GoKawiilHow to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS
Published on: 2024-08-23
ZFS System by Oracle
If you need a basic NAS and don't care about GUI features, it is suprisingly simple to set up a ZFS dataset and share it over the network using Samba.
Scope:
Scope & Requirements Raid Level RAIDZ1 (1 Drive Redundancy) Operating System Debian 12 Bookworm Encryption None ZFS Implementation OpenZFS, zfs-2.1.1 CPU 4 Cores, Xeon Server CPU can be had for cheap RAM ECC RDIMM RAM 16 GB Storage 4x4TB NVMe SSD Backups Not covered, use ZFS Backup Scheduler Skills Basic familiarity with Linux Skill Level Beginner/Easy
I am using this article to document it for future myself, feel free to adopt it for your needs. Problem with TrueNAS is that it is a full-featured, supposedly enterprise-grade, software suite. While it may be simple to set it up (I've never tried), I just don't need any of the bells and whistles it offers. It's the mismatch between what I need and what it offers; not something inherently wrong with TrueNAS. There is also something to be said about a system you know everything about and not having to rely on yet another thing.
ZFS's best feature that's never explained or written anywhere
ZFS filesystem is self contained. If your OS is nuked suddently, simply take all disks to another machine or install a new OS, install zfs , run zfs import and get back your data. This freedom is underrated and not well understood. It is also not explained anywhere.
It's worth emphasizing: All configuration/details about ZFS is stored on the disks themselves. If you've setup a RAIDZ2 (Raid 6) with 6 disks, they are self contained. Move them to a new machine with zfs tools installed, and simply run zfs import . Boom, they'll show up as RAIDZ2. This is an amazing feature that no matter what happens to the host OS, machine, etc; as long as the disks are not damaged, your data is fine.
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