Great video Tom! And thank you so much for showing the failure State scenario! I was afraid that no one was going to show that this weekend 🙂 Couldn't agree more with your take on us right now. We really aren't designed for you or probably most of your audience. Coming from the IT industry, I always found setting up a home server to be a fun project for a very long time, but always found it frustrating to recommend to my less IT savvy friends and family. That's why we created this product. I get that some people are confused about the price, confused about the value, etc, but I think in due time even if it's not for you, you'll understand what we're trying to do here. Thanks again for the coverage and looking forward to many more conversations to get your insights going forward!
Your stated goals sound great. Buddy backups, easy to set up and configure? That alone would be worth the price of admission. But.. I'm never going to install a NAS OS with a web based management console or web based authentication that relies on a third party. And I won't be recommending it no matter how easy it is to set up. Sorry, hard no.
Just a suggestion: you guy should make an all-in-one box solution. That means a server (small) with HexOS all ready installed and ready to go. I think that will make Sypnology and QNAP run for their money.
the price is insane for a operating system. being around $300 not on sale is crazy. add another $100 and id get a synology which are easy to setup it as well. also like others have said a web based dashboard or mamangement is a horrible idea and if that sticks around i definitely would never recommend or use the product.
@@undercatviper So TrueNAS is just putting a logical permissions UI behind a pay wall? From the appearance here HexOS is more focused on the cloud interface with the intention to make accessing NAS functionality from outside your LAN as simple as using Google Drive. Which I can see a place for. This isn't going to fly if all it is is a 300 dollar UI wrapper.
That's the only thing that I like about it. ACL are a mess in truenas. (Also IX systems/Truenas are an investor along with LInus (ltt)) I would rather give IX systems $99 to fix ACL than give hexOS
That's where 99% of my personal gripes with TrueNAS are - getting an ACL working properly. If they had a wizard to add/remove users/groups/etc to an ACL as a "simple" mode, and advanced was the usual full-featured editor we have now, I'd be over the moon. (The other 1% is the recent shenanigans with changing out the apps back to the supplied ones; which, you guessed it, was almost entirely ACL issues).
The main issue is that truenas should already have these features. Functions that you commonly see tutorials for, should be a priority to automate, where the user is presented with a option of an automatic config and a manual one, where the automatic does everything for you, and then displays a summary of what it did, and potentially provides options to tweak individual items on the summary page.
I have been running a TrueNAS Scale server on my home LAN for about three years and frankly it has just worked reliably since the initial install and setup. In fact my TrueNAS server is so reliable that I have been hesitant to make any changes to it, including updates, for fear of breaking something. The problem now is that in the time since I installed it, I have forgotten how to set up TrueNAS and would have to go back and relearn how to do it all again. Enter HexOS, my hope by buying into the beta program is that it will make installation, setup and updates to my NAS server a no brainer in the future without having to relearn all the TrueNAS settings. I can see for someone like Tom who does this sort of thing for a living where HexOS might not be for him, but for me I just want to set up my NAS server and forget it. So the simpler it is the better.
For the price tag, if it saves me any time at all setting one of these up it's already paid for it'self. Don't get me wrong, I used to IT (yeah I verbed IT so what?) back in the day and I'm more than capable of fumbling around with this stuff and making it work. But that eats away my precious not working time. But this appears to be the type of tool I've been looking for. dead simple interface that's got real software underneath so I can get my hands dirty if I really need/want to. I'll take the gamble.
2:38 - "It doesn't really give you any other options" What's that "manual configuration" button do then? I would've thought that let you pick Z1 or Z2.
I think a lot of people don't understand the target group. It's prosumer / small buissnes / nerds who needs storage but is not that enthusiastic about it not working. 300$ is not in the slightest much money for someone who needs a nas. A synology basically charges the same about if you consider the actual cost of the hardware. The fact that I can quite easy just take any old computer, pay a one time fee and then not having to learn how to set up an advanced Nas is 100% worth the pricetag. So you have to treat it as the luxury item it is, then the whole project makes a lot more sense. Some people just want to have it work and not spend 6 hours learning how to do it or pay someone to do it for them. I'm very excited for this and will buy when my synology dies!
Can I just say, if price is the main thing holding people back: it's only 50 usd higher than unraid. So then it's picking between an unknown (hexos future), and another unknown (unraid 7 ... this will get intresting for sure.
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For the buddy system they could take a marketing trick from the early internet days. Buy a game disk, get a "buddy disk" for free (one with single player, one with multiplayer only). In this situation it would be something like a buddy of mine could have a stripped down HexOS for just putting data and and back it up to me, and my data to him. But then needed to buy a license for a fuller version with ex. Plex or Immich.
is this a cloud management software? or does the hexos interface run on the local server? your video makes it seem like it's cloud which would be a dealbreaker for many NVM: at the end of the video
I decided to treat this as a kickstarter and pick up a $99 lifetime license in the hope it will turn out great. I'm very much in the "just make it work, minimum clicks required" crowd when it comes to a NAS system, and the features already present looks like they should fill my basic need. The only dealbreaker is the lack of local management, but the backlash on that has made them change their tune from "we'll think about it" to "it's now officially on the roadmap". Hopefully they'll be true to their word on that. The $300 price seems ridiculous, but then I remembered that is going to be a lifetime license price, and they will also be doing subscriptions (or so I've heard). My experience with subscription services that also offers a lifetime alternative, is that the lifetime price tends to fall in the 2-3 year subscription price range. If I imagine $10-15/month subscription fee, the $300 goes from "that's insane, no one will buy at that price" to "that looks pretty much as could be expected".
@@LubomirGeorgiev I mean, Microsoft just launched FS2024 in an alpha state, and their premium bundles are much more than $99. :p As I said, I think of it as a kickstarter. This is them financing, not launching or testing. I paid for the prospect of a product, not a finished product (although, if the current state hadn't looked like it would probably fit my basic need already, I would likely have sat it out). Once they do launch 1.0, assuming they actually do a subscription model, odds are there will be a "first 30 days free" sort of deal. At least I would be surprised if there isn't. It's all hypothesis for now, we'll have to wait and see.
paying 300 bucks for a truenas reskin that currently doesn't offer much is insane when you can get a perpetual unraid license for 250. which gets you a lot more, you can have much easier to expand storage pools but also zfs and it's mature while hexos is currently in beta
The subscription that they are offering Is simply for people who don't understand how to safely set up a system where you can access stuff on your home Nas without just opening up ports on your home internet, If you know how to do this kind of stuff without just having open ports everywhere that nerdo Wells can just use then the subscription is a waste of money. But if you don't know how to do that and you want to access your Nas remotely, then that subscription is a half decent value
I like the idea of HexOS. it’s great for beginners starting out. I’ve had my fair share of difficulties setting permissions, and static ips, where sometimes it would be nice to have a one click setup. I do wish they would add more user input for setting up vdevs. I am curious to see how app access to an smb share will be handled (for Jellyfin)
I'm pretty sure apart from those 2 "curated" apps, you can install everything else too. And it didn't say that other apps are not supported. It said those apps are "not curated", but the install button was still there in hex os UI.
I work in IT (over 20 years), but the majority of my experience is in Windows Desktops/Servers with some Azure/AWS stuff recently. My experience with Nix is very out of date like later 90s/early 2000s era(during my Uni days I had a crack at multiple distros Redhat/Mandrake/Debian/Gentoo). I've been trying to setup a new FileServer/NAS from scratch over the last month, and lets put it this way, I have gotten more done with HexOS in a Day this weekend than I did with TrueNAS Scale over the previous 3 full weekends, it may just be that the previous 3 weekends was a good training session for the 1 day though :P I think that HexOS is good from a Time saving perspective, and ease of setup perspective, but from then on, I may just use the underlying TrueNAS Scale that is under the hood.
