TrueNAS Mini X (Diskless)

I've been in the QNAP realm for about 2 years now. I started with a 2-bay system them at the of the 2 years I had 2 4-Bay systems. Why did I move to TrueNAS then?Because I got fed up with QNAP. Their system is too bloated with s* for someone like me, and they keep adding more s* without strengthening the core experience and reliability.Going to TrueNAS means less features and a GUI not as user friendly as QNAP, but if you are the type of person that basically uses NAS as the name actually implies "Network Attached Storage", then TrueNAS is meant for ya! I got mine from zero to showing up on Windows in about 4 hours as an average power user...Honestly though, there's plenty of guides around the web, so you can get it done if you are not a power user. It just takes a bit of patience, but the reward for not dealing with QNAP crap is 👌.I will try to remember to edit this review in a few months to relay how the uptime experience feels. However, from the hours of non-stop shoving terabytes of data into it, it has performed incredibly snappy. Not a single bug/funky thing happened.I also like how it looks, and the locking devices, especially from the hands of kids is a welcoming benefit.

Perfect size for home lab and backup solutions. Nice and quiet and possibly some of the best hdd trays I have ever touched. I bought this to replace a synology that is getting long in the tooth. Scale installed with zero issues. Everything was well packaged and I have zero complaints. I did run Truenas Scale on my own junky hardware and liked it enough that I thought I would give them a try. Time will tell how it holds up but for right now it seems really well built.

TrueNas ZFS w/ cache outperforms big name storage WITH all the bells at less than half the cost. This box was a replacement for a previous one for personal storage, which lasted me 8 years. It's funny, this unit is built from the same brand of parts I used in my custom build. Like ASRockRack motherboard with free BMC features.The only problem is the chassis feet are stick-on. This sort of etiquette has been established for decades, so I was surprised to see them. What a dumb way to potentially lose a rating star!Overall I am very happy with the product and all of the expertise that has gone in to this project over the years. Thank you!

This a quality product what you cannot build cheaper. Low power consumption was a deciding factor as well as the long life SuperMicro chassis. A product that can grow in size and network performance. Can utilize WakeOnLan. Excellent home system. Shipped well packed.

Great product.Motherboard has just about everything you'd ever want: BMC, IPMI, ECC RAM support (DDR4 (cheap!!), up to 128G (at $1/G, why not max your ARC?)), support for up to two SATA DOMs, a spare thermistor header (useful if you want to configure the case fan to spin up/down according to HDD temperature), two SAS controllers (which share bandwidth with the SATA ports on the motherboard -- be aware of bandwidth limitations -- this machine only supports a max of 4 SATA SSDs (24MB/s total, 2 SSDs per SAS controller) before it's choking), a PCIe x8 slot (which you can use for 10gbE or SFP+, which you'll probably want to do because the 4x1gbE ports on the mobo do not amount to much bandwidth), a lil' ID button, serial, two USB3 ports, and more.The backplane has disk connection and activity indicators, though doesn't support SAS SGPIO. (The motherboard, on the other hand, *does* support SAS GPIO.)Chassis has just about everything you'd want, too: intrusion detection (though only on the right side), disk and network indicators (though only the first two network ports have LEDs), lots of hot-swap bays, and a locking door (though this obscures the disk LEDs and the labels for the chassis LEDs).The BIOS even lets you stagger your HDD spin-ups!Caveats:Note: To control the fans from BMC, you may need to update your BMC (which iXsystems does not support you doing). The latest BMC is not available on ASRockRack's website (though 1.70.00 is, and that does have the fan controls); you'll have to email them, and they'll then send you login info for their FTP server; you can download the latest from there.Worth noting: the BIOS watchdog timer is poorly-implemented and booting with 128G of RAM will cause the timer to reset the computer before memory tests complete. So if you're planning to max your RAM, make sure to disable the watchdog before installing that much memory.The clearest area for improvement would be to have a PSU with PMBus support. The motherboard supports it, and iXsystems went through the trouble of making everything else enterprise-grade; why not the PSU?Also kinda odd that it doesn't have a buzzer out-of-the-box. This is useful when you are booting it headless, since it gives you an indication that the system has POSTed successfully. It probably is also useful for diagnostic codes. Would have been nice to not have to buy a pack of these separately.Also: this only comes with TrueNAS Core; you'll have to manually install TrueNAS Scale if you want the latest & greatest performance and features.Another caveat: It doesn't come with 3.5"-to-2.5" adapters, and iXsystems won't sell them to you after you purchase your system. These worked for me, and look very similar to the official ones: https://a.co/d/61xBuUQ.Modifications:I only needed 6 of the bays for my disks (two triple mirrors: one of HDDs, one of SSDs), so I repurposed the bottom bay as a kind of air-duct for the CPU. Pretty easy to do with some tape. (The SSD bays are stiffer than the HDD ones, and so don't need their plastic placeholders to stay in-shape.)There's something to be said for drilling some holes in the side panel by the PSU intake; it's quite far from the nearest opening in the case.You can theoretically add additional case fans or even eSATA headers (SATA-to-eSATA from the on-board SATA headers (very short range compared to real eSATA)) by cutting/drilling into the metal plate above the IO shroud at the back, or by cutting/drilling into the sides. There are two unused case fan headers on the motherboard. I find that stock cooling is perfectly adequate, though.

Three features are unique in TrueNAS mini X* Using ECC RDIMM.* RAM can be expanded to 128GB according to motherboard spec - ASRock C3558D4I-4L* IPIM for remote management.Works quite well.

We were looking at Synology and TruNAS for a client who wanted a 20TB NAS. We were specking it with Raid 6 or RAIDZ2. The TrueNAS was closer to our price point, with reconditioned drives.Plugged in the drives, turned it on, and basic config was done in no time. With a NoIP connection, we are able to make this unit available anywhere an Internet connection is available.