If you're interested in building your own NAS device or even installing a NAS operating system on a pre-built NAS device, you'll eventually have to select an operating system. This is where things tend to get more challenging because you're comparing operating systems that

you potentially haven't used and are trying to determine which option makes the most sense for you. So if you clicked on this video to try and figure out which NAS operating system is best, there isn't a best option for everyone, but there is a best option for you, and

that's what we're going to focus on in this video. Now, if you're coming from a pre-built NAS operating system, these options are drastically different. Generally, pre-built NAS devices come with software that's optimized for the hardware used, but these operating systems are designed to work on a wide

range of hardware. For this reason, one of the most important steps in selecting a NAS operating system is selecting the operating system that you think will function best on the hardware that you're using. This is more important if you're using lower-end hardware, as more

powerful hardware with sufficient resources will most likely work with any of these operating systems. But keep that in mind as you select an operating system. Now, before we get started, there are a few important disclaimers that I want to get out of the way. A NAS is

network attached storage. You can set up a shared folder in Windows that will function as network attached storage, but this video will focus on operating systems that are designed to be used on a NAS. That means that when you load it up, it'll have some sort of GUI to allow

you to create a storage pool and volume, shared folder configurations, and generally have what you'd expect out of a NAS operating system. I'll also focus on official options, so while there are unofficial options that exist, I will not be recommending them. The goal is to

simply highlight some of the biggest differences between these NAS operating systems to help you make an informed decision. Those differences generally revolve around the actual storage pools, as they'll all support shared folders, have their data accessible through file services like SMB, and while one may be

slightly easier or more intuitive than the other from a setup perspective, the end result will be the same. So the first up is going to be the name that you probably heard first, and that's TrueNAS. TrueNAS has two flavors: TrueNAS Core and TrueNAS Scale, which are both free to use.

TrueNAS Core is the successor to FreeNAS, which I believe was released sometime around the mid-2000s, and TrueNAS Scale was released within the past few years. From a NAS perspective, they're designed to function the same. They both run ZFS, which I believe is the best file system

that you can use, as it's designed around data integrity. ZFS is a copy-on-write file system, so it supports snapshots, which freeze your data at a point in time. It also stores data using checksums to detect and correct potential corruption and is extremely scalable. This is the

main selling point to TrueNAS, as it's extremely resilient and is something you can kind of set up and forget from a data integrity perspective. TrueNAS Core and TrueNAS Scale both use ZFS, but there are differences, and it generally comes down to

their underlying operating system, TrueNAS Core, was built on FreeBSD, and TrueNAS Scale is built on Debian Linux. None of that matters for you except to say that it leads to some extreme differences, with one of the biggest potentially being the applications that you plan on

using on the NAS. With prior versions of TrueNAS Scale, Docker was supported, but mainly because it was used as the container runtime for k3s. When k3s switched to containerd, Docker was deprecated in TrueNAS Scale. However, there are still a ton of great applications in

TrueNAS Scale instead of k3s. TrueNAS Core utilizes something called jails and plugins. While they both work well, I think long-term TrueNAS Scale will be a better platform for applications. Next is virtualization, which in my opinion is better on TrueNAS Scale since it uses KVM

while TrueNAS Core uses bhyve. Whether you plan on running virtual machines on the device will depend on your requirements, but the point is they both run virtual machines, though some may have a preference on KVM or bhyve. So up to this point, it

probably sounds like you should use TrueNAS Scale, then, right? Probably, but what TrueNAS Core has is stability and longevity, with all things equal, meaning no hardware compatibility issues. And comparing TrueNAS Core versus TrueNAS Scale as a NAS only, many will still say that TrueNAS Core is

more stable, though TrueNAS Scale has come a long way since its release. The goal of a NAS is to be stable, and stability isn't something you should just dismiss, so that's a huge, huge plus for TrueNAS Core. This naturally leads us to the actual

