Building your own NAS (Network Attached Storage) is very easy and simple with TrueNAS. It supports a wide variety of hardware thus making it simple and easy to install.
You can make use of any old computer with at least 4GB or more and a minimum of 4 Hard Drives with any make or model, preferably with the same capacity (eg. 1TB). The performance of system will solely depends on your choice of hardware but for Home use it is more than sufficient.
There are 2 Community Edition available :-
- TrueNAS Core
- TrueNAS Scale
TrueNAS Scale on the other hand is based on Debian Linux, it's also very stable and more suitable for Home use because it's using Debian Package.
While TrueNAS Enterprise is more designed towards Enterprise companies with demands on High Availability, High Performance and Professional Supports. iX System also developed and sell pre-build TrueNAS System to cater for anyone that doesn't want to build their own.
For more information about TrueNAS, please visit their website at https://www.truenas.com/
Why TrueNAS ?
Well first of all, TrueNAS is using OpenZFS. It's an Open Source Storage Platform that have functionality of both traditional file system and volume manager.
Unlike other Array Controller that required all hard drives to be in the same Make and Model, OpenZFS make use of mixed Make and Model to create a Storage "Pool" thus making it very suitable for Home use because not everyone have the same hard drive specifications laying around.
More information about OpenZFS can be found here at https://openzfs.org/wiki/Main_Page
Step-by-Step Guide :
1. Download the latest ISO file from TrueNAS website (https://www.truenas.com/).
2. Use any preferred ISO Maker/Writer to an external USB Flash Drive, a minimum of 8GB will be sufficient.
3. Once the USB Flash Drive is ready, you can plug into the computer.
4. But before installation, we need to ensure that all the hard drive is correctly detected and remove any RAID array configuration. ZFS works best without any RAID configured.
5. You will need to choose the install drive, any capacity drive will do. Preferably the first drive that is connected.
6. After that, you will be prompted to specify an Administrator's password, this password will be used to login to TrueNAS Web GUI on the later stage.
7. Once the installation completed and computer rebooted, on another computer and open your prefer browser (eg. Google Chrome) and type-in the IP Address of the server displayed at console screen.
8. Some basic configurations is required, we need to specify a Static IP Address for the server. This will ensure that everytime the server rebooted, it will use the same IP Address and also it is more easy to configure port forwarding in your router (if needed) for some applications to work.
9. Next is to create the first storage pool, you can configure as many pool(s) you want but all depends on the available hard drives. For example, ZFS-z required a minimum of 2 drives (similarly to RAID-1), if you have more than 2 hard drives (eg. 3 drives) then the additional hard drive will be used as Parity Drive which are similarly to RAID-5.
10. Now you TrueNAS will work correctly, further configuration is required such as creating SMB (Samaba) Shares, NFS Share or whichever you required.
Video below :-
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