5 AWESOME Home Server/NAS Operating Systems

44 thoughts on “5 AWESOME Home Server/NAS Operating Systems”

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• @12:32 You are wrong about needing to contact anyone if your USB drive fails. First make sure you have Unraid connect setup so your USB is auto backed up. Then if you have a failed USB drive just get a new one log into your Unraid connect account download the backup zip. Extract it to the new USB then just use the online automated method built right into the OS. You can do that once every 12 months. I have 2 servers never had a usb fail yet in them after 6 years. Unraid loads fully in memory so after boot the USB has no reads or writes to it unless you reboot or upgrade Unraid.

• I have used all the options discussed in the video except for unraid which is the paid option but my favorite is my Synology NAS model DS920. Synology is another paid option obviously and i feel it’s better than unraid. Synology has its own NAS Software running on their own pre-built NAS which is just as easy as unraid or easier and i know i never used unraid personally but a friend of mine use it and they prefer my Synology setup over their own because of how easy it is with all the features included. Some of the other i still use like like Proxmox and Truenas Scale are install on hardware then i have OpenMediaVault and CasaOS running as a LXC container but they are also good as VM’s but use more resources that way.

• If you're just after a bare bones virtualization platform, LXD or Incus (the new community fork of LXD) is a good option. Both have a decent web UI or you can manage everything from the CLI if you prefer.

• Hi! Hopkins, regarding the USB with the Unraid operating system, have you tried cloning it to another "identical" USB drive that you are currently using to see if it works as a backup, attempting to start it? If you haven't, and you can perform this test, it would be a good idea.

• One can also add Rockstor to the list. It's based on OpenSuse, uses BTRFS and has docker integration similar to that of UnRAID.

• Been an UNRAID users for years for my Docker/NAS needs, love it! I do use ESXi 8 for VDI and game LAN streaming (Horizon 8) and Windows VMs though.

• 9:55 respect for saving the best for last imo

• As i sit here and watch this, i find myself wondering what "protainer" is and trying to figure out what exactly a "learning curb" is. Lmfao.

  Sorry, my mokey brain got distracted.

• Cant believe in this day and age, that everyone loves UNRAID. when, in this day and age, it can only be run from a USB drive.. WHY? That is the biggest SINGLE issue why I will never use UNRAD. I dont mind pating for software, but I would at least ecpect it can be installed on an SSD like a "proper" system.

• You make such great videos! I’m currently running on a few laptops and I hope to get it into one desktop. Trying to decide between Truenas and proxmox. Have a great day!

• CasaOS is not an OS, it's not technically based on debian because it's just a package you install in not only debian, but also Alpine, Arch or even OpenWRT if you're into that. It's just a frontend that lets you install docker containers easily.

• Hi man, BIG fan of you videos. May i ask a request? Do you have any video where as you explain from scratch how to setup a "homelab" with everything to server OS to applications and how to install them 🙂 (noob perspective) This would be very educational

• debating between OMV and CasaOS, although CasaOS has actual Docker native (apps i need are available) where OMV you need to use portainer, im actually leaning heavy towards OMV because of RAID support where CasaOS AFAIK so far doesnt support raid… maybe its planned i dont know

• For real yunohost is missing from that list. It is for home users such a great place to start, especially as it solves most of the SSL hustle for you 🙂

• It really seems you have three different categories of software you're dealing with: (1) a hypervisor (Proxmox), (2) a container manager (CasaOS), and (3) NASes that let you run additional software, whether in VMs, containers, or both (the rest). There's some overlap between these categories, but they're still fundamentally different pieces of software. I've at least played with four of the five (the only one I haven't touched is Unraid). I've been using FreeNAS for 10+ years, followed the upgrade path to TrueNAS CORE, and moved to SCALE about a year ago; I run a number of apps there (anything that's dealing heavily with data that's on the NAS, runs on the NAS). I've also been running a Proxmox cluster for a number of years; that's where VMs and LXCs run.

  A direct alternative to Proxmox would be xcp-ng, using Xen for its hypervisor rather than KVM.

• For me, my preferred go-to is the tried and tested Debian + Tmux + SSH

  Easy, straightforward

• Having license tied to the boot drive and having the boot drive only able to be a USB drive seems like such a hilariously terrible design. I'm surprised they've stuck with that over the years.

• What i love about UnRaid is that you can add drives as you go, without having to rebuild the entire array each time. I can upgrade over time as money and deals come up.

• Hey Brandon! Thanks for making this video! I run TrueNAS Scale as my media server, and I have a separte box for my router running OPNsense… I've been playing with the idea of consolidating it all with Proxmox as the hypervisor, but some tell me that it's not wise to run my router virtualized…. May I get your thoughts on that? Great video as always!

• Proxmox FTW. Docker–.