Hardware requirements for TrueNAS, which are potentially more than you'd expect since TrueNAS runs ZFS, it's a memory-hungry file system. Simply put, the more memory you can use with TrueNAS, the better off you'll be. Personally, I don't think you should

run it with less than 16 GB, but the minimum for both Core and Scale is technically 8 GB. In 2024 though, it's not that crazy of a recommendation to make sure your system has at least 16 GB of memory. There's also the debate of ECC

memory, which is designed to detect and correct single-bit memory errors before writing them to disk. Which is a fancy way of saying that if there's a memory error, ECC memory should fix it before it gets written to disk, where non-ECC memory will technically write that error to disk. How

often this happens is generally what's debated. I'm not going to partake in that debate, but to summarize, there are people who feel you shouldn't ever use ZFS without ECC memory. Then there are people who feel that you should never store data on a NAS without ECC memory, and

the file system being used is irrelevant; you just need to use ECC memory. All of this is to say, you should do your own research on this if you don't plan on using ECC memory because some of those arguments can potentially push you towards a different operating system

with more file system choices. This brings us to ZFS expansion, which will most likely be your biggest problem if you've never used ZFS. With ZFS, you were never able to add a single drive, meaning if you set up a RAID Z1 pool,

with four drives you couldn't add another drive to expand the pool, at least not the way you're probably thinking. Instead, you need to create a second vdev, which, without going too far into detail, the first four drives would be one vdev, and if you needed more storage space

you'd create a second vdev which has to be a mirror of the first vdev. So we have one RAID-Z1 vdev with four drives and the second vdev has to match. So to expand your pool you'd need four drives, not one.

Now, the hope is that at some point a stable version of RAID-Z1 expansion will be available, meaning that you'd select RAID-Z1 or Z2 as an example, and you'd be able to add a single drive and expand the pool. There's been a lot of

development on this from what I've seen, but it's not done yet. And then you'll have to wait for official support in TrueNAS. If you plan on adding your drives at one time and never expanding, this isn't a problem, but if your goal was to

slowly grow the storage space based on your needs, this could be a deal breaker. If this feature is important to you, you can look at the next operating system on our list, which is unRAID. Now, unlike TrueNAS, unRAID is not free. There are different pricing tiers, but you'll have

to work this into your budget if you're interested in it. I really like unRAID and always have in the past. UnRAID versus TrueNAS generally came down to if you wanted to use ZFS. If you did, your only option was TrueNAS. But today, unRAID

officially supports EFS, which naturally makes things more complicated. With that said, if you really want a ZFS pool, you'll probably still lean towards TrueNAS. ZFS on unRAID is still relatively new and it simply functions better than you're used to if you've ever used an on-

RAID array, and if you haven't, you'll probably want a lot of the benefits that historically have pushed people towards unRAID, which a ZFS pool doesn't really support. So why is that? Mainly because when you use an unRAID array, you're not

creating a storage pool, and in fact, you're not actually using RAID as the name kind of implies. You basically create an array that consists of data drives, and this is where your data will be stored. Unlike RAID, where data is striped across disks, unRAID writes that

data directly to the disk. You'll then specify one or more parity drives, which are used for redundancy so that if a drive dies, you don't actually lose your data. When you think of something like RAID 5, you can lose one drive without losing any of your data. With RAID 6,

it's two drives. For unRAID, it functions the same, but you enable redundancy by configuring parity drives as opposed to selecting a specific RAID type. You can configure cache as well, so unRAID functions the same way you'd expect with most other NAS operating systems. It

just does it entirely differently. Now, with unRAID, the drive sizes don't matter, but the parity drives must be at minimum the size of the largest drive in your array. If you need more space, add a drive and keep going. unRAID doesn't require you to actually rebuild a RAID array.

