TrueNAS R Series

Q: Which TrueNAS version is best?

For a new business deployment, TrueNAS SCALE, optionally with Enterprise support. CORE still works for existing FreeBSD-based deployments but is in maintenance mode and is not the recommended.

Enterprise Storage Hardware for Australian Business

Unified storage built on OpenZFS, scaling from 120 TB to 5 petabytes, with local Australian setup and support.

Open source still raises a question for business buyers: can software with no vendor logo on the box really carry production workloads and petabytes of client data. TrueNAS is developed by iXsystems, a storage vendor that has sold enterprise hardware for over two decades, and it already runs production storage behind businesses that cannot afford downtime or data loss.

Velocity Host supplies, configures and supports TrueNAS R Series hardware for Australian businesses, with setup, tuning and support delivered in Australian time zones, not an overseas call centre reading from a script.

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Why TrueNAS R Series Suits Business Storage

Being open source is not the same as being unsupported. The code underneath the R Series is open to inspection by anyone, which means vulnerabilities are found and patched in public, rather than sitting undisclosed inside closed vendor firmware. That transparency matters more as a business grows.

OpenZFS gives block-level checksumming, so silent data corruption is caught before it spreads
Snapshots are read-only once taken, so a snapshot made before a ransomware attack cannot be encrypted afterward
Data reduction, replication and scrubbing run natively, without third-party licensing add-ons
iXsystems and the TrueNAS community both audit and harden the platform, rather than relying on one vendor alone

Velocity Host can also replicate your R Series storage to Australia's first Tier 4 data centre, keeping your offsite copy onshore under Australian data sovereignty laws rather than defaulting to an overseas region.

TrueNAS R10, R20, R40 and R50:
Which Model Fits Your Business?

The R Series covers four single-controller models, from a compact 1U all-flash unit to a 12U hybrid system built for multi-petabyte archives. All models run on OpenZFS and support block, file and object storage protocols, major hypervisors, and replication between TrueNAS systems for backup and migration.

TrueNAS R20:
The general-purpose starting point

TrueNAS R20 is the model most Australian SMBs reach for first. It is a hybrid system, meaning it mixes flash and spinning disk, which keeps cost down while still giving fast access to active data.

12 x 3.5 inch bays plus 2 x 2.5 inch bays, expandable to 132 drives across shelves;
6 to 16 CPU cores and 32 to 192 GB of RAM per controller, sized to your workload;
Up to 2 expansion shelves;
Maximum raw capacity around 1.5 PB, maximum effective capacity around 4 PB [CONFIRM 2: effective capacity depends on data reduction and is not a fixed number, confirm how you want this stated];
Networking from 10GbE up to 100GbE, with an optional 32 Gb Fibre Channel path.

TrueNAS R50:
Maximum capacity for data-heavy business

TrueNAS R50 is the largest model in the range, a hybrid system built for businesses with serious archive, media or backup-target capacity needs.

48 x 3.5 inch bays plus 4 x 2.5 inch NVMe bays, expandable to 252 drives;
6 to 16 CPU cores and 64 to 192 GB of RAM per controller;
Up to 2 expansion shelves;
Maximum raw capacity around 5 PB, maximum effective capacity around 10 PB [CONFIRM 2]
The same 10GbE to 100GbE networking and optional Fibre Channel path as the rest of the range.

Also in the range:
TrueNAS R10 and TrueNAS R40

The TrueNAS R10 is the compact, all-flash entry point, a 1U unit built for performance in a small footprint rather than maximum capacity, with up to 120 TB raw and no expansion shelves. Above it sits the R40, an all-flash, high-density option built where consistent low-latency performance matters more than the economy of spinning disk, with up to 720 TB raw capacity. Both are worth a conversation with Velocity Host if your workload is performance-bound rather than capacity-bound.