Great review Tom, be interesting to see if it clearly helps with identifying a failed drive. As I've spent a good amount of time learning Core and now Scale, time is already invested so I'd stick with the TrueNAS GUI. However, for anyone with little NAS knowledge, it could be really great.
As someone with learning difficulties coupled with a bad memory, whenever i need to change 1 setting inside Truenas i have to refere back to my notes or watch one of Tom's videos for the 1000th time.... I can see this "easy - point & click" interface being helpful to my needs, BUT... i cant justify to 300 buck price tag for what is essentially a "wrapper" for the "full fat" Truenas system. I also like to have full control over where my data & apps are stored. ie. selecting the /host/path and storage locations, also a more granular approach to share access, users & groups. So i think ill stick with my Truenas perseverance. I also don't think this should be a paid product.... FOSS with donations =YES
Afaik, you still get access to all the Truenas functionality and settings. According to the LTT video, there appears to be a way to access the regular Truenas interface and override anything you've set up on the Hex OS UI. Other than that... yeah, I'm also skeptical about the long-term financial viability of the project.
@@methany8788If this team is relatively smart with their money, I can see this being financially viable long-term because I see a lot of small businesses using this for various small business needs because they won't have an IT staff that would be able to handle a full TrueNAS set up but wanting to benefit from local storage instead of paying back blaze or similar for any data storage
Wondering if this has HDD spindown that actually works unlike TrueNAS. Jokes apart, an OS that handles spindown very well (actually the only one I found so far with that feature working properly) is Unraid, which kinda aims for the same goals as this one while being way cheaper.
$300 planned license fees and cloud connectivity requirement is what turns me away from this product. $100 each license is what I think it is worth but needs local management. I see this as being something good for those that are half way from end user to tinkerers. I use multiple TrueNAS units at work and honestly I was ready to buy this for my home due to the straight forward simplicity but I can't because of my earlier comments. I will stick with my 2x Dell decommissioned Optiplex desktops with TrueNAS Scale installed at home.
PS I had an old desktop all ready for the beta and waiting for my invite that never came. 48gb RAM, SSD pair, 3x 8tb HDDs but I will just be using Proxmox or TrueNAS on it instead.
Agree on the pricing, At $100 its a value with whatever hardware a person might have lying around. At $300 you can just buy a Synology which already has a polished simple interface that anyone can use.
@@Adowrath I understand they are still in process of sending them out. In my opinion, you shouldn't be sending out 66% off deal that bypasses this waiting list when you haven't sent out trial licenses to those who were trying to volunteer for the beta program. I was fully willing to pay for a license (or 2 for buddy backup) but I am not willing to do it without some kind of trial. I have more to say but was hoping for the trial invite so I could speak there with my feedback as a customer.
Yeah, last year I tried using your tutorials to setup TrueNAS, and after multiple issues I scrapped my plans. I'm even a developer and the thing gave me all sorts of fits and issues I couldn't explain or properly fix. That's why I went with HexOS a few weeks ago.
For me, it really comes down to my time and how long I'm willing to spend configuring permissions and settings until everything is just right. A solution like HEXOS is necessary for this. If I can set up and configure a NAS quicker than I can focus on other projects that actually generate income, then the price is worth it. After all, you can always earn more money, but you can't get more time.
It's not for me, but I don't hate it. It's value isn't just in the simplicity it's in the guard rails it should give for your configuration to stop you from doing things which will bite you if you don't know what you are doing (or haven't read a couple of dozen reddit posts, some videos, the docs, etc, to see some gotchas). I have friends that are OK with doing hw upgrades in a PC, throwing in an extra drive, etc, but really don't want to become sysadmins. I'd probably have to recommend them getting an off the shelf NAS and feel bad about it (the vendor lockin, probably underpowered hardware, future end of updates, etc) but I wouldn't want to recommend the self-managed route unless they really wanted to self-host and get into that. I don't want to be on the other end of the phone when something breaks/they break something. If this reduces some of the barriers of entry to rolling your own, that has value. Does it have enough value for the lifetime price or eventual subscription price? Who knows. Not for me, but maybe for some. That's kind of the gamble you make bringing a product to market.
New user to NAS, very excited about the long term potential of this product. I hope to see more videos from you as they move from beta to full scale production models.
I don't see using this at this time. I use cosmos cloud which can run on anything and is VERY good for these types of things. The only downside it has is the buddy share which is a cool feature. But I'm hoping someone comes up with a cloud docker solution which has similar functionality. If i had to be honest, HexOS + Cosmos Cloud would be an incredible setup, but just unsure we'll ever see it.
Im a big fan of casaos, its like hexos but its more of a docker skin with smb support and a webgui. its not a full os but it can be installed via one command and is completely free. also because it is based on docker, bacicly everything runs on it and its very preformant
I am very ready for this product. The fact that it makes everything simpler is amazing. If I need to get into truenas I still can so I see no reason to use truenas over HexOS once it’s out of beta. Local control of hexos is a deal breaker though.
As it stand, it might be a cool stepping stone for someone who would like to look into selfhosting, to check if it's something you'd like to get into. It might help the culture shift from "cloud somewhere" to "my data, my home" for a younger audience.
seems like a good start for a simple diy NAS built of a good established platform like TrueNas that you can steer a friend to who might not be that tech inclined. not really for me as i like to torture my self to learn /figure out new stuff so half the fun is fighting with it lol . still trying to figure out permissions in TrueNas haha. Thanks for the video love your stuff
At $99 I would, but that’s a Black Friday special. I think I will give it a try on a 3 hdd nas I might build in the future. Thinking about buying the software today to save a buck also.
because truenas is not an OS, it's an appliance and devs are stubborn as hell to keep it that way in fear of unexpected behaviour scenarios and dense users that do not take responsibility for their admin actions.
For home use, turn key makes sense to me. Where for supporting mission critical infrastructure its ideal to become your own SME and be confident when doo doo hits the fan.
I absolutely don't care how it works, I want something that is as easy and close to "set it and forget it" as possible, but I also have an old synology I need to replace, and I don't like the way they are going, so I would like to take control myself
i think they do have the right state of mind, to make it more easy, it will probably make more people using it. though, those who want it easy often buy something like synology. but there are lots of IT people out there that may love IT, but maybe not loving storage servers. perfect easy soulution for them.
As a photographer/videographer with a passion for tech, I feel like HexOS strikes a balance between the user friendliness of a Synology/Qnap and the hardware flexibility of a custom build. I'd spend $1000 building a custom PC rather than a 6-bay NAS box that has 8GB of ram if I'm lucky and cost twice as much to upgrade/expand it down the road (not including all of the walled garden ecosystem shenanigans). However, I'm also not confident in linux distros for OMV, truenas permissions, Unraid file transfer speeds, or any of the deeper levels of command line work to feel like my files are "safe" (3-2-1 rule included). I'd be interested in giving it a shot if the amount of money I could earn on a shoot outpaces the amount of time it would take me to learn how to configure it correctly. Frankly if it works as intended, it checks all of my boxes.
As someone who has never build a NAS and a very light and simple user, this is the perfect kind of software I would use a first time builder. I bought a license and am looking to build in the next few months, so fingers crossed.
The "cloud" connection puts me off..... perhaps when they make a local interface, then i'll look at it. But.... the simple user interface with a proved and stable NAS OS behind it is a great idea. This is designed for some friends of mine, who really need to upgrade their NAS and/or break away from the walled gardens of some other NAS makers.
