zVault or XigmaNAS or other TrueNAS alternative

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Navvie

Member
Nov 21, 2020
42
15
8
I've used XigmasNAS (NAS4Free) for over a decade and switched to TrueNAS Core about a year ago when I rebuilt my NAS from a Norco 4224 to a Supermicro SC847.

No doubt that TrueNAS looks prettier, but it also hides some information from you that XigmaNAS puts front and center.

I'll let zVault mature a little yet but it's certainly on my radar.
 

simplex6

New Member
Feb 1, 2025
16
2
3
I've used XigmasNAS (NAS4Free) for over a decade and switched to TrueNAS Core about a year ago when I rebuilt my NAS from a Norco 4224 to a Supermicro SC847.

No doubt that TrueNAS looks prettier, but it also hides some information from you that XigmaNAS puts front and center.

I'll let zVault mature a little yet but it's certainly on my radar.
Why did you switch to TrueNAS Core?

After one year, any benefits of using that vs XigmaNAS apart from the pretty UI?
 

louie1961

Active Member
May 15, 2023
383
169
43
Why are you looking for an alternative? Does it have to be BSD based or are Linux based distros acceptable?
 

louie1961

Active Member
May 15, 2023
383
169
43
According to Distrowatch, XigmaNAS is your only remaining option now that TrueNAS core has been deprecated. zVault looks interesting but doesn't even show up yet on Distrowatch. I had never heard of it before. You could also roll your own on FreeBSD
 

simplex6

New Member
Feb 1, 2025
16
2
3
According to Distrowatch, XigmaNAS is your only remaining option now that TrueNAS core has been deprecated. zVault looks interesting but doesn't even show up yet on Distrowatch. I had never heard of it before. You could also roll your own on FreeBSD
Yeah, it's kinda new, but what's the point of a homelab if I don't try out new stuff :)
 

Greg_E

Active Member
Oct 10, 2024
208
51
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Ok, always interested in options. Anyone willing to give a summary on Xigma and zVault as compared to Truenas?

And will any run on a Pi4 for a simple home NAS (only really need a single disk). I just can't get a grip on OMV, but I have 6 Truenas between lab and production (some Scale and some still Core).
 

simplex6

New Member
Feb 1, 2025
16
2
3
Ok, always interested in options. Anyone willing to give a summary on Xigma and zVault as compared to Truenas?

And will any run on a Pi4 for a simple home NAS (only really need a single disk). I just can't get a grip on OMV, but I have 6 Truenas between lab and production (some Scale and some still Core).
I think getting them run on an Rpi4 is both kinda involved, and does not worth the trouble.

https://www.reddit.com/r/truenas/comments/14xfcfa
 

Navvie

Member
Nov 21, 2020
42
15
8
Why did you switch to TrueNAS Core?

After one year, any benefits of using that vs XigmaNAS apart from the pretty UI?
I didn't keep my XigmaNAS install up to date. I was still booting of a usb flash drive and that's not been supported/recommended for a while. Upgrading meant reinstalling so I figured I might as well install something else and try it. I looked at both FreeNAS and nas4free ten or so years ago and picked nas4free, which became XigmaNAS.

TrueNAS forums were a lot busier than XigmaNAS. Questions are answered more quickly, and more questions have been asked. It's a better reference and the TrueNAS documentation is better.

Why Core instead of Scale? I've been using FreeBSD since the 3.x release, so I've got a bit of a soft spot for it.

Any benefits of TrueNAS over XigmaNAS? Only the nicer UI. The way information that is presented is presented in a better way - the reporting tab in TrueNAS is very good. But I do miss stuff from XigmaNAS like the output of 'zpool iostat -vy 1' (or whatever Xigma's interval is) and 'zpool status -v', the output of both commands is shown in Xigma's UI exatly as is. in TrueNAS, as far as I know or as far as I've been able to find out, I have to run those from the command line. Which is no problem but it's an extra step.