Network Attached Storage
Table of Contents
It has been over 8 months since I built my first NAS server. In fact, that was my first time building a computer from parts. Today, I have 3 of them following the 3-2-1 rule, with 1 primary on-site and 2 off-site backup servers. All of them run TrueNAS Community Edition, and the primary backs up the datasets to the other two servers using Replication Tasks in TrueNAS.
It has been fun gradually gaining trust with my own deployments and moving away from a 200GB iCloud subscription to the free 5GB plan. I’ve been mostly using the NAS to store photos & videos using Immich, and files using Nextcloud. There are also a few NFS mounts that my other homelab hosts use to back up docker configuration and volumes.
Primary NAS Build #
| Component | Name | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Motherboard + CPU | Supermicro X11SSH-F + Intel Xeon E3-1220 v6 | $148 |
| RAM | Samsung 16GB DDR4-2400 ECC | $88 |
| HDDs (1 x Mirror) | 2x WD Red Plus 4TB | $221 |
| SSDs (1 x Mirror) | 2x Crucial BX500 240GB | $90 |
| Boot SSD | Kingston A400 240GB | $32 |
| PSU | Seasonic Focus GX-750 | $67 |
| Case | Fractal Design Node 804 | $166 |
| Others | Cables, Thermal Paste etc. | $53 |
| Total | - | $865 |
Secondary (Backup) NAS Build #
| Component | Name | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Motherboard | Supermicro X11SSH-F | $86 |
| CPU | Intel Xeon E3-1225 v6 | $13 |
| RAM | Samsung 16GB DDR4-2400 ECC | $88 |
| HDD | WD Red Plus 8TB | $182 |
| Boot SSD | WD Blue 250GB | $50 |
| PSU | Seasonic CORE GX-650 | $99 |
| Case | Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L | $39 |
| Fan | Thermaltake UX150 | $22 |
| Total | - | $568 |
This secondary instance has no reason to stay awake except when the primary wants to send the backup data. With the help of Claude, I was able to quickly build a Go binary to automate its power management through the IPMI interface. TrueNAS Power Manager is available on GitHub.
Tertiary (Backup) NAS Build #
| Component | Name | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Desktop | Dell OptiPlex 3050 SFF with Intel Core i3-7100 | $109 |
| RAM | Hynix 16GB DDR4-2400 | $78 |
| HDD | WD Blue 8TB | $265 |
| Boot SSD | WD Green 250GB | $32 |
| Total | - | $484 |