Definitely not for me, but I could easily see myself using this or something like this when building network storage solutions for friends and family (Just to avoid the many many calls I would get if I tried to give them a truenas scale install)
for a common homelab, this is a hard sell, considering that unifi has less complicated solution for 450ish usd, and can go waaaaay cheaper if theyre willing to do diy + getting fafo'ed tinkering truenas or any other "free" nas solutions, maybe they're targeting businesses wanting less labor cost or has less labor budget.
I still suck at TrueNAS, but I currently have my NAS set up how I want it, so I probably won't end up buying this for myself. That said, knowing what I know now about the difficulties TrueNAS presents, I'd STRONGLY suggest someone looking to set up a simple home NAS for the first time to look into this, especially since they're offering a lifetime license.
I want this because I have kids and about zero time for futzing around with this sort of setup when I would rather be enjoying being with my family or playing a video game in the rare instance I have downtime...besides home assistant, DIY router/firewall/network management is enough fun shit for me to manage with everything else :D
Yea, i hope this pays off for Linus, lol. Either way, it's cool to see yall supporting the things yall believe in. Have you done a video on your homes entertainment setup? Plex, jellyfin, remote family accounts, etc..? Right now, we utilize kodi with add-ons, but jellyfin/plex seems like a nice home IT project. Edit: 4 years ago, you have a plex 30 min video posted. Nice.
I used both and it is great software. But Plex really let me down a couple of years ago. There was credentials bug that basically nuked my installation of plex and all the workaround and fixes never worked for me. So i ended up having a lifetime license that i could practically not use on the specific NAS i had at home at the time. Got really pissed and went to jellyfin and never looked back. Jellyfin is a great alternative.
I think HEX OS will be for me I have tried a couple of times to set up truenas and I can get a smb share set up and maybe Plex, but once I add in sonar, radar etc it just falls down, I’m back running on windows 10 but I would love to move away from this with out spending weeks of trail and error and giving up
I would pay 5€/M. and i think this is a godsend for my family etc. And the ability to switch UIs to TrueNAS is amazing. Again, the price is the big issue, especially as you have no free trial AFAIK.
@@turner46 Which is fair enough, if this would not be a BETA. You think we are at stable in 30 days? This is a Kickstarter without calling it one, and paying considerable cash for an unproven product. Also: This "Lifetime" license thing is crap. No one can promise they will be around in 1 year, let alone 5 years.
Even at full price ($300) HexOS is a great deal if they can pull off what they are going for. If I value my time at JUST $50 per hour, then ask myself will it take more or less than 6 hours to get this set up correctly, and how many hours will I spend updating, fiddling, and troubleshooting each app I want to run, then it's a steal if I can just set it up and walk away to go spend time with my wife, go to a movie, work in my woodshop, play MtG, or any number of other, more fun things. I spend 9 hours per day troublshooting servers and application at work, 5 days per week. I don't want to be tech support at home. I pay a guy to do all my yard work because I hate yard work, how is HexOS any different, I'm paying them to do all the work for me so my NAS just works.
That is a very valid standpoint. However, I get a constant pay. If I pay $300, they're gone from my bank account and I can't get them back, no matter how much time I invest. Even if I invest 20h into fiddling around with TrueNAS, then I'll have $300 more on my bank account. Sure, the hourly rate isn't great, but since time doesn't directly translate into money for most people, it makes all the difference between "having more money" and "having less money". If you're self employed and can actually make money with the time saved when buying HexOS, of course the whole equation looks very different. And, of course, your personal preference and how much you're willing to pay to avoid a particular work is another story. I for example don't mind doing firewood, where others would just pay a ton of money to a utility company to have the house warm and sit in front of the TV instead of having to swing an axe. So, maybe it's not so much about how much you value your time, but what you're willing to pay to avoid THAT particular work?
Yeah I prefer to just have the control. Going with a two-drive mirror and having a hot spare may or may not make sense but at least I want the option. Above all I'm not paying money and connecting control of my storage to the cloud. So yeah, big fat no from me but I'm not the target audience either.
If I understand them correctly, you can hop into actual Truenas and configure everything there, though if you're going into it with that intention, there's probably no point of using it in the first place. As for the cloud stuff... yeah, yikes
8:57 They should start from scratch. Using TrueNAS ( that in itself is a middleware interface ), as the base is asking for trouble. They should code their own middleware based on Linux instead of TrueNAS OS. OpenZFS and QEMU should be enough, unless all they have is web developers. I will not use this HexOS for the same reasons you shared and have in mind.
HexOS feels like ix Systems realised they need to invest in UI/UX and to have that development actually pay off created a new product. UX is expensive and with TrueNAS's customer base probably less valuable in terms of return so they 'exploited' the home user crowd (I mean that in provided a product for them, not that they're being used at all). Thing is, TrueNAS is sold as an 'appliance' and yet vast amounts of fiddling has to be done under the hood even to view the logs. The ACLs and permissions is a mess, with Linux, POSIX, and SMB all fighting one another. They'd solve many people's problems by picking one.- such as Linux permissions - and re-writing the model to work with those and ONLY those but I fear they're in a situation where they can't because some customers are using the other and the flexibility has become a landmine they can't step off.
Have run truenas core for many years and switch to scale for 3 months ago. Plex still don't work. And had to move all data twice. Have jump to hex because of plex, and my time is better spent. But are waiting on til it is out of beta
HexOS is a good idea for a lot of people, but it might be to simplified for me. I like something in the middle, like Unraid - much more simple than TrueNAS while maintaining enough depth to tweak things. Also Apps are amazing in Unraid with the community support - way more apps than in TrueNAS and simple enough to install without dealing with ACL bullshit.
I think they should of made a free and paid version for hexOS. Free version could just give limited access to the NAS features and the rest is under a licensed version. As soon as this hype around larger creator slows down i can't imagine much interest in this unless they do something different than truenas with their future updates and features.
200$ for a true nas interface with very limited features/support and settings. I don't know... Unraid is 1/4 the price and probably better suited for people getting started in self hosting. ZFS is cool but i doubt begginers choosing hexos have a perfectly planned out pool layout and hardware in mind when getting started.
I'm too tech savvy for this product, apparently. I hadn't heard about HexOS before, so I'm reading between the lines and trying to understand what market segment is this intended for? Someone willing to buy or build/intgrate a TrueNAS server? If they are not sophisticated enough to operate TrueNAS (but somehow able to spec and build/buy the hardware), then maybe they are going to buy a turnkey hardware solution the delivers both a hardware solution and a friendly UX. What's the addressable market available for HexOS that's in between? I've only thought about this for 10 or 15 minutes; hopefully LTT throught harder before this $250K investment. Maybe HE is the addressable market - someone that plays the expert in his videos, but in reality not so much.
I don’t see a market for this due to the cost. Cloud only dashboard makes it an immediate no go for most people. I’m not against options but I really don’t see who would purchase this at $300 per server. You also never purchase today for promises tomorrow. “Trust me bro” is basically what Linus said.
Apparently a local dashboard is coming "soon". It's beta so I give it a little slack. I kinda agree. I wonder if they would allow us to install it "over" truenas. That cost kills me tho. $300 is insane.. $99 is fine. Also can anyone clarify. Is it $300 per install or total?
I do see some value in what they're trying to do and with some more features and polish I can see it being great for people who aren't tech savvy. I do know a lot of people who are sick of cloud service hell but I'm not going to recommend TrueNAS because I don't want to play tech support when they run into problems. I do think they're going to struggle to get enough people who are willing to pay them what they're asking. I feel like selling to NAS OEMs might be a more sustainable business model since many of them have trash software but that assumes they'd be willing to pay for it.
