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How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

neil.computer

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Re: How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

#91

Post by ocd »

I'm sure people have reasons for taking these things as far as they do with ZFS, and everything else that goes into what is commonly considered a "NAS." But I've found great convenience in a tight NFSv3 config running from a single high capacity HDD with ext4 on a Linux machine (primary system that's always on anyway while I'm around/awake) making things available to my other devices for the electricity and overhead cost of one machine instead of multiple.

I try to keep my network configuration restrictive by default, so I'm not too concerned about possible security arguments running it from my main machine. I've probably committed some great sin here, but is plain NFSv3 and secondarily Samba (for compatibility) really not enough?

Re: How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

#92

Post by a-french-anon »

I think it's appropriate to link to my blog post about building such a NAS but with very different technologies: dm-integrity, mdadm and XFS. The reason being that as a C/C++ dev following OpenZFS development closely, I found the focus on ginormous features over general stability and the constant problems due to the SPL/separate page cache too worrying.

Sure, I traded the convenience of kitchen sink (or Swiss army knife for the more charitable souls) ZFS for some initial pain, but I'm very happy with my choice today.

https://world-playground-deceit.net/blog/2025/06/nas-setup-l...

Re: How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

#93

Post by nuker »

Confiks wrote: post #7

Not a great time price-wise to be building a NAS, but I have been doing so for the last two weeks. Inside a Jonsbo N6 case, which is pretty nice with an 8x SATA backplane and drive bays (unlike the earlier Jonsbo variants). I ended up on shucking 4x the 14 TB WD Elements Desktop. They contain helium drives, the WD140EDGZ in my case, and are about a third cheaper than 4x the 12 TB WD Red Plus drives (which are air-fil…

> combined with LUKS, TPM keys

Does it work? Server can reboot and use TPM to unlock rootfs? What about /boot - encrypted and tamper proof? Resists evil maid attack?

Rabbit hole, I know, but so fascinating if you solved it all :)

Re: How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

#94

Post by thenthenthen »

bombcar wrote: post #12
tamimio wrote: post #8

Yeah no. When it comes to backups and data storage, I would rather use a proven reliable system that’s been used and tested by millions of other users, keep these hacky stuff for your hyperland set up.

I've lost more data to "proven reliable systems" than to my homegrown hacked-up stuff (which may be because I trust the latter much less).

This. My synology nas got pwned so many times i cant remember.

Re: How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

#95

Post by dannyw »

ocd wrote: post #91

I'm sure people have reasons for taking these things as far as they do with ZFS, and everything else that goes into what is commonly considered a "NAS." But I've found great convenience in a tight NFSv3 config running from a single high capacity HDD with ext4 on a Linux machine (primary system that's always on anyway while I'm around/awake) making things available to my other devices for the electricity and overhead…

First: Do you have backups of your single high-capacity HDD? That's my biggest worry. What's your plan for when that HDD fails one day, as it will?

The main reasons people go for ZFS and a "NAS" is checksums and data integrity protection, as well as maybe not wanting to keep their primary machine awake all the time (I personally don't).

Then there are useful features like snapshots, which means I don't have to worry as much about accidentally deleting, or over-writing a file and losing data.

I don't see anything wrong with using a main machine that's up 7x24 as a NAS, don't buy things for the sake of something, but I'm worried about your reliability and bitrot protection. (Yes, it happens, I've seen it first-hand thanks to ZFS).

Re: How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

#96

Post by giov4 »

naturalmovement wrote: post #53
ggm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Run ZFS backed filestore on FreeBSD, have migrated it to/from Debian. At work and home, not petabyte scale but certainly multi hundred terrabyte. Over 15 years, on over 50 hosts/NAS/SAN instances, different hardware. Run ZFS on Raspberry Pi, on home builds, on Intel, on AMD, on other ARM chipsets. I think you're over-stating things. Debian is fine for this. I do think FreeBSD is a better platform for myself. The code…

Sure you can migrate pools. Yet everyone is (again) lost in the details and missing the big picture, which is Linux is doing its best to rat fuck OpenZFS at every opportunity, the last of which was the elimination of write_cache_pages in 6.18 behind the GPL iron curtain a mere few months ago. I don't know about you but I don't want to build my file storage atop hacks on top of more hacks. The kernel has made it clear…

I understand and I agree from an experience point of view it felt very unstable on debian and proxmox that is debian based.

I wanted to share this experience too as a warning to users investing time and money and possibly hitting instabilities that can cause raid problems and data loss. Don't know why my comment got downvoted, if I knew about this I would have handled things differently.

I usually recovered the pool thanks to other disks being fine, but beside zfs being super cool in terms of features and flexibility at the beginning it actually felt unreliable and I would not suggest it neither!

as mentioned it is probably more stable on other families but I didnt experience that yet.

would freebsd be the most reliable? or which one would have the most reliable zfs module state?

do other solutions like unraid or truenas or similar use zfs the background?

Re: How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

#97

Post by dannyw »

A friendly reminder since it's probably relevant: when's the last time you tested disaster recovery for your own setup? If you haven't verified recovering it, you don't have an offsite backup.

I had a cloud backup (Backblaze B2, using rclone and encryption) for my home NAS. Some unlucky drive failures later, I was getting ready to recover from my Backblaze backup... and then I couldn't find/remember where I saved the rclone encryption backup.

I lost all data in that NAS, including irreplaceable personal/family photos, due to that mistake. My lesson to share: please verify you can indeed recover from backups.

Re: How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

#99

Post by FireInsight »

I used this blog post as one learning resource while building my own NAS a while back: https://xyny.art/blog/2026-building-nas/

Building a NAS from scratch is really fun! A small hinderance, but definitely part of the fun as well, is the lack of a "complete resource" on the topic covering how to do every single thing you need to do. Part of the point of my blog post is actually to bring to the internet yet another opinionated NAS setup "guide" (eventhough I would hesitate to call it a guide, but if I ever had to do the same thing again I would definitely read my own post first).

Re: How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS (2024)

#100

Post by gpt5 »

gpt5 wrote: post #56
Fr0styMatt88 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m running an 8-drive ZFS RAIDZ2 pool. I’m wondering if you know — are the free space recommendations around ZFS cargo or real? Like I’m already giving up two full drives for redundancy (which saved my ass - I recently had two drives fail on me in quick succession — both SSDs from what looks like an identical batch) but then the advice is kinda saying I need to keep at least another drive worth of space free for the…

ZFS will auto-degrade performance if there isn't enough headroom. In addition, if you use SSD, you also want the headroom, because otherwise you end up writing and rewriting on the same small empty space which kills SSD (unless you have enterprise SSD, which have built-in headroom).

Not sure why I'm being downvoted for being factually correct (and also, why I can't edit my above comment).

ZFS will definitely degrade write performance gradually from 90% utilization, and will hit a stronger cliff at 95%+. Same with SSD, using a consumer SSD above 90%+ utilization would rapidly degrade its lifetime. The effect will be smaller for very large pools and very large files, but the effect is stil there.

I'm repeating this so that people who set up these drives know what is actually going to happen.

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