OpenMediaVault vs TrueNAS Scale: Which free NAS OS comes out on top?

When you’re attempting to build your dream NAS, there are plenty of permutations and combinations you can try out for the hardware. The same can be said for software, as there’s a staggering number of operating systems that can turn your newly purchased NAS components into a powerful storage server.

TrueNAS Scale and OpenMediaVault are two of the most popular NAS operating systems that are not only free, but also possess several useful features. However, there are some notable differences between the two. In this article, we’ll compare multiple aspects of OMV and TrueNAS Scale to help you pick the right OS for your NAS.

Hardware requirements

Winner: OMV by a longshot

On paper, TrueNAS Scale doesn’t require a demanding system, as any 64-bit processor would suffice. However, you’ll need a minimum of 8GB RAM to run the OS without performance issues, meaning you won’t be able to deploy a TrueNAS Scale server on a device that’s crippled on the memory front.

In contrast, OpenMediaVault can run on practically any modern hardware. While the official website lists a 64-bit processor and 1GB RAM as the minimum requirements, it’s possible to set up OMV on many ARM-powered SBCs. Heck, I recently used a modified variant of this OS to turn my Milk-V Jupiter into a NAS, and while there were some compatibility issues with certain plugins, OMV worked surprisingly well for basic NAS Workloads on a RISC-V machine!

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Network shares

Winner: TrueNAS Scale (by a small margin)

When you’re attempting to access your self-assembled NAS over your home connection, you’ll have to set up a network share on the OS. TrueNAS Scale excels on this front, as it supports the file-sharing SMB and NFS protocols alongside the block-sharing iSCSI standard right out-of-the-box.

On the other hand, a basic installation of OpenMediaVault only supports the SMB and NFS protocols. So, you’ll have to install an extra plugin to configure block storage on your NAS (and this will be a recurring theme throughout the article).

File systems

Winner: OpenMediaVault and its array (pun intended) of file systems

When it comes to the file system collection, OpenMediaVault has TrueNAS Scale soundly beaten. Without any add-ons, OMV supports BTRFS, EXT3, EXT4, F2FS, JFS, and XFS. If you’re someone who loves ZFS as much as I do, you’ll be glad to know that you can configure this file system using the openmediavault-zfs plugin.

Meanwhile, TrueNAS Scale only features a single file system: ZFS. Don’t get me wrong; ZFS is one of the best ways to build a storage array for your NAS servers. But the lack of other options makes OMV the better OS as far as file systems are concerned.

RAID configurations

Winner: TrueNAS Scale, easy

If you’re running multiple drives in your storage server, it’s a good idea to build RAID pools for some additional performance, redundancy, or parity-based fault tolerance (or even all three, at the same time). TrueNAS Scale is versatile for all sorts of RAID setups, as the OS supports Stripe, Mirror, RAIDZ1, RAIDZ2, RAIDZ3, dRAID1, dRAID2, and dRAID3 configurations.

However, OMV only features Single, DUP, RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 10 arrangements via BTRFS. While these profiles are great for most NAS enthusiasts, TrueNAS Scale has the upper hand as it provides more complex RAID setups.

Containerization and virtualization

Winner: TrueNAS Scale, though OMV is quite capable with certain plugins

So long as your hardware doesn’t buckle under pressure, self-hosting FOSS apps and testing out different distros are quite common workloads for a NAS. Although it no longer supports the all-powerful Truecharts repo, TrueNAS Scale still lets you deploy your favorite services inside containers. What’s more, Scale features robust virtualization provisions to help you run virtual machines without major performance hiccups.

Unfortunately, its rival doesn’t ship with built-in VM or container support. But as you may have already guessed by now, you can add Docker, Podman, K8s, and other container services using their respective plugins. For those willing to dig deeper, you can even load the KVM hypervisor into your OpenMediaVault machine.

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Transfer speeds

Winner: TrueNAS Scale

Finally, it’s time to put the transfer speeds of TrueNAS Scale and OpenMediaVault to the test. As for the equipment, I used a 500GB WD Blue hard drive and a Crucial 1TB NVMe SSD and created two different storage pools before sharing them via the SMB protocol with my PC over a 10GbE connection.

In nearly all the read-and-write tests, TrueNAS Scale emerged victorious.

TrueNAS Scale for hardcore tasks; OMV for underpowered systems

As much as I’ve grown to like OpenMediaVault, I have to hand the crown of the best NAS OS to TrueNAS Scale. Not only does it have robust RAID and file-sharing mechanisms, it also has amazing virtualization provisions, making it perfect for beginner as well as expert NAS users.

That said, OMV has a couple of advantages over Scale. Even the most basic version of the OS includes multiple file systems and can run reliably on weaker systems. If you’re willing to mess around with a handful of plugins, you can easily turn your modest OpenMediaVault NAS into a multi-functional storage server.