@@AndrewClement I emailed the developer, and they confirmed the license isn’t tied to a specific machine. You can "unclaim" one server and transfer the license to another. But if you want to run two systems at the same time, you’d need two licenses. Hope that helps!
people seem to forget that Synology or other NAS off-the-shelf products are expensive as well, up to $600-800 AUD. This early adopter license is $150 AUD and you can easily set up a server with 2nd hand parts for $300-400 making this almost $100-300 cheaper whilst also being more custom. seems like a great idea to me.
This is TrueNAS under the covers, why not just use TrueNAS directly? How do you even know what these wizards are doing? Also, why would I pay for this when I can just use the underlying TrueNAS OS for free? I don't get it.
I am so far out of this target audience that HexOS is not for me at all. Both my home servers are set up without a WebUI, Command Line only, meaning they have SSH login. I even did my 2nd NAS backup on FreeBSD the same way, while I do run Linux mostly, getting into the nitty gritty with FreeBSD, it was quite different.
There's just no market for this. Most people are starting to look away at lifetime licenses because no company can offer lifetime support. It's of no use.
I don’t think you have to pay for a licence sure it’s nice & all but for people that can’t afford it can’t use it I miss the truenas extra apps it sad there all gone if there was a better system I would move to it but truenas scale is where I have to stay 😢
If you have to build the hardware yourself, it's not turnkey. Who's the market for this? Anyone willing to build their own hardware is going to have the ability to run Truenas by itself, and if they're willing to pay, then Unraid is superior in every way. Not sure they thought this through.
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I'm not liking it, especially with this agressive limited time pricing. Also I think this beta is more like an alpha. As for the full price and target demographic unraid might be a better option, as it's already established, and has support for different size drive. Which I think would be a big advantage to have for home users.
I think this product is a game changer for small businesses - especially when they have someone on staff that has some comfort with technology but doesn't have the time to learn the complexities of TrueNAS. I also think this is going to be a really nice thing for home users that want something that "just works". Honestly, this is the camp I'm in. While I manage a pretty complex setup at work...I just don't want to have to deal with all of it at home too. I'm currently running a Synology NAS at home and I think anyone that would be a Synology customer should also be looking at this as an option. Assuming they make offsite backup to Backblaze or AWS as easy to set up as in Hyper Backup (or easier)...which it sounds like they plan to do. The biggest thing that Synology has that a system running HexOS doesn't is Active Backup for Business, which again...super simple for small businesses and home users.
I'm probably not the audience for this product, because I love learning, but then again - I maybe would bite if the perpetual license was selling for $99 AFTER it was out of beta. Don't feel comfortable paying for future software promises
HexOS seems like it will be a good option for less technical people in my family. What completely puts me off is the currently planned final price. YIKES. I doubt I could convince anyone in my life to fork over $300 for an OS.
It will definitely be a hard sell, especially for people looking to avoid the price premium of devices like synology. For example, for my home NAS needs, I turned a older core I7 6700k build with 32GB RAM, into a NAS since it was an easy and cheaper way to have a system with initial support for 6 SATA drives (gigabyte gaming 6) and simply expansion with at 8 port SATA card, and a 10 GbE NIC. It works well overall, and far cheaper than Synology. The only annoyance is that you can't easily add more drives to the storage pool, because you can't expand an existing vdev, while synology allows you to easily, expand an existing storage pool while maintaining the single drive failure tolerance. Outside of that, I like having a NAS with no cloud reliance, since I like having selective firewall rules where it has no direct WAN access beyond NTP time, and if I need to update it, I can selectively allow the specific ports needed then block them again. For remote access, I simply use a VPN server.
I have an unraid server that I love dearly, so I don't *need* HexOS... but my friends might. Whenever I talk about getting a NAS they always say "that's cool, but it doesn't apply to me because i don't have 100 hours to configure and administrate the thing" and I'm really hoping this works for them. Also I'd been thinking about moving to trueNAS anyway and I appreciate Hex's ability to drop out of the wrapper and into trueNAS, so I'm thinking of trying it as trueNAS with upside...
I should be able to get TrueNAS up and running without any major problems, but right now, I just can't be bothered, I've got other stuff to do. So I might be willing to give HexOS a go. It looks like it's easy and just works, which is just what I'm looking for right now. And since it's got TrueNAS in the back, I should be able to do some more advanced stuff in the future if i'd like.
As someone who has DD Unraid for about 5yrs now, I like the idea of Turn-Key setups. I have been interested in TrueNas since the BSD days but felt easily overwhelmed by the level of control it has. I’ve even forgotten how to do certain thing in Unraid, so I like the UI of Hex, with the ability to switch to the “advanced” under the hood settings when need be. Heard a lot of discouraging things about the planned price those. A “license” for a free-ish distro is hard to swallow but I also paired for the perpetual from Limetech so I get it. Maybe something similar would be better. I guess we’ll all see 🤔
As always, the best review. It's a 'beta' so not worth doing a deep dive, and the promise of it being so easy to use that future videos will not be needed.
Linus didn't say what support you get for your money. If they actually helped you fix stuff it might be worth considering, but given it's a lifetime licence I'm guessing that the support is just a forum and script monkeys.
I already bailed when I saw you had to do it via their website... Ah yes, lets expose your stuffz to security holes.... No thanks... I'll stick to my trusted truenas scale which hasn't failed me once in all the years (and core before) Aside from that I see nothing with hexOS that has added value... But might be something for someone has zero knowledge and or time / skills to set something like this up... Although not sure you should be messing with a NAS if you don't.
Great video Tom! And thank you so much for showing the failure State scenario! I was afraid that no one was going to show that this weekend 🙂
Couldn't agree more with your take on us right now. We really aren't designed for you or probably most of your audience. Coming from the IT industry, I always found setting up a home server to be a fun project for a very long time, but always found it frustrating to recommend to my less IT savvy friends and family. That's why we created this product.
I get that some people are confused about the price, confused about the value, etc, but I think in due time even if it's not for you, you'll understand what we're trying to do here.
Thanks again for the coverage and looking forward to many more conversations to get your insights going forward!
Your stated goals sound great. Buddy backups, easy to set up and configure? That alone would be worth the price of admission. But.. I'm never going to install a NAS OS with a web based management console or web based authentication that relies on a third party. And I won't be recommending it no matter how easy it is to set up. Sorry, hard no.
@@cameronfrye5514 they'll be launching self hosted version in the future. its on the roadmap.
Just a suggestion: you guy should make an all-in-one box solution. That means a server (small) with HexOS all ready installed and ready to go. I think that will make Sypnology and QNAP run for their money.
@@simplereef4854 could probably partner with 45Drives and have it included as an option for the HL series of Home lab servers
the price is insane for a operating system. being around $300 not on sale is crazy. add another $100 and id get a synology which are easy to setup it as well. also like others have said a web based dashboard or mamangement is a horrible idea and if that sticks around i definitely would never recommend or use the product.
I think TrueNAS should just overhaul their permissions interface into something that makes sense and doesn't randomly break on me.
Truenas are actually invested in this, so this is essentially their play
@@undercatviper So TrueNAS is just putting a logical permissions UI behind a pay wall? From the appearance here HexOS is more focused on the cloud interface with the intention to make accessing NAS functionality from outside your LAN as simple as using Google Drive. Which I can see a place for. This isn't going to fly if all it is is a 300 dollar UI wrapper.
@@lifefromscratch2818 but 300-dollar price is i think for lifetime price? Right.
Truenas just needs help with ACLs and permissions. If those things were a little simpler to configure, it would be perfect.
That's the only thing that I like about it. ACL are a mess in truenas.
