TrueNAS Mini X+ Compact ZFS Storage Server with 5+2 Drive Bays, 32GB RAM, Eight Core CPU, Dual 10 Gigabit Network (Diskless)

This is a really nice product! Not only is it pretty fast, it’s packed with built in functionality, and extensible through plugins to be a generally useful addition to the home lab or small office. That said. The 2.5” drive bays were not plugged in when I got the unit. I had to take the sides off, clip the wire ties, and connect the power supply to the board. It’s not like it fell off during shipping, it was tied in a way that it could never have been plugged in to begin with. This might lead you to think that the SSD drive bays don’t work. They do, but you have to plug them in first inside the case. I found this out from someone else online posting about it, so it’s obviously something that happens often enough. I also found that the 10gb Ethernet ports don’t work with my 2.5 gigabit unmanaged switch. I had to plug it into my 1 gigabit switch, or it wouldn’t get an IP. Kinda strange and annoying. Overall, I really like it. The switch thing is weird, but I’m mostly docking it a star because I don’t generally expect to have to do that kind of surgery on a brand new and fairly expensive product I just bought.

Due to a slight customization I had to order this direct from iXsystems (I wanted mirrored internal boot devices, leaving all 7 storage bays available for storage drives). Well protected in shipment with lots of custom foam blocks in a large box (for such a compact machine). Very nice design, iX fits a TON into this tiny mini-ITX custom chassis! I like that they added an active cooling fan to the normally passively cooled Super Micro MoBo. Thankful that the 32GB RAM was 2 x 16GB so that upgrading to 64GB will be relatively inexpensive. With the 8C Intel CPU, 32GB ECC RAM, 2 x 10Gbe NICs + dedicated Gbe BMC/IPMI, 7 hotswap bays plus 4 internal SATA and 1 internal M.2 NVMe, it would be extremely difficult for me to build a mini-ITX server at this price. Would be nice if iX offered WD Red+ drives closer to Amazon pricing. I ended up ordering diskless and feel I got a nice value. Thank you guys at iX for all you do to provide and maintain TrueNAS for the community, it is the unequalled, unbeatable NAS OS!

The TrueNAS Mini X+ is a thing of beauty. It works so much better than my home built TrueNAS did. I appreciate that iXsystems builds and tests the systems before shipping. While that meant I had to wait a little longer than I was hoping it was great to know it had been tested and was ready for me to put it to full use. Representatives from iXsystems kept me informed along the way, which was very nice as well. This is working great for a family Plex server and storage. I highly recommend this unit.

Everything was easy to set up with the provided manual and the server came with all the necessary parts, including two Ethernet cables and all the screws necessary for the full set of drives (plus spares and extras), even though the drives themselves were purchased separately in my case. The front door is a bit thinner than I expected, but otherwise the build is sturdy and the case easily opened up for upgrades in the future. Noise-wise, it is noticeable in a quiet room but not distracting unless you turn the fans up using IPMI (might be necessary if you prefer to keep your drives cooler than 45C when active). While the price seems to be inflated compared to what it used to be, I looked up the cost of building a similar product from individual components and it was not much cheaper. Youll probably get a better deal if you go for used server parts, but you wont necessarily get good power efficiency that way and it might be overkill for small-scale/home use. On the software side, community support is widely available on the TrueNAS forums and the like, and I had no issue finding answers to most of the questions I had starting off. I havent put much work into setting up jails/non-storage applications yet, but the configuration I have should have plenty of capability for those, though it wont be doing much high-performance computing work.

