TrueNAS vs. OpenMediaVault NAS Performance Review

TrueNAS is a popular open-source network-attached storage operating system based on the FreeBSD and Linux operating systems and the OpenZFS file system. OpenMediaVault is another popular open source network attached storage software platform, which is based on the Debian Linux operating system. TrueNAS and OpenMediaVault can be installed on any modern hardware platform allowing one to easily build a fully featured NAS server. The purpose of this review is to compare the performance of TrueNAS and OpenMediaVault NAS storage operations on the same hardware platform.

For this review, we have performed the following benchmarks:

  • Disk Space Analysis
  • File Classification
  • Duplicate Files Detection
  • File Search Operations
  • File Read Operations
  • File Write Operations
  • File Delete Operations

TrueNAS version 13.0-U5.3 and OpenMediaVault version 6.5.0 were installed on exactly the same hardware platform equipped with a Quad-Core Intel CPU, 8 GB of system memory, a fast NVMe SSD disk and connected to the network via a Gigabit Ethernet card. The performance tests were performed using the DiskBoss file management solution, which is capable of performing many different types of disk space analysis, file classification, file search, file synchronization and file management operations using multiple, parallel threads fully utilizing modern multi-core CPUs.

All the tests were performed using the same set of files containing 450,000 small files with the average file size 32 KB, 50,000 medium-sized files with the average file size 4 MB and 1,000 large files with the average file size 100 MB. The tests were performed exactly in the same order on both, TrueNAS and OpenMediaVault NAS storage platforms.

TrueNAS vs. OpenMediaVault NAS Performance Disk Space Analysis

According to the disk space analysis benchmark results, the performance of the TrueNAS storage platform reached up to 24,932 Files/Sec with 4 processing threads, while the performance of the OpenMediaVault storage platform reached up to of 32,882 Files/Sec, which represents a significant 26% improvement for this specific operation.

TrueNAS vs. OpenMediaVault NAS Performance File Classification

According to the file classification benchmark results, the performance of the TrueNAS storage platform reached up to 24,109 Files/Sec with 4 processing threads, while the performance of the OpenMediaVault storage platform reached up to of 32,898 Files/Sec, which again represents a significant 26% improvement for this specific operation.

TrueNAS vs. OpenMediaVault NAS Performance Duplicate Files Search

The duplicate files detection operation is an I/O intensive operation, which requires both fast directory scanning capabilities and scalable file read operations allowing to read multiple files at the same time. According to the duplicate files detection benchmark results, the performance of the TrueNAS storage platform reached up to 1,063 Files/Sec with 4 processing threads, while the performance of the OpenMediaVault storage platform reached up to of 1,302 Files/Sec, which represents a 18% improvement for this specific operation.

TrueNAS vs. OpenMediaVault NAS Performance File Search

The file search operations requires both fast directory scanning capabilities and scalable file read operations allowing to read data from multiple files at the same time. According to the file search benchmark results, the performance of the TrueNAS storage platform reached up to 6,018 Files/Sec with 4 processing threads, while the performance of the OpenMediaVault storage platform reached up to of 6,670 Files/Sec, which represents a 9.7% improvement for this specific operation.

TrueNAS vs. OpenMediaVault NAS Performance File Sync Read

The file synchronization read operation is an I/O intensive operation, which requires both fast directory scanning capabilities and scalable file read operations allowing to read multiple files at the same time. According to the file synchronization read benchmark results, the performance of the TrueNAS storage platform reached up to 1,025 Files/Sec with 4 processing threads, while the performance of the OpenMediaVault storage platform reached up to of 1,118 Files/Sec, which represents a 8.3% improvement for this specific operation.

TrueNAS vs. OpenMediaVault NAS Performance File Sync Write

The file synchronization write operation is an I/O intensive operation, which requires both fast directory scanning capabilities and scalable file write operations allowing to write multiple files at the same time. According to the file synchronization write benchmark results, the performance of the TrueNAS storage platform reached up to 780 Files/Sec with 4 processing threads, while the performance of the OpenMediaVault storage platform reached up to of 857 Files/Sec, which represents a 8.9% improvement for this specific operation.

TrueNAS vs. OpenMediaVault NAS Performance File Sync Write

The file delete operation requires both fast directory scanning capabilities and scalable file delete operations allowing to delete multiple files at the same time. According to the file delete benchmark results, the performance of the TrueNAS storage platform reached up to 2,931 Files/Sec with 4 processing threads, while the performance of the OpenMediaVault storage platform reached up to of 2,679 Files/Sec, which represents a 9.4% performance degradation for this specific operation making it the only benchmark were TrueNAS delivered a better performance then OpenMediaVault. Due to the fact that the performance of the OpenMediaVault platform with 3 processing threads delivered better results, we have performed this specific test multiple times to make sure that the results are consistent.

OpenMediaVault NAS Performance Improvements

In order to summarize the performance comparison review, we have averaged the performance differences between TrueNAS and OpenMediaVault for all performed benchmarks and according to the average results the performance of the OpenMediaVault storage platform is better by 18.73%.

* This review was prepared for information purposes only and we strongly recommend to test the performance of DiskBoss file management operations on your specific hardware platform and with your specific data sets.