TrueNAS Specifications Compared

FEATURES	TrueNAS R10	TrueNAS R20	TrueNAS R40	TrueNAS R50

Rack Space	1U	2-10U	2-6U	4-12U
Controlers	Single
DRAM per Controller	32 GB - 96 GB	32 GB - 192 GB	64 GB - 192 GB	64 GB - 192 GB
Drive Bays	16 x 2.5" 7mm	12 x 3.5", 2 x 2.5"	48 x 2.5" 7mm	48 x 3.5", 4 x 2.5"
Storage	All-Flash	Hybrid	All-Flash	Hybrid
Max Ethernet Speed	2x 100 GbE
Expansion Shelves Supported	2 x 32 Gb
Expansion Shelves Supported	0	2	2	2
Maximum Raw Capacity	120 TB	1.5 PB	720 TB	2 PB
Maximum Effective Capacity	400 TB	4 PB	4 PB	5 PB
CPU	6 - 10 Cores	6 -16 Cores	6 - 16 Cores	6 - 16 Cores
Read & Write Cache	2 x 1.6 TB SATA SSD			3 x 3.2 TB SSD
Performance	Up to 500K IOPS and 10 GB/s. Varies based on configuration. Please contact us.

Choice

It's your TrueNAS, you choose the storage.

Western Digital

Western Digital Red Pro drives are specifically designed to handle the rigors of 24×7 TrueNAS workloads, offering excellent data protection and the highest level of performance possible.

IronWolf...
Way Ahead of the Pack

Seagate understands your unique data storage challenges and crafted the IronWolf^® and IronWolf Pro network attached storage (NAS) hard drives to help achieve your goals.

CORE, Enterprise and SCALE:
Which Edition For Your R Series?

An R Series unit itself is a hardware purchase, not a software subscription, and can run one of three editions. The right choice depends on how much formal support your business needs.

TrueNAS CORE: the original FreeBSD-based edition, now in maintenance mode. It still runs and receives stability updates, but new features and active development are no longer going into it and costs nothing in software licensing.

TrueNAS SCALE: the Linux-based Community Edition, now the actively developed option and the one Velocity Host recommends for a new R Series deployment and configures new R Series units with SCALE by default and costs nothing in software licensing.

TrueNAS Enterprise: SCALE with a formal support agreement from iXsystems, available at Bronze or Silver tiers, intended for businesses that want a vendor-backed support contract behind the open platform. Enterprise support, both Bronze and Silver, are optional paid add-ons, and are not a requirement to run the software

Choosing an edition is not a one-way door. A system can move from CORE to SCALE, and the Community Edition can be upgraded to Enterprise support later if your business grows into needing it.

TrueNAS R Series vs Other NAS and Storage Platforms

Open source being unproven for business is a common assumption, and it does not hold up against the alternatives business buyers actually compare it to.

Synology and QNAP: polished, closed hardware NAS platforms with vendor-locked management software, and a documented history of ransomware campaigns against internet-exposed units. Easier to start with, but you are dependent on the vendor's patch cycle and cannot run the software on your own hardware.

Unraid: a proprietary, paid-license NAS operating system popular with home and small-business users for its flexible mixed-drive storage. It does not offer the enterprise data protection, single-pane replication or multi-petabyte scaling the R Series is built for.

OpenMediaVault: a free, open-source NAS platform that is lightweight and well suited to small or low-power hardware, but without OpenZFS as its native file system and without the enterprise support tiers a growing business may eventually want.

Against all three, the R Series offers enterprise capacity, OpenZFS data protection as standard, and an optional vendor support contract through TrueNAS Enterprise, without locking your business into proprietary hardware or software.

