How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS

Re:How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, Tr... by burner420042 on Wednesday July 08, 2026 @12:54AM (#48827682)

I'm sure there's better options now but the HP ProLiant MicroServers (used).

They support ECC ram, 4 caddies, one extra PCIe slot, and to my knowledge you're not cpu limited for a zfs file server usecase.

Keep in mind though, all you need is linux* support, iDRAC, ECC if you're a snob, and drive bays ... and that's basically any free server.

In my extremely opinionated opinion I would only get used enterprise server gear, because a zfs file server will just work unless hardware fails. And a UPS.

*ZFS will be a more natural choice on FreeBSD. It's better documented, and will meet Linux 1:1 in hardware compatibility for this.

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Re:How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, Tr... by bpye on Wednesday July 08, 2026 @01:27AM (#48827872)

I'm still running an old Gen 8 MicroServer. Modern drives can actually saturate the SATA controller, and because it only has a single PCIe slot I can't add both a 10Gb NIC and a storage controller - I went with the 10Gb NIC.

It works well enough though and has lasted me over a decade at this point. 16GB DDR3 ECC, an old 4 core/8 thread Xeon, 4x14TB drives and the Mellanox NIC.

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Re:How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, Tr... by ahepp on Wednesday July 08, 2026 @05:51AM (#48829862)

I got a gen10 plus microserver and liked it so much that I got a second one.

Throw FreeBSD on it and add a couple lines to /etc/exports and rc.conf and it's a NAS right out of the box

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Re:How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, Tr... by itchingsphynx on Wednesday July 08, 2026 @06:12AM (#48830014)

Agreed. I have used a HP N40L ProLiant MicroServer since 2013 as home NAS and Time Machine backups via samba. Rock solid hardware, incredibly expandable, and today runs FreeBSD 15.1 with ZFS. Additional hardware modifications include; CD-ROM replaced by two 3.5" HDDs on mounts (now six HDDs of 10TB each in ZRAID1), a SAS card to add two mirrored bootable SSDs underneath CD-ROM drive space, a 2x 2.5G NIC (limited to 4GB/s slot) for dedicated NFS link, while additional internal SATA and external SATA ports unused. Next: replace PSU fan with quieter Noctua fan.

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