because there isn't a RAID array, which means that you can technically take the hard drives out, put them in a device that supports whatever file system you selected, and view the data. You can do this with RAID as well, but you need to move the entire RAID array, and it has to

basically spin up on the new device the same way as it did on whatever source it was initially running on, meaning the drive order must stay the same, and you have to use the same RAID configuration. With unRAID, pop out a disc, put it in another system, and as long as the new

device can read the file system you selected in unRAID, you'll see the data. If you've never used unRAID, this is probably foreign to you because you're used to multiple drives working together, and technically they kind of do when you take the parity drives into

consideration, but not like they do with a RAID array, which leads us to the point that you're accessing data on the specific drives as opposed to blocks of data across multiple drives, which is what you're doing with RAID. For this reason, you may have drives that are

inactive most of the time because they contain data that you don't access frequently. You don't even have to keep those inactive hard drives spinning with unRAID if you don't want to and can actually put them to sleep if you're not actively pulling data from them. Compare

that to something like ZFS, and the hard drives are constantly working together, so something like that isn't possible. People mainly do this for energy saving purposes, as there's a pretty big debate on if sleeping hard drives do or do not extend the life of the drive, but a hard

drive that's not spinning does save power. The point is all of this functions entirely differently than it does with something like ZFS, and you can't really do any of what we just discussed with ZFS, which is why this topic is arguably the biggest reason why you would or

wouldn't select unRAID over ZFS. This all leads us to the biggest downside of how unRAID works, and it's hard drive performance. Since data is stored on individual drives, you're generally limited to the overall read/write performance of that individual drive. With RAID, multiple drives work together

and for that reason, you're not limited to the performance of one drive the way you are with unRAID. Instead, the total number of drives work together based on the RAID type you're using, and the performance of that RAID pool is faster. For this reason, you really should use a

cache pool with unRAID, as it will drastically improve the overall write performance. With cache, when you're writing data to the array, it first gets written to the cache pool, which will generally consist of SSDs, and later gets moved to the array. This gives you

drastically faster write performance than you'd get if you didn't have cache. But the biggest downside is that unRAID unfortunately doesn't have the best read performance, and you're generally limited to the speed of the drive that you're pulling data from. This could be a deal

breaker for you, or could force you to use SSDs as opposed to HDDs for faster read performance. If you care solely about flexibility right now, unRAID is probably the better choice, as long as you understand the potential downsides. unRAID offers all of the usual

applications, Docker containers and VM support that you'd expect and is extremely comparable to TrueNAS scale in that regard. So I wouldn't necessarily pick one over the other for third-party tools, but injecting my subjective opinion into things, UnRAID does seem a little bit easier to use when it comes

to applications. For all of these reasons, your decision to use UnRAID should generally come down to flexibility and performance. With our next NAS operating system, OpenMediaVault, being a good option for total beginners or people coming from a pre-built NAS operating system that aren't ready to use TrueNAS or

UnRAID just yet, OpenMediaVault is really just a somewhat user-friendly free NAS operating system. I say somewhat because some things are super easy to do and others are flat-out convoluted. It's built on Debian Linux, supports all of the RAID types you'd come to expect and has

support for a bunch of different file systems, though most will probably use BTRFS for the snapshot functionality. OpenMediaVault technically supports ZFS as well, though it's handled through a third-party plugin and using OMV Extras, which is a separate install. But if you're using OpenMediaVault, you'll

probably install OMV Extras anyway with the ZFS plugin. I don't think it's technically official support, but it's developed in conjunction with the core of OpenMediaVault, whatever that means. With the help of OMV Extras, you'll have support for Docker, KVM for virtual

machines, VPNs like WireGuard and more. In my opinion, if you're planning on using OpenMediaVault, OMV Extras is a required install. Without OMV Extras, I'd say that OpenMediaVault is a fairly basic NAS operating system and I

probably wouldn't go out of my way to install it, but with OMV extras installed, it's a competitor in this space. All of this leads us to recommendations for you and whatever NAS device you're building. We'll start with Open Media Vault. The biggest downside

with Open Media Vault is that it's going up against TrueNAS and unRAID. As it stands, Open Media Vault is a lightweight NAS operating system that you can even install on a Raspberry Pi, but are you going to install it on a rack-mount NAS

device? Probably not. Are you going to install it on a desktop NAS device? Probably not. If I'm being honest, I've had trouble thinking of why, because it's not bad, it's just not that great either. I've seen it mostly used in the context of Raspberry Pi devices, and in that

space, it's a really great option. It's just hard when comparing it to TrueNAS and unRAID. And comparing TrueNAS and unRAID isn't particularly easy either. It's just easier to say that both options are most likely better than Open Media Vault.

