a terrible virtualization platform. With something like Open Media Vault you get access to KVM, which is a much better way to run a virt or two on the side.
TrueNAS isn’t just BSD anymore. There’s Scale which is just TrueNAS’s UI and ZFS on top of Debian.
You’re one of the few who mentioned OMV in the thread and I was wondering why, it works great for me as a VM on proxmox… the only gripe I have is that sometimes the GUI decides I’ve made changes to the configuration and asks me to apply them, only to fail and get stuck with the notification.
First I chose a Pi now am using a Nuc as a NAS.
Reason for why: The price was too much for a synology + transcode capable CPU as it wasmt clear what type of processor was being used.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
[Thread #164 for this sub, first seen 24th Sep 2023, 20:25] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
I have a QNAP NAS that I love. Can’t recommend it enough.
I got burned pretty bad by QNAP. Their TS-453 Pro had an Intel manufacturing defect that basically caused it to die prematurely and QNAP has basically given up all responsibility for it. I built my own NAS after that experience.
Yep, I had the same with my TS-453, but mine was second hand. Ended up buying a new QNAP NAS and being very happy with it.
I’m a big fan of unraid but I will admit it’s overkill for a simple media server.
A synology NAS should be plenty powerful enough for most streaming needs so long as you’re willing to let your media transcode first and you’re not streaming to too many devices at once.
I use my unraid NAS to run sonar/radarr/readarr/prowlarr, stable diffusion, myjdownloader, a few vms and at one point even my lemmy instance. But honestly aside from stable diffusion and the VMs a synology NAS should have enough power to run a handful of other apps in addition to plex/jellyfin
Do you have any old hardware that doesn’t have a job? That is a great place to start. Take some time try out different solutions (proxmox, unraid, casa OS). Then as you nail down your needs you can better pick hardware.
Yeah this is what I have been doing so far, loads of spare parts - running Debian atm. So kind of looking for ‘the next step’ rn.
A NAS serves data to clients; I know this is tilting conventional wisdom on it’s head but hear me out: go for the most inexpensive, lowest power storge-only-NAS that you can tolerate, and instead…put your money into your data transport (network) and into your clients..
As much as possible, simplify your life - move processing out of middle tiers, into client tiers.
I wouldn’t recommend a Synology NAS if you intend to stream content with Plex/Jellyfin. It simply lacks the horsepower most of the time. I should just go with a DIY solution, imo. If you just want to through components that you have lying around together, I would go with Unraid. Unraid doesn’t really care what you throw at it hardware wise.