(Also IX systems/Truenas are an investor along with LInus (ltt))
I would rather give IX systems $99 to fix ACL than give hexOS
Given that iXsystem also invested in HexOS, they either wants HexOS to fix it for them and eventually port it back, or not bother fixing it at all…
I was under the impression that the ACLs were SELinux. Is that not the case?
That's where 99% of my personal gripes with TrueNAS are - getting an ACL working properly. If they had a wizard to add/remove users/groups/etc to an ACL as a "simple" mode, and advanced was the usual full-featured editor we have now, I'd be over the moon.
(The other 1% is the recent shenanigans with changing out the apps back to the supplied ones; which, you guessed it, was almost entirely ACL issues).
The apps interface is also clunky and unintuitive. Again mostly a UI issue
The main issue is that truenas should already have these features. Functions that you commonly see tutorials for, should be a priority to automate, where the user is presented with a option of an automatic config and a manual one, where the automatic does everything for you, and then displays a summary of what it did, and potentially provides options to tweak individual items on the summary page.
As the makers of truNAS are their second investor I don't think this is going to be something they do anytime soon.
I have been running a TrueNAS Scale server on my home LAN for about three years and frankly it has just worked reliably since the initial install and setup. In fact my TrueNAS server is so reliable that I have been hesitant to make any changes to it, including updates, for fear of breaking something. The problem now is that in the time since I installed it, I have forgotten how to set up TrueNAS and would have to go back and relearn how to do it all again. Enter HexOS, my hope by buying into the beta program is that it will make installation, setup and updates to my NAS server a no brainer in the future without having to relearn all the TrueNAS settings. I can see for someone like Tom who does this sort of thing for a living where HexOS might not be for him, but for me I just want to set up my NAS server and forget it. So the simpler it is the better.
For the price tag, if it saves me any time at all setting one of these up it's already paid for it'self. Don't get me wrong, I used to IT (yeah I verbed IT so what?) back in the day and I'm more than capable of fumbling around with this stuff and making it work. But that eats away my precious not working time. But this appears to be the type of tool I've been looking for. dead simple interface that's got real software underneath so I can get my hands dirty if I really need/want to. I'll take the gamble.
I always struggle with permissions in Truenas
I would love to see buddy backup being a thing in general - I can manage my own stuff, but i dont want manage NASes that friends have.
Back dat NAS up!
2:38 - "It doesn't really give you any other options"
What's that "manual configuration" button do then? I would've thought that let you pick Z1 or Z2.
Nope, for now you just get Z1
@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS I appreciate you doing a review of HexOS so quickly, Tom!
Also, what brand and where did you get your glasses frames? Thanks.
I think a lot of people don't understand the target group. It's prosumer / small buissnes / nerds who needs storage but is not that enthusiastic about it not working.
300$ is not in the slightest much money for someone who needs a nas. A synology basically charges the same about if you consider the actual cost of the hardware. The fact that I can quite easy just take any old computer, pay a one time fee and then not having to learn how to set up an advanced Nas is 100% worth the pricetag. So you have to treat it as the luxury item it is, then the whole project makes a lot more sense. Some people just want to have it work and not spend 6 hours learning how to do it or pay someone to do it for them. I'm very excited for this and will buy when my synology dies!
Can I just say, if price is the main thing holding people back: it's only 50 usd higher than unraid. So then it's picking between an unknown (hexos future), and another unknown (unraid 7 ... this will get intresting for sure.
For the buddy system they could take a marketing trick from the early internet days. Buy a game disk, get a "buddy disk" for free (one with single player, one with multiplayer only). In this situation it would be something like a buddy of mine could have a stripped down HexOS for just putting data and and back it up to me, and my data to him. But then needed to buy a license for a fuller version with ex. Plex or Immich.
is this a cloud management software?
or does the hexos interface run on the local server?
your video makes it seem like it's cloud
which would be a dealbreaker for many
NVM: at the end of the video
I decided to treat this as a kickstarter and pick up a $99 lifetime license in the hope it will turn out great. I'm very much in the "just make it work, minimum clicks required" crowd when it comes to a NAS system, and the features already present looks like they should fill my basic need. The only dealbreaker is the lack of local management, but the backlash on that has made them change their tune from "we'll think about it" to "it's now officially on the roadmap". Hopefully they'll be true to their word on that.
The $300 price seems ridiculous, but then I remembered that is going to be a lifetime license price, and they will also be doing subscriptions (or so I've heard). My experience with subscription services that also offers a lifetime alternative, is that the lifetime price tends to fall in the 2-3 year subscription price range. If I imagine $10-15/month subscription fee, the $300 goes from "that's insane, no one will buy at that price" to "that looks pretty much as could be expected".
$99 on an alpha product seems crazy.. should be free until its v1.0. $300 is ok as long as it actually good and that TBD.
@@LubomirGeorgiev I mean, Microsoft just launched FS2024 in an alpha state, and their premium bundles are much more than $99. :p
As I said, I think of it as a kickstarter. This is them financing, not launching or testing. I paid for the prospect of a product, not a finished product (although, if the current state hadn't looked like it would probably fit my basic need already, I would likely have sat it out). Once they do launch 1.0, assuming they actually do a subscription model, odds are there will be a "first 30 days free" sort of deal. At least I would be surprised if there isn't.
It's all hypothesis for now, we'll have to wait and see.
paying 300 bucks for a truenas reskin that currently doesn't offer much is insane when you can get a perpetual unraid license for 250. which gets you a lot more, you can have much easier to expand storage pools but also zfs and it's mature while hexos is currently in beta
The subscription that they are offering Is simply for people who don't understand how to safely set up a system where you can access stuff on your home Nas without just opening up ports on your home internet, If you know how to do this kind of stuff without just having open ports everywhere that nerdo Wells can just use then the subscription is a waste of money. But if you don't know how to do that and you want to access your Nas remotely, then that subscription is a half decent value
I like the idea of HexOS. it’s great for beginners starting out. I’ve had my fair share of difficulties setting permissions, and static ips, where sometimes it would be nice to have a one click setup. I do wish they would add more user input for setting up vdevs.
I am curious to see how app access to an smb share will be handled (for Jellyfin)
I know this is in beta but I was wondering what would happen to the hex os overlay if you install an app in truenas? Does anything break?
I'm pretty sure apart from those 2 "curated" apps, you can install everything else too. And it didn't say that other apps are not supported. It said those apps are "not curated", but the install button was still there in hex os UI.
I work in IT (over 20 years), but the majority of my experience is in Windows Desktops/Servers with some Azure/AWS stuff recently. My experience with Nix is very out of date like later 90s/early 2000s era(during my Uni days I had a crack at multiple distros Redhat/Mandrake/Debian/Gentoo).
I've been trying to setup a new FileServer/NAS from scratch over the last month, and lets put it this way, I have gotten more done with HexOS in a Day this weekend than I did with TrueNAS Scale over the previous 3 full weekends, it may just be that the previous 3 weekends was a good training session for the 1 day though :P
I think that HexOS is good from a Time saving perspective, and ease of setup perspective, but from then on, I may just use the underlying TrueNAS Scale that is under the hood.
Great review Tom, be interesting to see if it clearly helps with identifying a failed drive.
As I've spent a good amount of time learning Core and now Scale, time is already invested so I'd stick with the TrueNAS GUI. However, for anyone with little NAS knowledge, it could be really great.
As someone with learning difficulties coupled with a bad memory, whenever i need to change 1 setting inside Truenas i have to refere back to my notes or watch one of Tom's videos for the 1000th time.... I can see this "easy - point & click" interface being helpful to my needs, BUT... i cant justify to 300 buck price tag for what is essentially a "wrapper" for the "full fat" Truenas system.
