TrueNAS Reviews

Summary: Installation and setup was very straightforward and easy. The UI is structured and clear and was easy to use. Creation of a storage pool, volume and share took me just a few minutes. The performance on a mapped network share on windows was very good, even while using very basic PC hardware and just two old SATA HDDs for the NAS. On another system where I used even older hardware one of the drives failed. The resilver was easy and worked just fine. No data was lost.

Positive: Easy installation and setup.
Good performance.
Very reliable.
Good UI.
A lot of protocols and addons supported.

Negative: The gap from a free install to a payed solution with hardware is quite big.
There is no SMB option that is cheap enough to compete with solutions like Synology or QNAP NAS.

Summary: The interface is very good so far, I have explored a small amount and will continue delving into containerised workload solutions.

Positive: Interface is easy to navigate, and online community tutorials are prominent.
Webpage shows a great amount of detail into the product.

Negative: These video/written tutorials could have a centralized place on TrueNAS' website.

Summary: 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.

Positive: 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.

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

Summary: 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!

Positive: 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.

Negative: 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... 😘

Summary: 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.

Positive: - 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

Negative: - 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.

Summary: 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.

Positive: 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.

Negative: 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.

Summary: 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.

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

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

Summary: Overall the experience has been good. I wish it had more plugin options but there are plenty of support available through YouTube channels etc.

Positive: There is a lot of cool features. It simple, updates regularly, easy interface, works with wide variety of tech.

Negative: Advanced work require a bit more knowledge. Samba has been a little flakey but seems improved with v13.

Summary: It's a great solution, I myself have been using it for data backup and media hosting, so far it has served me well!

Positive: Lots of health and safety features like short and long smart tests, scrubbing, snapshots.
Published docker containers can directly be pulled and ran as applications.
Notification system that can email you when something goes wrong.

Negative: Stopping and starting applications can be buggy and sometimes can get stuck stopping.
Sometimes rebooting may not start kubernates applications.
Very few applications officially supported.

Summary: Generally well performing and easy NAS system to setup and use.
Also underlying ZFS is working quite well.

Positive: Better usability on my opinion than on commercial NAS (QNAP)
DIY possible on own hardware and it was quite easy to setup.

Negative: Access control a bit confusing and also NFS / Samba related configurations.

Modifying existing Storages is very tricky (extending size etc).

Summary: Great, it was a really pleasant experience and very informative, also really great to know how to start a server.

Positive: The installation process on the right hardware is smooth, in older PC it might be a little more difficult but overall great, the service is nice.

Negative: It's closeness, it's difficult to install certain things.

Summary: Overall a very capable and handy OS. Has lots of features and is quite stable. Only the web GUI is sometimes a bit slow.

Positive: Great support.
Very stable.
Lots of features.
Open source. Good support. Good access management with ACL.

Negative: Issues after updates.
Long startup time.
Web GUI is sometimes unresponsive and slow.

Summary: Overall, TrueNAS provides powerful data storage capabilities with advanced features, strong performance, and reliable data protection. While it may require technical knowledge for setup and has some limitations in integration and scalability, its pros outweigh the cons, making it a solid choice for businesses and organizations in need of robust storage solutions."

Positive: TrueNAS offers robust data storage solutions with advanced features, scalability, and excellent data protection. Impressive performance & reliability.

Negative: TrueNAS can be complex to set up and configure, requiring technical expertise. Limited integration with certain third-party applications and potential scalability challenges for extremely large-scale deployments.

Summary: Very well designed software, good selection of futures for any taste. Maybe need some time to polish it and make it really easy to use.

Positive: Powerful.
Flexible.
Features.
Containers.
Powerful filesystem/volume manager.
Very good visual interface.

Negative: Can offer different filesystem (if user want it so much).
Interface can be cleaned up a bit.
Contextual help may improve the end user experience.

Summary: Coming from using a server OS vs NAS OS adjusting to how it functions in comparison, was somewhat of an adjustment.

Positive: Mainly the ease of use, but the flexibility of the software I also consider somewhat of a plus, the both add to the overall experience.

Negative: The fact that some applications have to run in jails.