Wave

There is a one line command install but I agree that this will be on the lower priority of things.

Expect 5-7 days for response and you still have plenty of time for a refund. The 30 days won't start counting until you get the invite if that's what you're worried about.

What you have is great. Drive speeds and networking are going to be your biggest bottleneck. I would recommend getting a 120GB SSD ($10-$15) just for OS installation, and then another stick of 8GB RAM, and as many drives as you need for storage.

Yes, you can. It states that you have to deactivate the license first on your old server and then you can activate the license on the new server.

That should run just fine without any problems in my opinion. Drive speed and LAN speed will be your biggest bottleneck. If you're concerned about the DDR3 ECC RAM, you should be fine. CPU is also great too.

HexOS is a wrapper functionality on top of TrueNAS and if they want to adjust features in order to lower the minimum RAM requirements, then they have to two options: Submit a request to make changes to the open-source TrueNAS operating system Fork the entire repo and make it their own which they could then make changes themselves. Just think about how Linux works with all the different flavors. Debian - Minimum: 512GB RAM Ubuntu Server: Minimum: 512MB Ubuntu: Minimum: 2GB RAM Kali: Minimum: 2GB RAM If the Debian-based operating system is at 512MB for RAM, there's no way to go below that without make significant changes to the whole thing and at that point, it would no longer be considered a "Debian" based operating system because you have strayed away too far from it. While technically they can go down that route, it definitely will require some additional manpower to make those changes. However, because it's a niche area, it may be a while until you see these changes. Last but not least, keep in mind that the target audience for TrueNAS is all about stability and scalability which probably explains the high RAM requirements in the first place. ZFS will definitely be used because it has been proven reliable and scalable. Unless something else will be used, the developers will definitely have an easier time to implement that but the majority of the folks want a simplicity in UI and managing TrueNAS easier. That's the goal of the project. Just like many pieces of software, although it claims that you need a bare minimum of 8GB of RAM, take it with a grain of salt and test it out. You can definitely run it for a lot less and someone already did with 2GB of RAM.

If you're planning to stream 4K movies/tv shows outside of your home network, you're going to have some additional factors to consider: Depending on how big the movie/show is, you need sufficient upload speeds (50Mbps+) to stream smoothly Optional: Graphics Card - Helps with Transcoding (See NVIDIA GPU Matrix - https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-support-matrix-new) Optional: Number of concurrent users streaming - Beefier equipment What transcoding basically does is that if the device does not support 4K or has limited download speed, the Plex server will be forced to transcode that media file into something that the device can process. For example, if your Plex server upload speed is limited to 10Mbps upload speed but the movie requires 50Mbps upload speed, the Plex server will have to use the CPU or GPU (better) to transform that media into a lower quality in order to stream that movie. Another example could be that the TV that one of your relatives has does not support 4K. As a result, the Plex server will need to transcode the media into a 1080p or 2K movie in order to stream it to their device. All this will consume a lot of CPU. At that point, it's not worth it to get a beefier CPU and it's better to invest in a better GPU because it can transcode way better and more efficiently than a CPU. Hence, that's why I asked that question of direct play versus transcoding. In an ideal world, let's say everyone meets the requirements of upload/download speed, 4K TVs, etc. then no transcoding will need to take place and the Plex Server will direct play the media to the users. If everyone is using direct play, then no need for GPU and at that point you just need to account for how many users will be streaming at the same time. P.S. Plex also has a setting where you can force users to only do direct play and no transcoding at all which means that any users that does not meet the requirements of watching the video (bandwidth, resolution, etc) will not be able to watch the movie/show or may watch it with a limited experience.

Are you planning to transcode 4k, if so, then yes a beefier CPU is needs and a GPU may also help more. If you're planning just using direct play with 4k, then you should be fine using a less beefier one.

It looks like someone tested it out with 2GB RAM and it worked. However, keep in mind that HexOS is a wrapper functionality with TrueNAS still being the core thing running. By default, most users would want additional features enabled such as data deduplication, advanced caching mechanisms, and data integrity checks. You can get away with a minimum of 2GB of RAM if you turn off those features yourself using TrueNAS backend if you cannot wait for the developers to implement something easier. (it's just a bit more work on your end). Last but not least, since TrueNAS uses ZFS, it definitely relies heavily on ARC (Adaptive Replacement Cache) to improve read performance. Larger ARC will benefit ZFS performance by reducing disk I/O which is probably the main cause of the high minimum RAM requirements. It will still operate but the performance will suffer a bit. When you compare this to consumer-based NAS like Synology (good for moderate use/not so serious users), they use BTRFS which is less memory intensive and again it hasn't been proven enough at the large enterprise levels where ZFS has, thus again, high memory requirements for ZFS.