Outside of extremely specific hardware that could push you towards OMV for that reason, selecting a NAS operating system ultimately comes down to the question that it's always come down to: Do you want to use ZFS? And will you have the recommended system resources for it? If

you do, you can use TrueNAS Core, Scale, or even unRAID, but I'd probably lean towards TrueNAS, as TrueNAS is designed to run ZFS and that's it. You'll have to compare and contrast the differences between TrueNAS Core and TrueNAS Scale to

determine which is best for you, but in my opinion, I'd probably lean to the side of TrueNAS Scale as it just seems like iXsystems, who creates TrueNAS, is pushing it harder, and TrueNAS Core seems to be in a long-term support phase with that.

That said, long-term support isn't bad, and for some people, they might actually prefer that since TrueNAS Core is free. It's been around for close to 20 years at this point and has supported ZFS for close to 15 years. So if stability is

important, TrueNAS Core is a great option and probably a better option than TrueNAS Scale. You may have some hardware compatibility issues with TrueNAS Core, and if you do, that's where TrueNAS Scale will shine, but you'll have to determine that when you install it. Now, if flexibility or future

expansion is important and you don't want to jump through the potential hoops that ZFS has in that regard, UnRAID is awesome if you've amassed a bunch of hard drives that are just laying around and you want to create an array with them. You probably won't be able to pick

a better NAS operating system than UnRAID. UnRAID comes with the downsides we already discussed in terms of read performance, but write performance can be improved with an SSD cache pool. TrueNAS and Open Media Vault won't handle mixed-size drives like UnRAID does, so if

you actually want to utilize them without creating multiple pools, UnRAID is going to be your best bet. UnRAID also has a loyal and strong community where you'll get great support, which is important for any operating system. Ultimately, you need to assess your hardware and try and determine which is

best for you for you when you remove pre-built NAS operating systems from the equation, these are the three most common NAS operating systems you'll come across and they all function similarly but differently. So I hope that some of this information helped determine which

option is best for you. If you made it this far, thank you for watching. I'll see you guys next time.

What is the BEST DIY NAS Operating System?

WunderTech

DIY NAS 운영체제를 선택할 때 TrueNAS, unRAID, OpenMediaVault가 있으며, 각각 장단점과 특징이 있다.

TrueNAS는 ZFS 파일 시스템을 사용하여 데이터 무결성을 강조하며, Core 버전은 안정성이 높고 Scale 버전은 애플리케이션 지원이 좋다.

unRAID는 유료이지만 유연한 드라이브 관리가 가능하고, OpenMediaVault는 초보자에게 적합하지만 TrueNAS나 unRAID에 비해 기능이 제한적이다.

🤔 NAS 운영체제 선택, 왜 어려울까?

자체 NAS 장치를 구축하거나 기존 NAS 장치에 NAS 운영체제를 설치하려는 경우, 운영체제 선택은 어려운 과제가 될 수 있습니다. 시중에는 다양한 NAS 운영체제가 존재하며, **각 운영체제는 서로 다른 특징과 장단점을 가지고 있기 때문입니다**.

사전 구축된 NAS 장치는 하드웨어에 최적화된 소프트웨어를 제공하지만, 직접 구축하는 경우 다양한 하드웨어와의 호환성을 고려해야 합니다. 따라서, **NAS 운영체제 선택 시 가장 중요한 요소 중 하나는 사용 중인 하드웨어와의 호환성입니다**.

TrueNAS는 가장 널리 알려진 NAS 운영체제 중 하나이며, TrueNAS Core와 TrueNAS Scale 두 가지 버전이 있습니다. 두 버전 모두 무료로 사용할 수 있습니다. **TrueNAS의 핵심은 ZFS 파일 시스템을 사용한다는 점입니다**.

ZFS는 데이터 무결성을 중심으로 설계되었으며, 스냅샷, 체크섬, 확장성과 같은 기능을 제공합니다. **TrueNAS의 가장 큰 장점은 데이터 안정성이 뛰어나다는 것입니다**.

