TrueNAS Mini XL+ Compact ZFS Storage Server with 8 + 1 Drive Bays, 32GB RAM, Eight Core CPU, Dual 1/10 Gigabit Network (Diskless)

Can you do better than this by hunting parts on your own? Maybe.Do you feel like dealing with it? great, do it. If you're me who has built more than enough computers in their lifetime at this point that just getting one in the box you can open, plug in, turn on and start moving data onto it, this is for you.This unit will come installed (as of April 2022) with the TrueNAS Core product on a M2 device on the system board. I personally replaced it with the newer TrueNAS Scale so I could use the linux based newer solution. Was a simple process.One Caveat - due to the fact this is a ZFS based solution some things in other NAS will not be here. You can't expand an array after you create it. So for example if you buy four drives, and then buy another four you can't add them to the existing array they have to make another one. I missed that note and bought four drives, and then bought an additional one a month later and discovered that after the fact.The Read and Write Cache's are a decent investment. One fits in an internal slot and the other plugs into the 2.5" slot along the top. Comes with plenty of screws to mount hard drives to the internal slide in brackets. Included two ethernet cables, power cords, and came extremely well packaged in custom foam.

QNAP and Synology are going to push you hard and they're going to look appealing, but in the end? This is the one you want. The quality, performance, security, lack of lock-in, and just...all of it, is so much better than anything you're going to get from the other two. I know it's a bit of a bullet to bite, but if you have data you need to store and don't want to put it in just some brick, this is the NAS you should get. I made the switch after my QNAP was hit with ransomware due to unpatched vulnerabilities that I couldn't even address and this machine has been an absolute god send. 10/10 could not recommend more. I will never go with QNAP again and I'm sorry that I did in the first place.

What you get for your money is a neatly presented relatively low (thermal) power server with plenty of capacity to run a home NAS using a Truenas operating system, and some useful other server functions either virtualised or as FreeBSD jails. As well as saving the cost and effort of finding a case with good thermal properties and 8 3.5" drive bays it also uses an excellent Supermicro motherboard which itself is expensive and hard to obtain in Europe, and you have the peace of mind of knowing that all the components will work reliably together. There is some technical hardware support, and endless community support for the operating system. In summary, not cheap but worth it for the time saved and peace of mind.PS I see some reviewers have complained that the disks run hot. As supplied, I found the same. I don't have air conditioning (not being in America despite the heading on this review). In the IPMI menu (and possibly also in BIOS setup - I haven't checked) there is a menu for Fan mode, and if you change this to "heavy IO" the disks in my case run 10°C cooler, about 32°C with an ambient about 25°C. Of course, this is at the cost of louder fan noise.

After settling on FreeNAS/TrueNAS as the software platform of choice for a new NAS, I began looking into hardware solutions for the system build. Finding that iXsystems had prebuilt server boxes specifically for TrueNAS made the decision to build or buy very easy for me. I got the Mini XL+ and am very satisfied with my choice. The build quality of the system is top notch, and the entire platform has been extremely well thought out as far as ease of serviceability goes. It is also very quiet and does not run hot. Not a cheap purchase, but I would still buy again instead of build if I had to do this all over again because everything just works out of the box with no hassle.Performance wise, I am running 32GB ECC ram and eight Seagate 4TB Ironwolf HDDs in RAIDZ2. I am seeing sustained transfer rates of about one gigabyte per second read and write over the onboard 10 gig ethernet.The customer service staff at iXsystems was a pleasure to work with and bent over backwards to resolve a shipping delay issue that was Amazon's fault.

I've built two of these myself, but I've been spoiled by Synology for the last few years. However, I wanted easy ZFS. The manual was completely useless -- worse than useless, really.I also got some irrelevant advice from the company which is why it took so long to get it properly setup. The only way I could get it worked out was by telling the company I was shipping it back today unless I got a call from them. The tech support gave me true info which was not helpful in getting the system configured, and in fact it led me down a rabbit hole that took a month to get back from.The basic console is only available via VGA. Who has a VGA anymore? (The standard was approved 35 years ago!)The manual is wholly inadequate to get to setup. The console is available via an ethernet port on the back, but that's not clearly spelled out anywhere and it wasn't well.I'm sure the other reviews about the excellent hardware is true, and I like the software. I've been very unhappy with the documentation and lack of an hdmi, but I'm going to keep it.I'm a fan of the actual system however.Those problems merit a 3 star review though.