Hear more and more about NAS servers or “Network Attached Storage Devices”, a specific class of computers that allow us to do this Setting up our personal cloud Even hosting backups, a medical center, or a torrent download client.

However, what sets it apart is that, whether we use a commercial device or configure our NAS at home to reuse an old computer, The operating systems and/or distributions we will use are not the same we are used to For use in home computers.

So we compiled Four Most Used NAS Operating Systems (two in the “open source” category, and two more in the commercial solutions category), so we can start to get to know them a little better.

TrueNAS (Free, Open Source)

TRONAS (Formerly known as FreeNASIt is an open source operating system based on FreeBSD. Apart from the commercial NAS, it is the most widely used operating system in the field, thanks to its veteran capability and versatility (it is perfectly usable in the professional field, for example).

It stands out when it comes to facilitating file sharing with other systems, such as Windows (thanks to its support for SMB/CIFS), Unix (NFS), and Apple (AFP); Integration with cloud storage platforms is supported as standard for Create remote “snapshots” (backup copies) of your files.

It is the only open source operating system that offers ZFS-based volume encryption, but if you are going to use this file system, try to have a good amount of RAM,

OpenMediaVault (Free, Open Source)

OpenMediaVault ES Increasing value in NAS operating systems. Unlike the previous one, it is based on GNU/Linux (specifically Debian), so it may be familiar to many users…not to mention the advantages Be able to count on a wide repertoire of software available for such distribution.

Another difference with TrueNAS is that OpenMediaVault Seeks to focus on home and small business, so it is less demanding in terms of hardware: a lot, even in Installable on Raspberry Pi mini PC.

This system, with a modular approach (with many official and third-party add-ons), has a lot of documentation and support from the community.

DiskStation Manager (commercial)

DSM (short for DiskStation Manager) is the operating system of the NAS brand Synology, a leader in its field – installed on more than eight million computers. We already covered the potential of this system a month ago as an alternative to google images, using a beta version of DSM 7, the final version of which was released this week.

likely, The biggest attraction of DSM is its large ecosystem of official apps, both those that can be accessed from the “store” of the NAS itself and those that are available in the mobile version, which will allow us to access various services on the NAS from the smartphone.

Interesting fact: There is a bootloader, called Xpenology, that It will allow us to load DSM on x86 machines, even if they are not manufactured by Synology (Although of course it does not have the support of that brand, only the user community).

QTS (commercial)

The second most used commercial operating system On NAS devices, it is QTS that is based on Linux and that QNAP uses on its own devices. like a rival, It also has a whole ecosystem of apps (On your platform and on mobile).

And like Synology too, it released a version this week (QTS 5.0, based on Linux 5.10 LTS kernel), although in your case it is still in beta.

Like the DSM, its user interface, although based on HTML, Seeks to simulate a typical desktop environment, with icons, menus and taskbar.

Image | Basado en original de Aaron Yoo & Software box by ProSymbols from Project Noun