TrueNAS Core는 FreeBSD 기반으로 구축되었으며, TrueNAS Scale은 Debian Linux 기반으로 구축되었습니다. 이러한 기반 운영체제의 차이는 애플리케이션 지원에 영향을 미칩니다. **TrueNAS Scale은 Docker 컨테이너를 지원하여 애플리케이션 확장성이 더 뛰어납니다**.

TrueNAS Core는 안정성과 오랜 기간 동안의 지원을 강점으로 내세웁니다. NAS로서의 안정성을 중요하게 생각한다면 TrueNAS Core가 좋은 선택이 될 수 있습니다. **TrueNAS Scale은 최신 기술과 애플리케이션 지원에 중점을 둡니다**.

TrueNAS는 ZFS 파일 시스템을 사용하므로 메모리 요구 사항이 높습니다. **최소 16GB 이상의 메모리를 권장하며, ECC 메모리를 사용하는 것이 좋습니다**. ZFS는 단일 드라이브 추가를 지원하지 않으므로, 스토리지 확장에 제약이 있을 수 있습니다.

unRAID는 TrueNAS와 달리 유료 NAS 운영체제입니다. unRAID의 가장 큰 특징은 유연성입니다. **unRAID는 RAID와 달리 데이터 드라이브와 패리티 드라이브를 사용하여 데이터를 보호합니다**.

unRAID는 드라이브 크기에 제한이 없으며, 필요에 따라 드라이브를 추가하여 스토리지를 확장할 수 있습니다. **unRAID는 RAID 재구축이 필요 없기 때문에 드라이브를 쉽게 교체하고 데이터를 복구할 수 있습니다**.

unRAID의 가장 큰 단점은 하드 드라이브 성능입니다. 데이터가 개별 드라이브에 저장되기 때문에, **읽기/쓰기 성능이 개별 드라이브의 성능에 제한됩니다**. 캐시 풀을 사용하여 쓰기 성능을 향상시킬 수 있지만, 읽기 성능은 여전히 제한적입니다.

unRAID는 Docker 컨테이너 및 VM을 지원하며, TrueNAS Scale과 유사한 수준의 애플리케이션 지원을 제공합니다. **유연성을 중요하게 생각한다면 unRAID가 좋은 선택이 될 수 있습니다**.

🌱 OpenMediaVault: 초보자를 위한 선택?

OpenMediaVault는 초보자나 사전 구축된 NAS 운영체제에서 넘어오는 사용자에게 적합한 무료 NAS 운영체제입니다. **OpenMediaVault는 Debian Linux 기반으로 구축되었으며, 다양한 RAID 유형과 파일 시스템을 지원합니다**.

OpenMediaVault는 OMV Extras를 통해 Docker, KVM, VPN과 같은 추가 기능을 지원합니다. **OMV Extras를 설치하면 OpenMediaVault는 경쟁력 있는 NAS 운영체제가 됩니다**.

🤔 최종 선택: 나에게 맞는 NAS 운영체제는?

OpenMediaVault는 Raspberry Pi와 같은 소형 장치에 적합하지만, 대형 NAS 장치에는 적합하지 않을 수 있습니다. **궁극적으로 NAS 운영체제 선택은 ZFS 사용 여부와 시스템 리소스 요구 사항에 따라 결정됩니다**.

ZFS를 사용하려면 TrueNAS Core, Scale 또는 unRAID를 선택할 수 있습니다. **TrueNAS는 ZFS에 최적화되어 있으며, TrueNAS Core와 Scale의 차이점을 비교하여 자신에게 맞는 버전을 선택해야 합니다**. 안정성을 중요하게 생각한다면 TrueNAS Core, 최신 기술과 애플리케이션 지원을 중요하게 생각한다면 TrueNAS Scale을 선택할 수 있습니다.

