Hello! It’s time for a new NAS so I was thinking of building one. I’ve always used of the shelf boxes for storage so I’m not really familiar with there different software options. I would like to run Channels directly on it. Other than that I will run Plex and store movie/tv’s. Right now I only use about 8TB of storage but would like to be about to scale.
Just wondering if anyone with experience has an OS preference.
I tried truenas scale when it first came out. It was alright. But its main use is for storing data and the docker seems an afterthought on it. I ended up trying out proxmox and have been very happy with it. The only downfall is that you have to specify how much hard drive space your going to use for a server your going to run. I use debian for the OS and installed channels/plex natively to that. I also installed docker for pluto channels. I just like the freedom that proxmox gives for running almost any OS on it.
I have 4 2tb SSD for my fast storage. I also have 4 4tb seagate drives for storage purposes. I also have a synology nas. But I use that for cameras and to back up proxmox to. It is nice to know you can backup a node to the nas. Then restore it if something went belly up.
Thank you. That’s an interesting option and not one I really considered. It’s been a while since I played with hypervisors but it would be good to look at them again. It looks like some people run Truenas in a VM with Proxmox so it provides a lot of options.
If you were wondering I run a i5 12400 processor with 64 gigs of ram. HBA card with two cables that can do 4 sata connections each. 1 nvme, 4 sata ssd and 4 sata spinning rust. It uses ZFS. Runs about 70.8 to 80 watts on average. Seems you can never have enough cores 
Are you running any other VM’s? I thought about trying out pfSense.
I am not a fan of running router software as a VM. If your server ever goes down. Then you have no internet either, granted I always keep a spare asus router around for such cases. I have used pfsense and OPNsense. Both work fine, but I prefer OPNsense. I run this on a small 4 port machine that has 2.5bg ports and uses a J4125 celeron.
As for the VMs.
I run two debian OS. Channels, Plex, Docker, Portainer on one. The second debian I use primarily for samba. I have Webmin installed on top of that to make shares easier. Then I run home assistant. Basically for turning lights on and off in the kitchen using a motion sensor for detection. Even the dogs like it when they go in the kitchen to get a drink/food.
I appreciate all the help. Downtime would definitely be a problem in my full house. This is a whole new level of nerdiness that I need to dig into.
LMAO it is a rabbit hole for sure.
+1 for Proxmox
I messed around for awhile trying to figure out the best way to make the transition from the Windows server I'd been using for a few years (latest in a line dating back to the original version of Windows Home Server) -- but like you, didn't want any downtime.
With Proxmox, and its excellent PCIe passthrough capabilities (recent motherboard designs only) the solution turned out to be pretty easy. I was able to passthrough the NVMe boot drive from my Windows server as a PCIe device, then I moved my big SATA drives over and passed those through as VirtIO devices. Amazingly, I was able to carry-on using the Stablebit Drive Pool software with all of its redundancy and folder duplication options across my data drives.
What's important about this story, is not so much the specifics of what software I was using previously, but that I was able move everything over to my new Proxmox platform unchanged, other than it was now virtualized. As a bonus this gave me a fallback position, as I could still boot natively with my original OS -- which in the early days of this setup was reassuring.
So, Id' recommend buying a motherboard that supports VT-d (or the AMD equivilant), and has two NVMe slots. Proxmox is at its best with at least one additional Ethernet port, and my motherboard has a 2.5Gbps port onboard, and I added a 10Gbps board for the CTs and VMs -- which I would highly recommend.
I appreciate the information. I have a small computer graveyard in my basement. I'm going to put together a test system running Promox and decide if I want to build a larger system.
That makes sense to me!
Can I pick your brain? I put my system together and installed Proxmox. Right now I'm just playing a bit. I tried to create a Kali VM a couple times. Each time the installation fails and the drive becomes read only. I can't stop the VM or delete until I reboot the box. I tried to create a TrueNAS vm and had a similar issue. The ISO installed but the VM freezes on boot and again I can't delete the VM. I was able to create a Debian container and Opnsense VM without issue.
I would recommend Unraid as a file server and for Dockers but I actually run Channels on a separate dedicated Windows 11 headless server with a long term goal of either running Channels in a VM under Unraid or I would run the Channels Docker
Hmm I do know there is a new CPU type being used. This could be causing your issue. Try the one without the AES feature. Try using kvm64 for the processor. I do run mainly linux containers. That is assuming you are running 8.0 version.