• I almost never leave comments online but I just have to say your CasaOS video was great. It was so easy to follow through and have it up and running. From someone who knows nothing to actually have a server up and running, it makes it so simple.

  I really appreciate these kind of videos for people like me on the fence to learn more and the way your break them down for people who have no background.

• URaid typo in the first list in the video.

• I love Unraid! So worth the price! Highly recommended!

• Casa OS is my favourite out of them all! Thanks to you 🙌🙌

• I have been running my unraid since 2015 on the same usb drive and cache drive with no problems. I subsequently built one more unraid machine here in 2023. And I love how docker and vm how easy it is to manage. Thumbs up from here.

• I have a synology but i would love to try trunas can i create a partition on my pc drive and install it there so i can try and test trunas or add an externa hdd and install it there ?

• i am using casaos

• Interesting video. Your list of server OSes and mine… only one overlap in the software that you list at the start and that I use: TrueNAS Scale. I took an ill-advised detour from Synology and built myself a TrueNAS machine for specific media backups. (I tried OMV and found it severely lacking and poorly designed). I do have a CasaOS VM, I wanted to see what it looked like. I had a NextCloud VM at one point too. Not useful if you already have Synology's suite of applications. Hypervisor: VMware ESXi (with vCenter Server). It's what I do for a living, along with Horizon VDI, and it's best-of-breed as far as hypervisors go. For containers, I have Docker running on one of the Synology NASes and on two Ubuntu Server VMs, one for production and one for test. I tend to spin up a VM rather than look for a Docker version of whatever I want to run. 20+ years using VMware software. Again, interesting video. Be well.

• I really don't get hype around Casaos. Found broken apps and selection itself isn't even anything spectacular. Imo something like caprover might be better option.

• I was taught "separate storage and virtualization" and personally prefer FreeBSD so I still run Truenas Core + Proxmox as my 2 'main' servers. Before that I manually configured FreeBSD, then moved on to FreeNAS. Xen used to be my hypervisor of choice but moved to Proxmox and have been happy with it.

  Currently rebuilding my Proxmox server and want to play around with Scale so I'll probably run a Scale VM which still seems wrong to me but I'll get over it. Tried OMV and Unraid and while I didn't see a reason to move away from Truenas I do get why people like Unraid so much.

• I wish Unraid would get off of using USB as a boot drive and switch to SSD/NVMe… Call me dumb but this is the main reason I don't run Unraid… Even TrueNAS stopped recommending USB boot devices. There is a reason

• Linux + Cockpit

• Nice lineup, thanks. Question: One of the things I would be wanting to do with a NAS, is run an instance of OpenSimulator on it. But I haven't been able to find out if that is even possible. Does anyone know if any of these platforms would be an appropriate environment for OS?

• Hi TechHut, I have seen a lot of videos of your home server setup and i tried to replicate the same but services that you run there are not many videos showing step by step installation of those, like Proxmox, or Sonarr or Radarr how to link them to torrent and Jellyfin etc.. can you make videos with the step by step setup process of services that you use.

• I use Debian 12 for my home server. Not because just "STABLE AF", but it can fulfill most of my needs. HAIL FOR DEBIAN 🙂

• I run everything in proxmox then create big Ubuntu vms and run docker inside of it.

  I’d love to move to something like unraid but my hardware is split up currently and I don’t have enough storage to justify it.

  Once I build out (eventually) a HL15 or something similar with decent storage I’ll probably swap everything to unraid.

• I've been using NixOS on all my home servers for a while now and I couldn't use anything else at this point. Sure, it has a learning curve, has no fancy GUI and is not going to be as noob-friendly but it is so convenient and powerful to set up your whole system declaratively in one config file and then have it update itself continuously. And if something breaks and you need to reinstall, no problem, just copy over the config file, rebuild the system and everything just works. Infrastructure as code > GUI.

• I insist, I would love to see one video ( or even an article) about home server + GIS. I don't want to deal with PostGIS on my own x_X.

• I love TrueNAS SCALE so far, but I wish I could have at least tried Unraid without paying.

• I've been running two Unraid servers for about five years with no issues.

• DAMN IT MAN! You had the perfect number 69 uploads.
  It was perfect. Perfect. You gotta do 99 more now so we can all still go “heh…. Nice”

• Also not a fan of the USB-drives for booting Unraid, but having them mounted internally (if you can), you just kind of forget about them. I have replaced 1 drive that failed about half a year ago, and I managed to delete the key-file, but support sent me new key within like 3-4 hours.

• Thanks for another great video. I'm in my 50s. As a complete beginner to NAS (as in I still haven't purchased a unit yet!) do you think a Chinese knockoff (say, terramaster F4-423) with one of the OS you talked about would be okay for someone super amatuer. Or would a more expensive Synology unit (currently looking at DS-1522+) be better? Thanks for all you do! 🙏

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