ZimbaBoard 2 1664 as a NAS. Which OS?

Operating System
1

Hi everybody.

I just got my first ZimbaBoard 2 1664 yesterday and I to use it as a replacement of my old NAS.

I have:

  • ZimaBoard 2 1664
  • 2-Bay HDD Rack Tray for ZimaBoard 2
  • Mini DisplayPort Male to HDMI Female Cable 4K 60Hz
  • SATA Y-Cable for ZimaBoard/ZimaBlade
  • 2x Cat7 Ethernet Cable (2m/ 6.5ft, Black)
  • HP HPFD911W-128 USB-Stick
  • 2x 1TB NAS SATA HDDs from Seagate

My plan was to install Proxmox 9 on it and use it to virtualize TrueNAS Scale and OPNSense on it. Sadly Proxmox doesn’t support eMMC storage and the USB stick is too slow to run a PVE.
Since I would passthrough both HDDs to the TrueNAS VM, I would need an extra NVMe driver which I connect to the PCIE port with the NVMe adapter. But this would cost another ~400 bucks.
So I dropped the idea.

What I need:

  • a NAS
  • be able to authenticate against an IDP (SAML2.0, OAuth or LDAPS)
  • strong encryption
  • docker and docker compose support
  • high security standards in general
  • easy to use for users (not administrators)

What I considered:

  • OpenMediaVault – Not an option, I use it right now and it is terrible
  • Unraid – not an option, too insecure and no support for IDP authentication
  • ZimbaOS and CasaOS – not an option, doesn’t meet most requirements.
  • TrueNAS scale – maybe
  • other OS – maybe

Which OS would you recommend me to use on the ZimbaBoard 2 1664 for my needs?

2

You can always slap an HBA on the PCIE slot and grow your disk pool too. You could leave the SATA ports for mirrored system drives. That would probably help you out.

3

You can always slap an HBA on the PCIE slot and grow your disk pool too.

I would have done this with your HBA, but the thing alone costs around 127 bucks + the new NVME M2 SSD.
Its just expensive, so I look for another OS.

You could leave the SATA ports for mirrored system drives. That would probably help you out.

I need to pass them to the TrueNAS scale system, otherwise it will not work like expected.

4

You can find the IBM M1210 which is PCIE x4 for less than U$20 shipped in eBay. Sounds like a tolerable fee for a proper HBA to pair with TrueNAS.

5

For what should I get a Raid adapter for TrueNAS?

My problem is not TrueNAS rather than the Proxmox itself.

6

Sorry, what I’m trying to imply is just that you’re going to need more drives since 2x drives will be connected to the 2 built-in SATA ports of the Zimaboard 2. If you’re not willing to take the HBA route to add more drives then you will have to sacrifice the RAID capability and use one of the drives to install the system on.

7

Ah okay,
I get what you saying now.

I ended up buying:

  • crucial 710 1TB with heatsink
  • glotrends M.2 NVMe Adapter Card

The NVMe Adapter Card is plugged into the free PCIe port on the zimaboard 2 and on the card I than install the SSD from crucial.
On the SSD the OS is getting installed and on the 2 HDDs I will create a ZFS Raid Mirror and use it for user data.