NAS Research - Terramaster and vmware esxi or unraid

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1

HI all,

I have seen the review “TerraMaster Hybrid NAS: Review and Setup for the F4-424 Max -Nice homelab vm host tutorial” and I am interested in the product line probably the F6-424 Max (6 bay and better CPU from what I gather so far??)

Synology also would be a choice, but they are sacrificing the hardware vs software where I tend to lean more towards raw power than a better developed software ecosystem, and I assume you can’t swap out a synology os??

Synology and Terra Master are the only two brands I have really looked at, I don’t know anything about QNAP or any of the other ones and I prefer a turnkey solution when it comes to the hardware rather than to build my own.

Most of my drives would be 3.5’s but also having some nvme as well would be nice.

I know a little about unraid and vmware esxi hypervisors, and the thing about these that appeals to me most is the fact that they run directly off of USB Drive (Ram drive) rather than eating up one of your internal NAS drives.

My need is for a NAS solution that also does virtualization. I use mostly vmware workstation and have used standalone esxi hosts in the past but not at home so you can assume that I have a vmware bias. I prefer to stay in the VMware ecosystem if or nothing else then the ability to use VMware Workstation to connect directly to ESX vm’s (I hate web GUI’s :grinning: and I also have no need of clusters or advanced features)

Q1: Will it work: Can the TerraMaster utilize either unraid or vmware as the operating systems running off a USB key? Of course I would swap out the USB key and not use the one that it comes with, and I do realize the costs associated with each of these two solutions. Any gotches I should know about regarding these two operating systems used this way?

Q2: What else is there: Other than ESX and unraid, what other NAS/VM Operating systems also allow you to run off of the usb key? (I of course have heard of TrueNAS, Proxmox) but have never used either one so I’m not sure if they can do this. I know there is a TrueNAS Scale and Core but don’t understand the differences enough to know which one to use.

Q3:Other Recommendations: Putting aside the ability to boot off a usb key, what would everyone recommend as the next choices if I had to install an OS on one of the internal non-USB drives?

Thanks.

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so you want a homelab (entry level) turnkey esxi compatible workstation capable of functioning as a NAS?

That would be a workstation from one of the major OEM’s: Dell, HP, Lenovo

Unless you want a rack mount screamer, but turnkey ESXI validated hardware is going to exceed the price of a used truck before you factor in licensing costs.

ESXI 8.0+ is VERY picky regarding hardware.

ESXI 8.0 does not support USB installation, not many OS’s do anymore as the cost of SSD’s has dropped so considerably.

Core is EOL, so Scale would be the recommendation and installed on a dedicated boot drive.

ProxMox is the hypervisor set to replace ESXI as Broadcom continues consumer abusing behavior and policies.

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Have you checked out 45 drives home lab series?

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I had not, but I will. Thanks.

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Thank you, I will start to look at those options.

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