NAS operating systems and network bandwith II

In the first part, we looked at the classic, so to speak, Openmediavault with RAID5. Openmediavault and Snapraid is perhaps not so widespread, but I have operated several years.

Today in the 2nd part I will continue with the different systems.

Truenas Scale/Core

I also wanted to try this operating system because of the ZFS file system. Truenas Core is based on BSD while Truenas Scale was released not so long ago but is based on Debian Linux.

The basic setup of the system is actually quite simple and also in a speed test this operating system actually performed very well. Only the write rates are lower, because ZFS is a COW (copy-on-write) file system, which has implemented functions to ensure the integrity of the stored data.

However, I did not warm up to Truena’s system and I discarded it for my own NAS.

Nevertheless, it is certainly a perfromant and sophisticated system, which certainly carries NAS in its nane rightly.

Openmediavault and ZFS

When dealing with Truenas in particular, the file system ZFS is of course noticed again and again. On the other hand then again and again of the very high RAM need is to be heard, at the same time the file system is characterized as very safe and straight for servers as very suitably.

However, warnings come very quickly that ZFS and Linux are hardly suitable for a productive system, or that the detection system is relatively slow. The setup step is actually quite simple. First you install the plugin omv-extras. There is among other things the installation of the Proxmox kernel provided and that was already known to me my other server.

Then you can install the openmediavault-zfs plugin and create a pool in the GUI interface. I deliberately created a RAID-Z1 pool from my 6 hard disks.

And the results speak for themselves, even with the speed. I also downloaded the ZFS snapshots from omv-extras.org. These scripts create hourly, daily and monthly snapshots of the ZFS file system, which can be restored if necessary.

Conclusion

Openmediavault with ZFS as file system has proven itself for me, even with a 10GBit network, because it was one of the fastest to deliver the data. ZFS has already saved my life 2 times, because I could correct everything by simply restoring the snapshot. And last but not least, it runs stable and without problems since 3/4 year.

What systems are you using and what file systems?

ciao tuxoche