The Mini X+ is a beautiful machine, and perfect my intended use case of reliable home file storage. As an IT professional, Ive come to the conclusion that there is no substitute for ZFS when you want the greatest possible assurance that your data will be preserved intact. And the TrueNAS Mini line is the turnkey solution for ZFS file storage in a small affordable package. I bought the Mini X+ when it was first released because it offered several advantages over the previous FreeNAS Mini models. The space in the machine is better optimized, with almost all the available front panel space being utilized by five 3.5 hot swap bays and two 2.5 hot swap bays. Previous models required opening the case to access some of the 2.5 drives. This 5+2 layout, together with the upgraded CPU and RAM, is a nice compromise for someone who wants a more powerful machine than the previous E/E+ models, but not quite as large as the XL models. My X+ also came with dual onboard 10-gigabit ethernet, which is backward compatible with 1-gigabit switches. It also has a low-profile PCIe expansion slot, which I havent had the need to use yet. The really killer feature is the IPMI management port with HTML5 iKVM — I have never needed to attach a monitor and keyboard to the machine, because it is so much easier just to manage everything through my web browser. The TrueNAS Core web GUI is fantastic, and getting better with every release, but it does have a learning curve. Be aware that some technical understanding is needed to get the most out of the capabilities of your NAS. I think this is intrinsic to the technologies involved, rather than any design decisions by the iXsystems team. Other NAS manufacturers try to make their web GUIs look like computer desktops, with flashy apps and buzzwords, in an effort to make them seem user-friendly, while TrueNAS is no-nonsense, all the options that you need, no more and no less. For power users, you can do even more things with plugins and jails, and almost anything is possible for those who dig into the command line. The TrueNAS Mini line, unlike TrueNAS Enterprise machines, does not come with software support, but it does come with a limited hardware warranty (read the fine print). Nonetheless, when Ive needed support, Ive been very satisfied. There is a built-in tool in the TrueNAS Core GUI for filing bug reports, which I used once in the early days of TrueNAS 12. My bug got fixed in the very next release, after they kept me updated about the progress of the fix. There are tremendous benefits to the open source nature of TrueNAS, with very active community forums and a lot of online information. And whenever Ive had occasion to talk directly with the folks at iXsystems, theyve been a very friendly and helpful bunch, based in the USA. I would recommend the TrueNAS Mini line to anyone who wants the very best in storage technology on a small scale, and who is willing to make a minor intellectual investment in configuring it. The open-source TrueNAS Core can also be installed on your own homebuilt hardware, but in pricing out the parts I wanted, I found that it was not much more expensive to just buy the Mini X+, which provides not only a beautiful and compact enclosure, but also the peace of mind that it was designed by experts, and includes enterprise features like the IPMI and ECC RAM.

My QNAP finally fell victim to ransomware, and so I decided it was time to replace it with something else. Ive read that Synology NASs have also had similar security issues that left them vulnerable to ransomeware attacks. So I pondered the feasibility of throwing together my own solution using open-source software, as it is more likely to have better security. iX Systems TrueNAS Core (formerly FreeNAS) has a great reputation in the open-source community, and Ive been wanting to try it. I really did not want to roll my own NAS, although that is entirely possible with TrueNAS, and so was very glad that iX Systems offers a range of products for the home/small office user community. The Mini X+ is, for me, a serious upgrade over my previous QNAP. Plex transcoding should not be an issue for me if I have other things going on on the device at the same time as well. The Mini X+ itself is very well put together and has an excellent build quality, comparable to Synologys offerings. I am an IT professional and I have extensive experience administrating NetApp, Pure Storage, and Equallogic systems. I will say that the TrueNAS software itself is enterprise class, having many of the same features present in storage solutions that cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. Out of the box, TrueNAS supports iSCSI, NFS, SMB, and even s3. One of the features I really love about it is the underlying ZFS filesystem. TrueNAS + ZFS gives you the ability to make snapshots of your datasets, and you have the option of reverting or even cloning the snapshot to a new dataset. This makes file recoveries relatively painless, reducing the need to recover from backup. You do back up your data, dont you? With 5 drives in the mini X+, selecting RAID-Z1 will provide protection for up to a single drive failure. Ive only been using this for a few days now, and the only negative thing I have to say about TrueNAS is that the login to the web GUI is limited to the root account only. It would be nice if iX Systems would, in a future version, allow the ability for other accounts to be able to access the GUI.