TLDR; by your description it sounds like this box will be your storage nexus where a large majority (if not all) of your data will live. If that is the case, I would definitely say TrueNAS is the right call, specifically TrueNAS Scale.
I was in a similar boat a few years back and settled on Scale as well and it’s been amazing.
On Distros:
Between TrueNAS and Proxmox, my rule of thumb is that TrueNAS is a Storage-First distro, while Proxmox is a Virtualization-First distro. They have heavy overlap, so it’s very common, and super acceptable, for people who have more experience with one to use it for the other usecase.
Scale vs. Core:
Tom Lawrence (Lawrence Systems on YouTube, and a champion of TrueNAS in the SMB space) said it best in a recent livestream: “every time a client hits a problem or limitation with TrueNAS Core, usually the answer is just to switch to Scale”. Because Scale is built on Linux it has a much wider gamut of bolt-ons you can MacGuyver on to the system, better driver support for modern hardware, and easier to troubleshoot online.
On Docker
Since Scale is basically Debian, Docker and Portainer are super simple to get working. Wendell posted a great initial guide here on the forum, and it’s constantly being updated by the community (TrueNAS Scale Native Docker & VM access to host [Guide]). There is currently a minor conflict with TrueNAS Apps, but only if you enable them - however because no one ever uses Apps and it conflicts with normal Docker TrueNAS, iXSystems is actually removing Apps in the next major revision.
On VMs
VM support has come along way, so much so that my gaming rig is a VM and is powered by a 3080 Ti via GPU passthrough. My wife just beat Stray by streaming to the Nvdia Shield in our living room via Sunshine/Moonlight and loved it - she’s working through Dave the Diver now, and I’m playing Starfield (as I’m writing this). She’s a lawyer and super non-technical and has had no issues at all (like I would find her at 4AM still playing).
On Disks
When I was young I was really all about using as much storage space as possible from different drives, but after losing data a couple of time, as well as spending days troubleshooting I’ve realized my time is worth more that the few dollars saved by using an exotic disk setup. ZFS is pretty robust, and has a healthy distrust of any storage medium, so multiple single vdevs/pools mounted to a single folder has worked best. If you’re in the US or Canada, I recommend checking out https://serverpartdeals.com/ - they sell refurbished drives at a great price and are super great at replacing drives that fail a burn-in test. I’m currently a fan of 12TB Helium Hitachi enterprise drives for spinning rust and Intel P4510 NVMe SSDs for primary storage.
On OS Backup
Backups on TrueNAS are just the best. The entire config can be exported to a single file - I have this backup to Backblaze & S3 every day. To recover from a failed OS drive, just reinstall TrueNAS and import the backup config when prompted. Had to do it 3 days after my first install, and was sold instantly. I have a bash script that reinstalls everything off-label (like Portainer) - everytime I add a new off-label component, I just copy the commands I used into the script as I’m entering them.
TrueNAS also has a builtin Cronjob manager and Cloudsync tool in the GUI so it’s pretty simple to manage.
On Data Backup
Having used enterprise software, TrueNAS’s ZFS native is just plain amazing. If you ever have the ability to put another box somewhere else, TrueNAS can perform differential backups to a remote TrueNAS install with a single click - even the disks don’t have to be the same. You can also use the cloud sync tool to backup just subsets of data to a remote site - All my work and personal documents get backed up to multiple cloud services every hour, and it was basically “Select folder, select destination service, select frequency, and DONE”.
On Licenses and Subs
Just not a thing, this is why Tom, Wendell and so many others favour it in the business space as well. (They also love XCP-ng on the virtualization side as well, for good reason, but I digress)
For context some of the components in my home network are:
- TrueNAS Scale at the center of my env serving SMB shares to the network - running a AMD R3600 on a AsRock Rack X470 w/3080 Ti on passthrough and MCX4121a with Virtual Functions (VFs) and VXLAN for VM & Docker network isolation
- Performance & Data Sensitive VMs/Containers run on TrueNAS on dedicated ZFS datasets that can then be individually backed up via the WebUI (like the gaming VM, by Seafile (document sharing) docker, and Gitlab docker)
- Proxmox HA Cluster running on 3x Lenovo M720q Tiny for fun and multi-node development work (they use a MCX354a 40GbE ring with VFs between each other for VM connectivity)
- TrueNAS/Portainer running on a M720q Tiny for core house services like Home Assistant, AP Controller, Dashy, and Prometheus/Grafana - all are backed up to the core TrueNAS server.
Hope it all works out on the NAS!
I’m not sure where I’d even start with a complete DIY setup and honestly I don’t really feel comfortable with that. I’d rather have some software where the majority of the work is already done. If I have to do some legwork for a plugin or just have to do without one that’s fine with me. The primary goal is to have a storage box after all.
