I tend to go overkill when it comes to home networking and server infrastructure. I’m considering replacing my QNap, with what I assert is the world’s worst software, with a homebrew and unRAID.
I’m just wondering if anyone has any experience doing this or not. For a few years I ran a raid 5 array on an old gaming PC, and then I swapped to qnap for “what if there is a fire, how do I grab and run with a computer that can act as an anchor for a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier”. That’s worked for the last 5 years, sort of, but I swear they make everything 10x harder than it has any right to be.
I was considering 4 x 10tb hdds and 3x2TB Evo 990 Pros, in a cache pool and/or 2x2TB in an SSD pool for docker containers and 1 2TB for the cache pool. I’m just not entirely sure where unRAID itself ends up going; the cache pool?
Aside from that question, any other “gotchas” that you’ve experienced? Any comparisons with qnap would be greatly appreciated, too.
@dax I use TrueNAS. They have a CORE version for BSD fans and a Scale version for Linux types (better for VMs IMO)
I use CORE on a surplus Dell Compellent server. It is over kill. TN works fine on commodity hardware.
I set up a Scale install on a surplus Dell R710. I use the CORE version, which has low level BSD fiber channel tools, to export volumes to Scale and use Scale pirmarily as a VM host. The free version of Scale does not support fiber channel.
Luckily, I got some good surplus scores last year ;-)
TrueNAS is the rebranding of FreeNAS, right?
I’m not the biggest BSD fan - I’ve struggled with figuring out <basically everything> with my pfsense and then opsense perimeter devices, so I kinda just gave up. TrueNAS Scale could work, but I’m trying to avoid VM in favor of docker-container-all-the-things. How is TrueNAS for running containers? Is it just like a basic linux server install, or does it have some bells and whistles like unRAID does?
@dax Scale is very nice. Way better docker/cotainer support. the CORE version does not really support that at all. Scale has proper container support.
Scale has a good UI for containers, I think it’s very easy management.
I have a couple little boxes around I could install scale on to give it a test drive - with unRAID having a (very modest) price point I’m not against it, but if TrueNAS Scale does what I want, I won’t really need to go unraid route. To be honest I’m less entranced with the UI than I am having a sane set of command line tools and a reasonable cli-first configuration route, if that’s possible.
@dax TN may not be for you then. The cli and all the tools are available but it is GUI based.
I have not tried unRAID but have read good things about it.
@dax BTW, pfSense is my gateway/firewall. I love it. It runs on commodity hardware. Hasn’t crashed in a long time. THe last problem was a dead pwoer supply which had been on 24/7 for about 5 years
Yeah, I got a cheap ali-express mini-itx of some sort about a decade ago and ran pfsense on it for like 7 years straight, with my only issue being pfBlockerNG causing a catastrophic failure after I installed it. this was my first trial-by-fire of administering a bsd machine on the command line and it was so stressful because I was trying to undo it without any internet at all. I still never got it working in the end and just gave up and ran pihole on a container instead.
I ended up switching to opnsense when I got > 1gbps internet and wanted to make sure my router could handle it - got one of the opsense appliances with sfp+ and ran 10gb fiber to my switch and 2.5gbps ethernet to my modem. It’s been super nice actually!
I could also be convinced to look at proxmox too, but that doesn’t help my storage needs nearly as much as it sanitizes my docker/lxd container needs