유연성과 스토리지 확장을 중요하게 생각한다면 unRAID가 좋은 선택이 될 수 있습니다. **unRAID는 다양한 크기의 하드 드라이브를 혼합하여 사용할 수 있으며, SSD 캐시 풀을 사용하여 성능을 향상시킬 수 있습니다**. 각 운영체제의 장단점을 고려하여 자신에게 맞는 NAS 운영체제를 선택하십시오.

사전 구축된 NAS 장치를 구축하거나 설치할 때는 운영 체제를 선택하는 것이 중요합니다.

익숙하지 않은 운영 체제로 인해 선택이 어려울 수 있습니다.

가장 좋은 옵션은 하나도 없지만 각 사용자에게 가장 이상적인 선택은 존재합니다.

사전 구축된 NAS 시스템은 자체 구축된 장치 옵션과 크게 다릅니다.

하드웨어 호환성은 특히 저가형 하드웨어에서 중요한 요소입니다.

트루나스 코어와 트루나스 스케일 비교

TrueNAS는 ZFS 파일 시스템을 사용하는 코어 버전과 스케일 버전을 모두 무료로 제공합니다.

ZFS는 데이터 무결성, 쓰기 시 복사 시스템, 스냅샷, 확장성 면에서 높은 평가를 받고 있습니다.

Core는 FreeBSD를 기반으로 구축된 반면, Scale은 Debian Linux를 사용하므로 애플리케이션 지원에 영향을 미칩니다.

스케일은 코어(bhyve)에 비해 애플리케이션 및 가상화(KVM)에 더 적합한 것으로 간주됩니다.

Core는 안정성과 수명을 우선시하며, 잠재적으로 Scale보다 더 중요할 수 있습니다.

TrueNAS 하드웨어 요구 사항 및 ZFS 확장

TrueNAS는 메모리를 많이 사용하므로 16GB를 권장하지만 최소 8GB를 권장합니다.

일부에서는 데이터 손상을 방지하기 위해 ZFS에 ECC 메모리를 사용해야 한다고 주장합니다.

ZFS 확장은 일반적인 확장과 달리 첫 번째 가상 디바이스를 미러링하는 두 번째 가상 디바이스를 만들어야 합니다.

RaidZ1 확장팩이 개발 중이며, 향후 더 간편한 확장을 약속합니다.

Unraid는 유료 옵션으로, ZFS를 지원하며 유연성을 제공합니다.

Unraid는 RAID와는 다른 접근 방식을 사용하여 개별 드라이브에 직접 데이터를 저장합니다.

패리티 드라이브는 중복성을 제공하며, 드라이브 크기가 유연하고 확장이 용이합니다.

Unraid의 고유한 접근 방식을 통해 다른 시스템에서도 드라이브 제거 및 데이터 액세스가 가능합니다.

Unraid의 성능은 RAID의 통합 성능과 달리 개별 드라이브 속도에 의해 제한됩니다.

SSD 캐싱은 Unraid의 쓰기 성능을 크게 향상시킵니다.

오픈미디어볼트: 초보자 친화적인 옵션

오픈미디어볼트(OMV)는 특히 초보자에게 사용자 친화적입니다.

OMV는 타사 플러그인(OMV-extras)을 통해 ZFS와 함께 다양한 RAID 유형 및 파일 시스템을 지원합니다.

OMV-extras는 Docker, KVM, VPN 지원 등을 추가합니다.

OMV는 가볍고 라즈베리 파이와 같이 덜 까다로운 설정에 적합한 것으로 간주됩니다.

선택은 ZFS 사용량과 사용 가능한 시스템 리소스에 따라 달라집니다.

ZFS의 경우 TrueNAS Core 또는 Scale을 권장하며, 일반적으로 Scale의 기능을 선호합니다.

TrueNAS Core는 장기적인 지원을 제공하는 반면, Scale은 보다 적극적으로 개발되었습니다.

Unraid는 혼합 크기 드라이브로 유연성과 확장성이 뛰어납니다.

논의된 세 가지 옵션(TrueNAS, Unraid, OMV)은 유사한 기능을 제공하지만 접근 방식이 다릅니다.

What is the BEST DIY NAS Operating System?

What is the BEST DIY NAS Operating System?

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