I also like to have full control over where my data & apps are stored. ie. selecting the /host/path and storage locations, also a more granular approach to share access, users & groups.
So i think ill stick with my Truenas perseverance.
I also don't think this should be a paid product.... FOSS with donations =YES
Afaik, you still get access to all the Truenas functionality and settings. According to the LTT video, there appears to be a way to access the regular Truenas interface and override anything you've set up on the Hex OS UI.
Other than that... yeah, I'm also skeptical about the long-term financial viability of the project.
@@methany8788If this team is relatively smart with their money, I can see this being financially viable long-term because I see a lot of small businesses using this for various small business needs because they won't have an IT staff that would be able to handle a full TrueNAS set up but wanting to benefit from local storage instead of paying back blaze or similar for any data storage
Wondering if this has HDD spindown that actually works unlike TrueNAS.
Jokes apart, an OS that handles spindown very well (actually the only one I found so far with that feature working properly) is Unraid, which kinda aims for the same goals as this one while being way cheaper.
$300 planned license fees and cloud connectivity requirement is what turns me away from this product. $100 each license is what I think it is worth but needs local management. I see this as being something good for those that are half way from end user to tinkerers. I use multiple TrueNAS units at work and honestly I was ready to buy this for my home due to the straight forward simplicity but I can't because of my earlier comments. I will stick with my 2x Dell decommissioned Optiplex desktops with TrueNAS Scale installed at home.
PS I had an old desktop all ready for the beta and waiting for my invite that never came. 48gb RAM, SSD pair, 3x 8tb HDDs but I will just be using Proxmox or TrueNAS on it instead.
Fyi a local dashboard is coming "soon"
@@2008mjb "Invite that never came" Dude they're still in the process of sending them out?
Agree on the pricing, At $100 its a value with whatever hardware a person might have lying around. At $300 you can just buy a Synology which already has a polished simple interface that anyone can use.
@@Adowrath I understand they are still in process of sending them out. In my opinion, you shouldn't be sending out 66% off deal that bypasses this waiting list when you haven't sent out trial licenses to those who were trying to volunteer for the beta program. I was fully willing to pay for a license (or 2 for buddy backup) but I am not willing to do it without some kind of trial. I have more to say but was hoping for the trial invite so I could speak there with my feedback as a customer.
Synology's Hyperbackup works well to a friend.
Do we really need this "overlay" for TrueNAS... that is using some kind of cloud service and that stores the administrator password....
I think some people do need this.
Yeah, last year I tried using your tutorials to setup TrueNAS, and after multiple issues I scrapped my plans. I'm even a developer and the thing gave me all sorts of fits and issues I couldn't explain or properly fix. That's why I went with HexOS a few weeks ago.
For me, it really comes down to my time and how long I'm willing to spend configuring permissions and settings until everything is just right. A solution like HEXOS is necessary for this. If I can set up and configure a NAS quicker than I can focus on other projects that actually generate income, then the price is worth it. After all, you can always earn more money, but you can't get more time.
Not paying $300 for a gui. that money saves me 6 hours of learning, but I’m constantly tinkering with new stuff anyway. Definitivt not worth it
I would love to see an updated series/video on building, installing, and setting up TrueNAS for home use!
Yup, working on that.
@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS
that would be awesome
Obviously very basic now, but I love where they're going. I'd love to see a feature parity (or close enough) with Synology.
It's not for me, but I don't hate it. It's value isn't just in the simplicity it's in the guard rails it should give for your configuration to stop you from doing things which will bite you if you don't know what you are doing (or haven't read a couple of dozen reddit posts, some videos, the docs, etc, to see some gotchas). I have friends that are OK with doing hw upgrades in a PC, throwing in an extra drive, etc, but really don't want to become sysadmins. I'd probably have to recommend them getting an off the shelf NAS and feel bad about it (the vendor lockin, probably underpowered hardware, future end of updates, etc) but I wouldn't want to recommend the self-managed route unless they really wanted to self-host and get into that. I don't want to be on the other end of the phone when something breaks/they break something.
If this reduces some of the barriers of entry to rolling your own, that has value. Does it have enough value for the lifetime price or eventual subscription price? Who knows. Not for me, but maybe for some. That's kind of the gamble you make bringing a product to market.
New user to NAS, very excited about the long term potential of this product. I hope to see more videos from you as they move from beta to full scale production models.
I don't see using this at this time. I use cosmos cloud which can run on anything and is VERY good for these types of things. The only downside it has is the buddy share which is a cool feature. But I'm hoping someone comes up with a cloud docker solution which has similar functionality. If i had to be honest, HexOS + Cosmos Cloud would be an incredible setup, but just unsure we'll ever see it.
Im a big fan of casaos, its like hexos but its more of a docker skin with smb support and a webgui. its not a full os but it can be installed via one command and is completely free. also because it is based on docker, bacicly everything runs on it and its very preformant
I am very ready for this product. The fact that it makes everything simpler is amazing. If I need to get into truenas I still can so I see no reason to use truenas over HexOS once it’s out of beta. Local control of hexos is a deal breaker though.
As it stand, it might be a cool stepping stone for someone who would like to look into selfhosting, to check if it's something you'd like to get into. It might help the culture shift from "cloud somewhere" to "my data, my home" for a younger audience.
seems like a good start for a simple diy NAS built of a good established platform like TrueNas that you can steer a friend to who might not be that tech inclined. not really for me as i like to torture my self to learn /figure out new stuff so half the fun is fighting with it lol . still trying to figure out permissions in TrueNas haha. Thanks for the video love your stuff
At $99 I would, but that’s a Black Friday special. I think I will give it a try on a 3 hdd nas I might build in the future. Thinking about buying the software today to save a buck also.
If this is just a reskin of truenas, why go through all of the trouble of only allowing this through an os install?
because truenas is not an OS, it's an appliance and devs are stubborn as hell to keep it that way in fear of unexpected behaviour scenarios and dense users that do not take responsibility for their admin actions.
Wish theywould add single drive pools for non critical data
For home use, turn key makes sense to me. Where for supporting mission critical infrastructure its ideal to become your own SME and be confident when doo doo hits the fan.
Curious how this compares to ZimaOS. Both seem to be targeting the new NAS user.
I absolutely don't care how it works, I want something that is as easy and close to "set it and forget it" as possible, but I also have an old synology I need to replace, and I don't like the way they are going, so I would like to take control myself
i think they do have the right state of mind, to make it more easy, it will probably make more people using it. though, those who want it easy often buy something like synology. but there are lots of IT people out there that may love IT, but maybe not loving storage servers. perfect easy soulution for them.
As a photographer/videographer with a passion for tech, I feel like HexOS strikes a balance between the user friendliness of a Synology/Qnap and the hardware flexibility of a custom build. I'd spend $1000 building a custom PC rather than a 6-bay NAS box that has 8GB of ram if I'm lucky and cost twice as much to upgrade/expand it down the road (not including all of the walled garden ecosystem shenanigans).
However, I'm also not confident in linux distros for OMV, truenas permissions, Unraid file transfer speeds, or any of the deeper levels of command line work to feel like my files are "safe" (3-2-1 rule included). I'd be interested in giving it a shot if the amount of money I could earn on a shoot outpaces the amount of time it would take me to learn how to configure it correctly. Frankly if it works as intended, it checks all of my boxes.
I didn’t get achievement failed! So jealous!
As someone who has never build a NAS and a very light and simple user, this is the perfect kind of software I would use a first time builder. I bought a license and am looking to build in the next few months, so fingers crossed.
The "cloud" connection puts me off..... perhaps when they make a local interface, then i'll look at it.
But.... the simple user interface with a proved and stable NAS OS behind it is a great idea.
