Storage Server — NAS that actually protects your data.

Most NAS boxes run ext4 or btrfs and pray your data stays intact. A kldload storage server runs ZFS — every block checksummed, every read verified, self-healing on mirrors. This is what TrueNAS does. Now you can build your own.

The recipe

# Start with a kldload server install, then:

# Install file sharing packages
kpkg install nfs-kernel-server samba tgt prometheus-node-exporter

# Create datasets for shares
kdir /srv/shared
kdir /srv/backups
kdir -o compression=zstd /srv/media

# NFS export
echo "/srv/shared  10.0.0.0/24(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)" >> /etc/exports
exportfs -ra

# Samba share
cat >> /etc/samba/smb.conf <<EOF
[shared]
  path = /srv/shared
  browsable = yes
  writable = yes
  valid users = @users
EOF
systemctl enable --now smbd

# iSCSI target (block storage over network)
zfs create -V 100G -s rpool/srv/iscsi-lun0
# Configure tgt to export the zvol...

# Enable Prometheus metrics (scrape on :9100)
systemctl enable --now prometheus-node-exporter

What you'll learn