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TrueNAS NAS Server

CLOIF2 — Cloud Infrastructure

School

Project Overview

In the CLOIF2 (Cloud Infrastructure) module, our group of three set up and fully configured a TrueNAS Community Edition NAS server on real enterprise server hardware. Starting from bare metal, we covered everything from RAID controller staging, OS installation, and network configuration through to user management, dataset creation, and client connectivity from both Windows and Linux.

Group

  • Würth Eric
  • Simon Max
  • Kugener Sven
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Hardware

We worked on an Intel SR2600URBRPR — a 2U rack-mounted server with the following specs:

  • CPU — 2× Intel Xeon X5650
  • RAM — 8× 8 GB (64 GB total)
  • Native HDD (SATA) — 2× 160 GB
  • RAID HDD (SAS) — 3× 146 GB via Areca RAID controller with backup battery

Software

TrueNAS Community Edition (formerly TrueNAS SCALE) — an open-source, Debian-based NAS OS using the ZFS file system, developed by iXsystems. Free to use with the same codebase as the enterprise edition.

What We Configured

  • RAID Staging — Accessed the Areca RAID controller web interface to prepare the hardware RAID array before OS installation
  • OS Installation — Installed TrueNAS Community Edition on the server
  • Network Configuration — Set a static IP, configured hostname, gateway, and DNS via the TrueNAS console and web UI
  • Storage Pools — Created both a software RAID pool (Mirror) and a hardware RAID pool (Stripe) using ZFS
  • Users & Permissions — Created SMB-enabled users and set ACL-based permissions on datasets
  • File Sharing — Connected to the NAS share from a Windows client (File Explorer / SMB) and from a Linux client (Nautilus / smb://)
  • iSCSI vs NFS/SMB — Studied and documented the differences between block-level (iSCSI) and file-level (NFS/SMB) storage protocols

Key Takeaways

This project gave me hands-on experience with enterprise server hardware and a production-grade open-source storage OS. Working directly on physical rack hardware — identifying ports, handling the RAID controller, and tracing cables — made the theoretical concepts from class immediately tangible. Configuring ZFS pools, managing permissions, and troubleshooting network connectivity reinforced my Linux and networking skills in a real environment. The group collaboration also taught me how to divide tasks efficiently and document work clearly for others to follow.