This is designed for some friends of mine, who really need to upgrade their NAS and/or break away from the walled gardens of some other NAS makers.
Definitely not for me, but I could easily see myself using this or something like this when building network storage solutions for friends and family (Just to avoid the many many calls I would get if I tried to give them a truenas scale install)
for a common homelab, this is a hard sell, considering that unifi has less complicated solution for 450ish usd, and can go waaaaay cheaper if theyre willing to do diy + getting fafo'ed tinkering truenas or any other "free" nas solutions, maybe they're targeting businesses wanting less labor cost or has less labor budget.
I still suck at TrueNAS, but I currently have my NAS set up how I want it, so I probably won't end up buying this for myself. That said, knowing what I know now about the difficulties TrueNAS presents, I'd STRONGLY suggest someone looking to set up a simple home NAS for the first time to look into this, especially since they're offering a lifetime license.
it's the pricing and weaponised FOMO that scares me. all that hard work down the drain if the average joe can't afford it.
its a lifetime license
I want this because I have kids and about zero time for futzing around with this sort of setup when I would rather be enjoying being with my family or playing a video game in the rare instance I have downtime...besides home assistant, DIY router/firewall/network management is enough fun shit for me to manage with everything else :D
Which version of truenas are they using?
Latest 24.10
Yea, i hope this pays off for Linus, lol. Either way, it's cool to see yall supporting the things yall believe in.
Have you done a video on your homes entertainment setup? Plex, jellyfin, remote family accounts, etc..?
Right now, we utilize kodi with add-ons, but jellyfin/plex seems like a nice home IT project.
Edit: 4 years ago, you have a plex 30 min video posted. Nice.
I used both and it is great software. But Plex really let me down a couple of years ago. There was credentials bug that basically nuked my installation of plex and all the workaround and fixes never worked for me. So i ended up having a lifetime license that i could practically not use on the specific NAS i had at home at the time. Got really pissed and went to jellyfin and never looked back. Jellyfin is a great alternative.
I think HEX OS will be for me I have tried a couple of times to set up truenas and I can get a smb share set up and maybe Plex, but once I add in sonar, radar etc it just falls down, I’m back running on windows 10 but I would love to move away from this with out spending weeks of trail and error and giving up
It looks like a very nice FOSS project that would be useful to some people. But at $200? I just don't see the value there.
I would pay 5€/M. and i think this is a godsend for my family etc.
And the ability to switch UIs to TrueNAS is amazing.
Again, the price is the big issue, especially as you have no free trial AFAIK.
The full price of $299 is the same as $5/month for 5 years. Also, there is a 30-day refund policy listed in their terms and conditions.
@@turner46 Which is fair enough, if this would not be a BETA.
You think we are at stable in 30 days?
This is a Kickstarter without calling it one, and paying considerable cash for an unproven product.
Also: This "Lifetime" license thing is crap. No one can promise they will be around in 1 year, let alone 5 years.
hold up wth is Buddy Backups. Is there a non-HexOS version of that?
I am not aware of any automated way to do it.
@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS Resilio Sync has encrypted folders that might do the job.
Syncthing
Even at full price ($300) HexOS is a great deal if they can pull off what they are going for. If I value my time at JUST $50 per hour, then ask myself will it take more or less than 6 hours to get this set up correctly, and how many hours will I spend updating, fiddling, and troubleshooting each app I want to run, then it's a steal if I can just set it up and walk away to go spend time with my wife, go to a movie, work in my woodshop, play MtG, or any number of other, more fun things. I spend 9 hours per day troublshooting servers and application at work, 5 days per week. I don't want to be tech support at home. I pay a guy to do all my yard work because I hate yard work, how is HexOS any different, I'm paying them to do all the work for me so my NAS just works.
That is a very valid standpoint. However, I get a constant pay. If I pay $300, they're gone from my bank account and I can't get them back, no matter how much time I invest.
Even if I invest 20h into fiddling around with TrueNAS, then I'll have $300 more on my bank account. Sure, the hourly rate isn't great, but since time doesn't directly translate into money for most people, it makes all the difference between "having more money" and "having less money".
If you're self employed and can actually make money with the time saved when buying HexOS, of course the whole equation looks very different.
And, of course, your personal preference and how much you're willing to pay to avoid a particular work is another story. I for example don't mind doing firewood, where others would just pay a ton of money to a utility company to have the house warm and sit in front of the TV instead of having to swing an axe. So, maybe it's not so much about how much you value your time, but what you're willing to pay to avoid THAT particular work?
Yeah I prefer to just have the control. Going with a two-drive mirror and having a hot spare may or may not make sense but at least I want the option. Above all I'm not paying money and connecting control of my storage to the cloud. So yeah, big fat no from me but I'm not the target audience either.
If I understand them correctly, you can hop into actual Truenas and configure everything there, though if you're going into it with that intention, there's probably no point of using it in the first place.
As for the cloud stuff... yeah, yikes
8:57 They should start from scratch. Using TrueNAS ( that in itself is a middleware interface ), as the base is asking for trouble. They should code their own middleware based on Linux instead of TrueNAS OS. OpenZFS and QEMU should be enough, unless all they have is web developers.
I will not use this HexOS for the same reasons you shared and have in mind.
Sounds good in theory, but they would need to get some very substantial funding to make that happen.
HexOS feels like ix Systems realised they need to invest in UI/UX and to have that development actually pay off created a new product. UX is expensive and with TrueNAS's customer base probably less valuable in terms of return so they 'exploited' the home user crowd (I mean that in provided a product for them, not that they're being used at all).
Thing is, TrueNAS is sold as an 'appliance' and yet vast amounts of fiddling has to be done under the hood even to view the logs. The ACLs and permissions is a mess, with Linux, POSIX, and SMB all fighting one another. They'd solve many people's problems by picking one.- such as Linux permissions - and re-writing the model to work with those and ONLY those but I fear they're in a situation where they can't because some customers are using the other and the flexibility has become a landmine they can't step off.
Have run truenas core for many years and switch to scale for 3 months ago. Plex still don't work. And had to move all data twice.
Have jump to hex because of plex, and my time is better spent. But are waiting on til it is out of beta
HexOS is a good idea for a lot of people, but it might be to simplified for me. I like something in the middle, like Unraid - much more simple than TrueNAS while maintaining enough depth to tweak things. Also Apps are amazing in Unraid with the community support - way more apps than in TrueNAS and simple enough to install without dealing with ACL bullshit.
you either pay with your time or your wallet
yup
If I was looking for something simple, I'd probably just pay for an Unraid license or buy a synology. It's a nice front end, but it's not for me
I think they should of made a free and paid version for hexOS. Free version could just give limited access to the NAS features and the rest is under a licensed version. As soon as this hype around larger creator slows down i can't imagine much interest in this unless they do something different than truenas with their future updates and features.
200$ for a true nas interface with very limited features/support and settings. I don't know... Unraid is 1/4 the price and probably better suited for people getting started in self hosting. ZFS is cool but i doubt begginers choosing hexos have a perfectly planned out pool layout and hardware in mind when getting started.
A TrueNAS bandaid in a world where unRAID exists.
I like the idea of easy setup and ease of use but way too expensive for me.
Hell yeah, I love completing achievements in my NAS software...
I'm too tech savvy for this product, apparently. I hadn't heard about HexOS before, so I'm reading between the lines and trying to understand what market segment is this intended for? Someone willing to buy or build/intgrate a TrueNAS server? If they are not sophisticated enough to operate TrueNAS (but somehow able to spec and build/buy the hardware), then maybe they are going to buy a turnkey hardware solution the delivers both a hardware solution and a friendly UX. What's the addressable market available for HexOS that's in between?
