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166 TrueNAS Reviews
I don't know of an easier way to set up ZFS storage with a clean and relatively easy management UI. In general day to day use it's a very smooth experience. Getting a set of disks into a ZFS pool and hosting a share is quick and pretty understandable and the UI is attractive. Additional virtualization and containerization features make it a great option for many additional use cases.
For a home NAS or a small/medium business after a flexible and affordable NAS solution using off-the-shelf hardware I don't believe there is a better option. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Bugs appear often and regressions happen regularly and can be slow to get fixed. When it works the middleware is great but when it doesn't it's often for reasons that make you question how thoroughly the releases are tested. These are often very low impact bugs but I think just a little more polish is deserved for an otherwise great product.
Some features beyond storage often don't feel fleshed out or complete - OpenVPN server and client were very exciting inclusions, however set up for the server is painfully obtuse and the client is near unusable except in specific use cases. Trying to connect to protonVPN via the UI, for example is basically impossible as far as I can tell, as it doesn't use a client certificate, but had they just allowed you to upload a .ovpn config there's no reason why it couldn't work, except to dress up the process in their UI. The only usable documentation for these features seems to be provided in forum posts by the community.
Apps are the same with TrueNAS SCALE - it's cumbersome and can be buggy and vastly overcomplicated. SCALE is relatively immature so this is to be expected and, when it works it's great, but often the UI can make it harder to troubleshoot issues and not all the functionality is explained and thoroughly documented. There seems to be no way to easily back up container configurations and my apps have just disappeared multiple times, even after release. I would not trust these features in a business setting. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Ease of use. The best thing by far is how easy it is to setup and get going. Even someone not used to FreeBSD can their NAS spun up, ZFS pool created and shared. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Some of the more advanced config or throubleshooting still needs to be done via CLI. Thats fine, but something like replacing a drive in a pool should be more straight forward. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I use TrueNAS to set up a local NAS on my home network. As a NAS/RAID newbie, it was fairly straightforward to get it up and running and there are a number of resources available online to help you get started. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
There are several different settings/terms that I am unfamiliar with being new to the NAS/RAID field. It would be nice if TrueNAS could explain what things were and their benefits more clearly-- or even link to resources where I can find more info. Additionally, enabling a TrueNAS supported integration feels like a black box to a newbie and it would be nice if this could be simplified more or if it could be explained more as well. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
It continues to work seamlessly once it has been configured correctly. I have been running my TrueNAS instance for two years. I rarely log into the admin console because it just works. Unlike other products I have worked with in the past, it integrates intelligently with my hardware devices. Once, my motherboard went bad and I had to re-install the TrueNAS operating system on a new computer. I did not have a backup of my settings. I was worried I had lost everything. On booting the freshly installed TrueNAS operating system, it examined my existing drives and loaded their configuration automatically. I also love how it can synchronize files from the disks to the cloud. I use it to back up critical shared directories to Google Drive. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The initial setup was challenging for me. I was new to NAS technology and was unfamiliar with the concepts. Luckily, I found some useful YouTube videos that helped me understand how to set it up. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
TrueNAS is a great alternative to paying subscription fees to products such as Google Drive, Microsoft Onedrive, and Apple iCloud. Having the ability to manage data locally allows for more control. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
TrueNAS has a little bit of a learning curve compared to other solutions but is well worth the extra effort. Once installed, there isn't a lot of management and maintenance required. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I love the ease of installation and the ability to install apps such as nextcloud and plex. I like the easy interface to manage truenas. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Sometimes the updates for the apps don't quite keep up with the actual updates available for the particular app in truenas core ie plex media server. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
TrueNAS enables a mildly-competent computer hobbyist, or an IT professional, to build a full-featured NAS solution using parts from the parts box to end up with a system more powerful than the appliances at much lower cost. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
ZFS file system cannot "grow" a volume by adding drives one at a time, which is possible with, for example, Synology's Btrfs file system. This means adding more storage requires planning the additional volume to be added, and purchasing the necessary drives all at once. Thankfully I have encountered this only once. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
TrueNAS provides a easy to manage interface to ZFS and makes it available via SMB, NFS, and a variety of cloud sync utilities. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
TrueNAS does require a bit more knowledge about how storage works and how you need to set up your own requirements. This is the cost of having a very extensible system, though. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Setup was quick and not overly complicated. They did require 48 hour notice to do an initial setup, but i didn't require much help getting it going. Full disclosure I have been using this for only a few months, later in the review it does not give the option to indicate that I bought this in 2022 not 2018. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The Model I picked (R-10) only has 2 LAN Ports, this would be an issue for an environment with more users. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Easy to install and an easy-to-follow Dashboard. Straightforward to install VMs. Great online manual (docs) which help with all aspects of setting up the system. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
What don't I like - nothing much to be honest. Software updates don't arrive that often but maybe that's because the software is so robust it doesn't need them?! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
