So I set up a NAS for my org to use. We deal with a lot of video data, so I purpose-built a system with a lot of fast NVMe storage. After some mishaps with bad NICs (turns out, Realtek is trash!) the system is up-and-running!
I set up HexOS. That was super easy, after I dealt with the bad NIC - good job to the HexOS team!
Then I started looking into the available apps... and I was totally not prepared for all the cool stuff you can set up on a NAS! My conception of a NAS coming in is it's a filesystem that can be mounted to computers on your network, and nothing else. Turns out, TrueNAS allows you to do a whole lot more than that!
I did some research and settled on adding the NAS to my Tailscale network. I took it a step further and installed Dockge. I was able to spin up a deployment of Nextcloud using this guide, gave it a domain on my Tailnet + HTTPS cert. Now everyone in my org can get off the Google Drive & start using this on-prem solution. I love it.
I noticed there is a whole lot more that can be done in Nextcloud other than a drop-in replacement for Google Drive. I may try to set up a CalDAV server next to solve a calendar sync issue I've been having.
Beyond that, there are so many other apps listed in the HexOS page. I see a lot of stuff related to video/audio/eBook multimedia - Plex is a big one. That's got me thinking - what else can HexOS / TrueNAS do?
Would love to hear what others think about this setup! And please, do share any cool ideas or setups of your own 🙂