I've only thought about this for 10 or 15 minutes; hopefully LTT throught harder before this $250K investment. Maybe HE is the addressable market - someone that plays the expert in his videos, but in reality not so much.
I don’t see a market for this due to the cost. Cloud only dashboard makes it an immediate no go for most people. I’m not against options but I really don’t see who would purchase this at $300 per server.
You also never purchase today for promises tomorrow. “Trust me bro” is basically what Linus said.
Apparently a local dashboard is coming "soon". It's beta so I give it a little slack.
I kinda agree.
I wonder if they would allow us to install it "over" truenas.
That cost kills me tho. $300 is insane.. $99 is fine.
Also can anyone clarify. Is it $300 per install or total?
I do see some value in what they're trying to do and with some more features and polish I can see it being great for people who aren't tech savvy. I do know a lot of people who are sick of cloud service hell but I'm not going to recommend TrueNAS because I don't want to play tech support when they run into problems. I do think they're going to struggle to get enough people who are willing to pay them what they're asking. I feel like selling to NAS OEMs might be a more sustainable business model since many of them have trash software but that assumes they'd be willing to pay for it.
@@AndrewClement I emailed the developer, and they confirmed the license isn’t tied to a specific machine. You can "unclaim" one server and transfer the license to another. But if you want to run two systems at the same time, you’d need two licenses. Hope that helps!
@@truespartak That does. Thank you
pfSense is doing this same type of thing. It's the wave of the future sadly.
people seem to forget that Synology or other NAS off-the-shelf products are expensive as well, up to $600-800 AUD. This early adopter license is $150 AUD and you can easily set up a server with 2nd hand parts for $300-400 making this almost $100-300 cheaper whilst also being more custom. seems like a great idea to me.
Truenas with a custom front end which doesn’t include everything at 199. No thanks…
This is TrueNAS under the covers, why not just use TrueNAS directly? How do you even know what these wizards are doing? Also, why would I pay for this when I can just use the underlying TrueNAS OS for free? I don't get it.
I am so far out of this target audience that HexOS is not for me at all.
Both my home servers are set up without a WebUI, Command Line only, meaning they have SSH login.
I even did my 2nd NAS backup on FreeBSD the same way, while I do run Linux mostly, getting into the nitty gritty with FreeBSD, it was quite different.
I would prefer something turnkey, and 199 for it isn't really a dealbreaker for me.
There's just no market for this. Most people are starting to look away at lifetime licenses because no company can offer lifetime support. It's of no use.
I don’t think you have to pay for a licence sure it’s nice & all but for people that can’t afford it can’t use it I miss the truenas extra apps it sad there all gone if there was a better system I would move to it but truenas scale is where I have to stay 😢
If you have to build the hardware yourself, it's not turnkey. Who's the market for this? Anyone willing to build their own hardware is going to have the ability to run Truenas by itself, and if they're willing to pay, then Unraid is superior in every way. Not sure they thought this through.
I'm not liking it, especially with this agressive limited time pricing.
Also I think this beta is more like an alpha.
As for the full price and target demographic unraid might be a better option, as it's already established, and has support for different size drive. Which I think would be a big advantage to have for home users.
.....and I was just going through the SMB share permission video today 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I bought it when the video went live. I use unraid but wiling to give them a fair go
in all this, immich will get the needed attention!🎉
Yeah, I have never heard of it before this. I am getting HexOS and immich will be my first install!
I paid for it, it's simple, i like simple, i don't want to deal with extra stuff like permissions & ACL's.
Super looking forward to the buddy system.
I think this product is a game changer for small businesses - especially when they have someone on staff that has some comfort with technology but doesn't have the time to learn the complexities of TrueNAS.
I also think this is going to be a really nice thing for home users that want something that "just works". Honestly, this is the camp I'm in. While I manage a pretty complex setup at work...I just don't want to have to deal with all of it at home too. I'm currently running a Synology NAS at home and I think anyone that would be a Synology customer should also be looking at this as an option. Assuming they make offsite backup to Backblaze or AWS as easy to set up as in Hyper Backup (or easier)...which it sounds like they plan to do.
The biggest thing that Synology has that a system running HexOS doesn't is Active Backup for Business, which again...super simple for small businesses and home users.
I got two keys to set up backups for my extended family. So I don’t have to do it anymore.
I'm probably not the audience for this product, because I love learning, but then again - I maybe would bite if the perpetual license was selling for $99 AFTER it was out of beta. Don't feel comfortable paying for future software promises
HexOS seems like it will be a good option for less technical people in my family. What completely puts me off is the currently planned final price. YIKES. I doubt I could convince anyone in my life to fork over $300 for an OS.
It will definitely be a hard sell, especially for people looking to avoid the price premium of devices like synology. For example, for my home NAS needs, I turned a older core I7 6700k build with 32GB RAM, into a NAS since it was an easy and cheaper way to have a system with initial support for 6 SATA drives (gigabyte gaming 6) and simply expansion with at 8 port SATA card, and a 10 GbE NIC. It works well overall, and far cheaper than Synology.
The only annoyance is that you can't easily add more drives to the storage pool, because you can't expand an existing vdev, while synology allows you to easily, expand an existing storage pool while maintaining the single drive failure tolerance.
Outside of that, I like having a NAS with no cloud reliance, since I like having selective firewall rules where it has no direct WAN access beyond NTP time, and if I need to update it, I can selectively allow the specific ports needed then block them again. For remote access, I simply use a VPN server.
I have an unraid server that I love dearly, so I don't *need* HexOS... but my friends might. Whenever I talk about getting a NAS they always say "that's cool, but it doesn't apply to me because i don't have 100 hours to configure and administrate the thing" and I'm really hoping this works for them.
Also I'd been thinking about moving to trueNAS anyway and I appreciate Hex's ability to drop out of the wrapper and into trueNAS, so I'm thinking of trying it as trueNAS with upside...
You're smart! You can figure it out.
I'm getting with these docker containers that these groups are calling OSes. They aren't operating systems, they're just web servers.
I should be able to get TrueNAS up and running without any major problems, but right now, I just can't be bothered, I've got other stuff to do. So I might be willing to give HexOS a go. It looks like it's easy and just works, which is just what I'm looking for right now. And since it's got TrueNAS in the back, I should be able to do some more advanced stuff in the future if i'd like.
ZimaOS is based off of Casa OS and is free and will stay free, and it does exactly what is being shown here in this video.
As someone who has DD Unraid for about 5yrs now, I like the idea of Turn-Key setups. I have been interested in TrueNas since the BSD days but felt easily overwhelmed by the level of control it has. I’ve even forgotten how to do certain thing in Unraid, so I like the UI of Hex, with the ability to switch to the “advanced” under the hood settings when need be. Heard a lot of discouraging things about the planned price those. A “license” for a free-ish distro is hard to swallow but I also paired for the perpetual from Limetech so I get it. Maybe something similar would be better. I guess we’ll all see 🤔
As always, the best review. It's a 'beta' so not worth doing a deep dive, and the promise of it being so easy to use that future videos will not be needed.
There is an audience for everything ! Fortunately but also unfortunately... And companies take advantage of that...
Linus didn't say what support you get for your money. If they actually helped you fix stuff it might be worth considering, but given it's a lifetime licence I'm guessing that the support is just a forum and script monkeys.
I already bailed when I saw you had to do it via their website... Ah yes, lets expose your stuffz to security holes....
No thanks... I'll stick to my trusted truenas scale which hasn't failed me once in all the years (and core before)
Aside from that I see nothing with hexOS that has added value...
But might be something for someone has zero knowledge and or time / skills to set something like this up... Although not sure you should be messing with a NAS if you don't.