To NAS or not to NAS, that is the question. Open Source NAS software reviews abound, and one stands out over the others, called TrueNAS, formerly FreeNAS. There are many others to consider. This is not a review of NAS software, moreover a reason to move to a NAS platform, turnkey, or DYI — you choose.
November – 2022 – | Ten years ago, Open Source NAS software was rough around the gills, base software that exposed file sharing primarily NFS and secondarily SMB Windows was available, but we were all still hosting a server under our desks. My office computer was Windows 7 with 4 disk drives, and compute motherboards of then supported RAID, still to this day, so why did I need an NAS, another piece of hardware to maintain?
Understand my reason for writing this piece. Open Source #1, then the sad demise of old solid and beloved Windows, rather, Microsoft foisting of the useless new ad-packed Windows 11, that I would have used as a file server. Serving files are so “2000’s”, as new NAS software are now more than just a share or backup target.
My current Office Computer running Windows 10, six hard disk drives – so “2000’s” in reality. As I forecast to move from, rather avoid, Windows 11, Linux will be my desktop of choice. Its time to take advantage of securing critical data from the windows box to a central NAS.
Reasons for a central NAS is data consolidation primarily. The latest NAS software offer not just data consolidation, but bullet proof security, remote internet access, apps/VM that can run on NAS, data replication, data dedupe, run jailed apps like PLEX, Docker, Kubernetes, etc, etc. The days of running all this on a single Windows Desktop is over, and for good reason. Windows IS a desktop. Even Windows Server is becoming a software of the past in favor of AWS Linux instances. I just love the demise of the Windows Chokehold.
All that said, TrueNAS has become a top choice of open source network storage for many reasons. TrueNAS can run on just about any compute platform available today, ranging from single board computers to full blown fiber channel attached devices for the enterprise. For SOHO use, an average x64 based device can be sufficient to run TrueNAS depending on the network bandwidth and storage pool needs.
TrueNAS is not positioned for the inexperienced tech person. I think of TreuNAS as nearing the EMC Islon in terms of flexibility and complexity of configuration options. Of course the EMC Islon is intended as an enterprise solution, but I would pair TrueNAS as a second string player.
Turing back to the SOHO NAS needs. TrueNAS offers an equivalent of software and plugins to eclipse the best home Synolgy or Qnap NAS boxes, but it comes at a cost of the learning curve of the open source offering, but there is no denying that TruNAS can be an enterprise level piece of free software for the cost of nothing but the hardware. — Oh I love to see Microsoft fade away….