TrueNAS R Series Support in Australia:
What You Get With Velocity Host

Pre-sales sizing to match your workload to the right model, drive mix and RAM configuration

Rack installation, network configuration, pool setup and share or permission configuration

Support in Australian time zones, from a local team, not an overseas call centre

Optional offsite replication to Velocity Host's own Australian Tier 4 data centre infrastructure

A full range alongside the R Series, from the TrueNAS Mini for small teams through to the X Series and M Series for larger enterprise workloads, on our TrueNAS storage solutions page

TrueNAS in Action
A Real Australian Business Storage Result

A long-standing Velocity Host client running production workloads on SmartOS, a ZFS-native hypervisor platform, needed a backup destination that could handle native ZFS replication rather than a generic file-based cloud backup product. Doing this requires administrative access on both ends, which most public cloud backup services cannot offer, as well as sharing root-level access on shared infrastructure was not acceptable.

Velocity Host built a dedicated, isolated zone for the client with its own dataset and full administrative rights inside it. The array is built to a minimum of raidz3, tolerating three simultaneous drive failures per group. Replication runs on native zfs send and zfs receive, moving only changed blocks between snapshots over SSH.

The client sets their own snapshot retention and runs replication on demand or on a schedule
Data stays onshore in Velocity Host's Tier 4 data centre under Australian data sovereignty, with local support.

Read the full native ZFS replication case study.

TrueNAS R Series Australia FAQs

How much does a TrueNAS license cost?

The TrueNAS software license itself costs nothing. CORE and SCALE are both free and open source to download and run on your own hardware. What you pay for is the hardware, such as an R10 price of roughly US$4,000 for the entry model, and optionally a formal Enterprise support contract with iXsystems if your business wants a vendor-backed agreement rather than self-managed support.

How much RAM does TrueNAS actually need?

More than the old rule of thumb suggests. The once-common guidance of 1 GB of RAM per TB of storage is outdated advice from early ZFS deployments and is not a hard requirement. What matters is enough RAM for ZFS's read cache to do its job, which scales with your working data set and workload, not your raw capacity. R Series units ship with 32 GB to 192 GB of RAM per controller depending on the model, and Velocity Host sizes this correctly as part of a quote.

Is TrueNAS completely free?

The core software is free. The Community Edition of TrueNAS SCALE remains free to run, with no licence fee for the storage platform itself. What is not free is the hardware, optional Enterprise support tiers, and the higher tiers of TrueNAS Connect, iXsystems' management and monitoring platform. A business can run TrueNAS entirely on the free software tier if it does not need a formal vendor support contract.

Is TrueNAS going closed source?

Not the core software. iXsystems moved its internal build and signing infrastructure off public repositories in 2026, citing Secure Boot and platform security requirements, which concerned parts of the self-hosting community [CONFIRM 4]. The TrueNAS platform and the Community Edition remain open source. iXsystems has described its ongoing direction as open-core, with paid features developing around TrueNAS Connect rather than the storage platform itself.

What are the best alternatives to TrueNAS in 2026?

The main alternatives business buyers compare are Synology or QNAP for a closed, vendor-managed hardware NAS, Unraid for a proprietary, license-based home and small-business NAS operating system, and OpenMediaVault for a lightweight, free and open-source option without native OpenZFS. Each trades something away, closed software, licensing fees, or enterprise support, that the TrueNAS R Series does not ask a growing business to give up.

Which TrueNAS version is best?

What is the difference between TrueNAS R10, TrueNAS R20, TrueNAS R40 and TrueNAS R50?

The R10 is a compact, all-flash 1U unit built for performance in a small footprint, up to 120 TB raw. The R20 is a hybrid, general-purpose model most Australian SMBs start with, up to 1.5 PB raw. The R40 is an all-flash, high-density option for consistent low-latency performance, up to 720 TB raw. The R50 is the largest model, a hybrid system for multi-petabyte archive and backup-target capacity, up to 5 PB raw.

Talk to Velocity Host About TrueNAS R Series for Your Business

The TrueNAS R Series gives an Australian business enterprise-grade, OpenZFS-backed storage that scales from a few hundred terabytes to multiple petabytes, without locking you into proprietary hardware or software. Velocity Host sizes, supplies, configures and supports the right model for your workload, from a local Australian team.