TrueNAS

Pros: Very sophisticated interface -- a big step up from my old FreeNAS box and head and shoulders above other commercial NAS products I have used.

Cons: Occasionally TrueNAS loses its connection after an update.

Overall: TrueNAS is a professional-grade product made available to those who want full control of their storage solution.

Pros: You can do everything with it. Even though it's sold as a NAS solution, out of laziness and power management I have moved everything to run on my NAS.

Cons: You will do everything with it. Since everything at my house now runs on it, I'm weary of the day something dies.

Overall: Would actually like to run everything in true as, has been very good for me for the past few years, only once had an issue with a very common hba stopping to be supported after an update, something that could've been my fault since it doesn't make any sense I admit, swapped it out for a cheap one of the jungle site and everything has been going fine since.

Pros: lots of resources for it and easy NAS setup, playing with vm's is fun and better than i expected from a NAS.

Cons: Non-NAS parts are bit more tricky, vLANs are glitchy on my install - apparently a driver issue with my built in ethernet.

Overall: Good, very reliable. Normal for it to be up for months at a time only going for a reboot when i update.

Solid performance on core, haven't tried scale - though it may solve my driver issue.

Pros: I like that it's stable out of the gate. No tweaking to make it work. It just works! Looking forward to purchasing a TrueNAS mini in my future. I want to grow my TrueNAS Scale with a new device.

Cons: Nothing so far as I am newly converted Synology user. Don't get me wrong, Synology's have been in use here since 2k and still use them for storage. I find that TrueNAS has opened up my LAN possibilities by leaps and bounds to the regrets of my wife... 😘

Overall: I had been using the default OS on an ASUStore NAS. It was ok. but very limited as an advanced user (retired IT Admin) it was not going to be acceptable for long. I started looking around and found TrueNAS installable and flashed it to a 1 TB Nvme and never looked back. Thanks to an ix youtube!

Pros: Dead simple install.
All the features of ZFS.
Great UI.
Automatic upgrades have worked flawlessly so far.

Cons: I don't like that it uses k8s for virtualization. I wish it used something lighter, like plain old docker or one of the variants.

Overall: Great product and very easy to install and admin. The well thought out UI makes using ZFS for storage very simple. There is plenty of documentation available and a lot of free user support in forums and other places online.

Pros: User friendly.
Free to use for home NAS.
Great apps.
Easy to run vm.
Easy to expand.
The list is just to big to write here.

Cons: Nothing bad i can think of.
It's just a breeze to use.

Overall: I was looking for some free and good way to start of with on my home storage.
I needed to expand and didn't want to buy more NAS's as i had an extra old PC.
I googled some software and watched some reviews.
After watching how easy it is i decided to try it and wow was i amazed.
I'm happy with TrueNAS.

Pros: You turn it on, and it works. It works for days and days and so one. It is like switching a lightbulb-switch.

Cons: If I see a feature that seems to work for me, installing it with all the parameters is difficult for me. There are questions that has no ringing bells for me. Even looking at several YouTubers.

Overall: I used it when it was called FreeNAS. Since then the updates went flawless. It took even years why I need a update. Not for the working of it all, for the security it seems.

Pros: Tried many services for my requirements and found TrueNAS. A very stable and robust OS which gives peace of mind when comes to safety of your data. Tried and trusted by many...

Cons: Would like to see more addons. And would like to have a customizable theme also.

Overall: Flawless performance and reliability. Blows the competitions away. Excellent value proposition. TrueNAS is truly the most scalable and reputable software available presently.

Pros: After getting it up and running it just works. Does everything a good NAS should do. I set it up mainly for my Plex media server and secondarily as a backup storage for my wife's accounting files. It's part of our 3 location backup.

Cons: For a novice like me it was a little tough to figure things out but several great YouTubers give simple step videos explaining how to do things and I got it up and running in short time.

Overall: I was looking at Synology for a while but I'm a FOSS person and a long time Linux user so I chose TrueNAS over Synology. I also had an older Dell computer that I re-purposed and it's working wonderfully. My only out of pocket costs were the NAS hard drives which I would've had to buy if I had gone with the Synology.

Pros: Fairly easy setup, little more complicated than most options but way more robust and versatile.
Awesome community help.

Cons: Basic setup was fairly easy, a little more complicated and less intuitive to do certain tasks.

