The storage platform we trust with our own data - and our clients' data.
Node runs TrueNAS SCALE as the foundation of our own central storage network. That is not a marketing position - it is the outcome of evaluating the alternatives and concluding that TrueNAS, on the right hardware, consistently outperforms what proprietary vendors charge multiples more to deliver. The software is mature, the filesystem is battle-tested, and because you are not locked to a vendor's hardware SKUs, the client has complete control over the cost, the performance profile and the upgrade path. We implement TrueNAS SCALE for clients who need serious storage performance, genuine data resilience and long-term infrastructure ownership.
What TrueNAS SCALE is
TrueNAS SCALE is an open source, Linux-based unified storage platform built on OpenZFS - one of the most advanced filesystems ever created, originally developed by Sun Microsystems and now maintained by an active open source community. It provides NAS (file storage over NFS and SMB), SAN (block storage over iSCSI and NVMe-oF), and S3-compatible object storage in a single platform, managed through a polished web interface or full REST API.
TrueNAS SCALE is developed by iXsystems, a company with over two decades of storage engineering experience. It is the same codebase that underpins iXsystems' commercial TrueNAS Enterprise offering - open source with optional commercial support. Tens of thousands of organisations run TrueNAS in production, from small businesses to research institutions, media production houses, financial services firms and healthcare organisations processing petabytes.
The performance figures are not theoretical. OpenZFS with a properly configured NVMe cache tier, adequate RAM for the ARC (Adaptive Replacement Cache), and the right spindle or flash topology for the workload regularly delivers throughput and IOPS that proprietary SAN vendors charge six-figure sums to match. The software is not the constraint. The hardware is the variable - and because you choose the hardware, you choose the price point.
OpenZFS - why the filesystem matters
Most storage platforms treat the filesystem as a commodity. TrueNAS is built on OpenZFS, and that is not an implementation detail - it is the source of most of TrueNAS's most important capabilities.
Copy-on-write integrity - ZFS never overwrites data in place. Every write goes to a new location; the old block remains until the transaction is confirmed. This means the filesystem is always consistent. There is no fsck, no journal recovery, no corruption from a power failure mid-write. The data is either committed or it is not - there is no in-between state.
End-to-end checksums - every block of data stored on ZFS carries a cryptographic checksum. When data is read, ZFS verifies the checksum. Silent data corruption - the kind that other filesystems allow to propagate undetected for months - is caught at read time and, where redundancy exists, automatically corrected from the good copy. TrueNAS runs regular scrubs that verify every block on every disk on a schedule, catching latent drive errors before they become data loss.
Snapshots at near-zero cost - ZFS snapshots are instantaneous and require no additional storage until data changes. A dataset with a snapshot simply retains the old blocks as new writes redirect elsewhere. You can take hourly snapshots of a 50TB dataset with negligible performance impact and negligible storage overhead until the data actually changes. Snapshots are the foundation of TrueNAS's ransomware resilience - an encrypted dataset can be rolled back to the last clean snapshot in minutes.
Inline compression - LZ4 compression runs inline with no meaningful performance impact on most workloads. Storage efficiency of 1.3x-2x is common on mixed data workloads. Database files, virtual machine images, log data and document storage all compress well. Raw media and already-compressed files do not - ZFS detects this and skips compression for incompressible data automatically.
Storage pools with configurable redundancy - ZFS vdevs can be configured as mirrors (RAID-1 equivalent), RAIDZ1 (RAID-5 equivalent), RAIDZ2 (RAID-6 equivalent) or RAIDZ3 (triple parity). Multiple vdevs are striped into a pool. The right configuration depends on the workload: mirrors for maximum IOPS, RAIDZ2 for bulk capacity with double-drive failure tolerance. We design the pool layout for your specific performance and resilience requirements.
Unified storage - NAS, SAN and object in one platform
TrueNAS SCALE presents the same storage pool through multiple protocols simultaneously, eliminating the need for separate NAS and SAN appliances.
SMB and NFS file shares - Windows clients connect over SMB with full Active Directory integration, access control lists and shadow copies (previous versions powered by ZFS snapshots). Linux and macOS clients connect over NFS. Mixed environments use both protocols against the same underlying datasets.
iSCSI block storage - for workloads that need raw block storage - virtual machine datastores, database storage requiring direct block access, or applications that cannot use file protocols - TrueNAS presents iSCSI LUNs carved from ZFS volumes. The same data integrity and snapshot capabilities apply to block storage as to file storage.
NVMe-oF - for latency-sensitive block workloads, TrueNAS SCALE supports NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) for high-performance block access over RDMA-capable networks, delivering near-local NVMe performance over the network fabric.
S3-compatible object storage - TrueNAS provides an S3-compatible object storage endpoint through MinIO integration. Applications that use the S3 API for object storage can point at your TrueNAS deployment instead of AWS S3, keeping data on-premise with no egress costs and no dependency on external availability.
Replication and disaster recovery
TrueNAS has native, ZFS-native replication built in - not an afterthought add-on, but a first-class capability that exploits ZFS's snapshot model to replicate only changed blocks.