Overall: Great NAS options and features.
Awesome community and forum help.
Get help from administrators that know the products, features and how to’s

Pros: - reliable
- easy to configure to get essentials up and running (more complex stuff is obviously more complex)
- open source
- at the time of this writing, has a decent company behind it with a great team

Cons: - community support can be somewhat abrasive.
provided documentation is actually of high quality as well.
however if you bump into some edge case, or in a rare occasion the documentation does not mention a bug, and if you are a beginner (or in a pinch) and are not able to sit for days reading through threads to figure out some obscure GUI quirk, and are hoping to find help in a conversation style manner, you're going to have a bad time.
thankfully, ChatGPT has been unveiled just in time.
you no longer need to take a mini crash course in linux networking, freebsd/jails (deprecated anyway), etc. just to get one time configuration right that you will otherwise never have to deal with again.

Overall: i started using FreeNAS since about 9.2. even though its been a rocky start, it was still far more accessible to me than other similar projects.
This project has come a loooong way in terms of reliability, clarity of configuration, and just general spit and polish.
i could not find any other alternative that suited my needs better.

Pros: TrueNAS is an amazing product. It allows you to run and administer a NAS with the ease of a home user product but provides reliability in line with industrial grade servers.

You can run it on just about any hardware and the learning curve is less than a week. If you are a Unix user, it is less than a day! Best of all the ZFS files system provides ultimate data security so you can feel safe.

Cons: It is truly hard to find any negatives, but I will try, so here goes: I am not overly fond of the UI Themes and feel bored to customise them. There. :-)

Overall: Perfect. I am running it on a 5 year old server as a media box and couldn't be happier. I advise using ECC Ram for extra safety but it is not a hard requirement.

Pros: I have been using TrueNAS Scale for several months.

It is built around ZFS filesystem, which is currently the best option to keep your data safe in time.

It also ships with tons of useful apps, provided by the community and by other partners.

Cons: It is often a bit difficult to manager and counterintuitive, it is better to be used by proffesionals or at least people eager to learn, like me.

Overall: Running an enterprise, TrueNAS Scale provides everything that is advisable to have, it really brings to life all the services that are necessary to be considered modern, starting from the data safety.

Pros: System is powerful with ZFS. Fully scalable as your system grows. System has been running for years without a hitch whatsoever. I expand my system usually once a year when I add/upgrade a Hard Drive when they go on sale. While I have the system open I vacuum the inside. That is the extent of my maintenance pretty much (plus vacuum the outside every 2 months). Love it!

Cons: The VMs are not as easy to setup, nor are they as powerful as other systems. But there are overhead solutions for that...

Overall: I love this system. All my computers and devices automatically backup. The system just works, what more can I say?

Pros: Relatively straightforward to setup with some valuable plugins. The UI is very nicely laid out. Tutorials are pretty easy to follow along with.

Cons: Initially understanding pools and jails wasn’t super straightforward during the initial setup but that was pretty quickly cleared up with some reading.

Overall: Overall very easy setup with some minor hiccups. Nothing google couldn’t resolve. Once it’s setup also it works and runs like a charm.

Pros: Free options available.
Seems reliable.
Good snapshot facility.
Lots of extra facilities available.
Runs under ESXi with few issues.

Cons: Some issues running under ESXi, predominately related to volume errors.

Overall: Very good NAS appliance for home or small business use, I use NetApp and similar devices in my job and TrueNAS offers most of the facilities you actually need at a lower cost.

Pros: The sheer customizability of the OS while using it on my HP Microserver Gen8 including the possibility to use Docker containers.

Cons: TrueNAS indeed has a steep learning curve, but thats not really a problem, as the documentation and forums are helping.

Overall: Would recommend without hesitation to everybody who needs a NAS. Self build/ hosted or using the possibility to buy via TrueNAS itself.

Pros: Easy and stable solution to use in a small system or in a enterprise environment. With the linux based version there are a lot of plus.

Cons: The linux-based version is still new and some functions may not work properly.

Overall: A good system for a home NAS or enterprise hardware. Based on your knowledge you can do more or less simple things.

Pros: ZFS is just great, nice that an open source distro of linux makes it accessible now. Docker is there too.

Cons: Docker has been crippled to k8s and no access to docker-compose easily.

Overall: I am very happy to use TrueNAS now. Compared to QTS by QNAP, it is light years better. I never want to go back.

Pros: Excellent product for a Home NAS. TrueNAS has a lot of features to safely store your data and experiment with lots of apps.

Cons: User interface to create VM is rather difficult and tedious.

Overall: Excellent product for a Home NAS. TrueNAS has a lot of features to safely store your data and experiment with lots of apps.