ZFS send/receive replication - TrueNAS replicates datasets to a remote TrueNAS system using ZFS send/receive. After the initial full replication, only the blocks that changed since the last snapshot are transmitted. A 20TB dataset with 50GB of daily changes sends 50GB per replication cycle, not 20TB. Replication is efficient regardless of dataset size.
Scheduled and continuous replication - replication runs on a configurable schedule. Hourly replication of critical datasets to an off-site replica means your RPO (Recovery Point Objective) is one hour. Near-continuous replication can bring this closer to minutes for the most critical workloads.
Off-site replica - we configure a replica TrueNAS system in a physically separate location - a second data centre, a colocation facility, or another office. The replica receives a continuous stream of ZFS snapshots and can be promoted to primary in the event the primary system is unavailable. RTO (Recovery Time Objective) is the time to redirect clients to the replica, not the time to restore from backup.
Immutable snapshots for ransomware resilience - ZFS snapshots on a properly configured TrueNAS system are not accessible to the filesystem in a way that ransomware can encrypt or delete them. A ransomware attack on a connected client encrypts files visible to that client; the ZFS snapshots underneath remain clean. Recovery is a snapshot rollback - minutes, not days of restore from tape.
Cloud sync for tertiary backup - TrueNAS integrates with cloud storage providers (AWS S3, Azure Blob, Backblaze B2, and others) for tertiary backup of critical data. Snapshots or datasets are pushed to cloud storage on a schedule as a final safety net, encrypted before transmission.
Hardware freedom - the real competitive advantage
Proprietary storage vendors sell you a stack: their software, their hardware, their support contract, and their upgrade path. You pay for all of them whether you need them or not, and you cannot separate them. TrueNAS decouples the software from the hardware entirely.
Choose your hardware - TrueNAS SCALE runs on commodity server hardware, purpose-built storage servers from any vendor, or whitebox builds configured to your exact specification. You can optimise for maximum capacity, maximum IOPS, minimum cost-per-terabyte or minimum power consumption independently. No proprietary controllers, no mandatory drive certifications, no vendor-mandated refresh cycles.
Scale without a sales conversation - adding capacity to a proprietary SAN requires engaging the vendor, waiting for a quote, negotiating a contract and scheduling a professional services engagement. Adding capacity to TrueNAS is ordering drives, inserting them and expanding the pool. You scale on your timeline, not the vendor's.
No per-terabyte licensing - TrueNAS SCALE is open source software. It does not cost more to use because you store more. A 100TB TrueNAS deployment carries the same software cost as a 1TB deployment: zero. The economics improve dramatically at scale, which is precisely why it outperforms proprietary alternatives on total cost of ownership at serious capacity.
Hardware recommendations without commercial bias - because we do not sell hardware, our recommendations are not influenced by margin. We specify the right server platform, the right drives (NVMe, SAS SSD, or nearline SAS/SATA depending on the workload), the right memory configuration and the right network interface for your specific requirements. The goal is performance and longevity, not upselling.
Implemented and managed by Node
We design, deploy and operate TrueNAS SCALE deployments as managed service engagements. You get enterprise storage capability without an in-house storage team.
Architecture and sizing - we design the pool topology, cache tier, redundancy configuration and network architecture for your workload. A storage system designed for virtual machine hosting has different characteristics from one designed for media production or backup. We get the design right before a drive is ordered.
Deployment and configuration - we deploy and configure TrueNAS including dataset structure, share configuration, access controls, Active Directory integration, replication tasks, snapshot schedules, alert configuration and monitoring integration with Zabbix.
Ongoing management - firmware updates, TrueNAS version upgrades, drive health monitoring, scrub scheduling, capacity trending and replication verification. Storage is not set-and-forget; we manage it continuously.
Proactive drive monitoring - SMART data and ZFS pool health are monitored continuously through our Zabbix platform. A drive showing early failure indicators is flagged and scheduled for replacement before it fails, not after it takes a vdev offline.
TrueNAS in the Node platform
TrueNAS SCALE underpins Node's own central storage infrastructure. Our Nextcloud private cloud service is backed by TrueNAS storage. Our virtualisation and Kubernetes infrastructure uses TrueNAS iSCSI and NFS datastores. Our backup infrastructure replicates to TrueNAS replicas. We use it because it is genuinely the best option for high-performance, resilient, cost-effective storage - and we implement it for clients on that same basis.
The honest comparison - a comparable proprietary NAS or SAN from the major storage vendors - NetApp, Pure Storage, Dell EMC, HPE - configured for the same capacity, performance and resilience as a well-specified TrueNAS deployment will cost two to five times as much over a five-year period when hardware, software licensing, support contracts and refresh costs are included. The performance of TrueNAS on appropriate hardware is not materially inferior. In many workloads, particularly high-throughput sequential reads and writes where the ARC and L2ARC cache can absorb working sets, it is faster. The gap exists not because proprietary platforms are technically superior, but because their business models require it. TrueNAS does not have that constraint.
Talk to us about TrueNAS SCALE.
Drop us a line, and our team will discuss your storage requirements - capacity, performance, resilience and budget - and what a TrueNAS deployment would look like for your organisation.