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Best / NAS & hypervisor

Best open-source NAS & hypervisor

The best homelab server split in the c17.io catalog is Proxmox VE for VMs and containers, TrueNAS for a ZFS NAS appliance, OpenMediaVault for a Debian NAS with plugins, and XCP-ng for a GPL-2.0 Xen hypervisor. They solve different boxes — /compare/proxmox-vs-truenas. Unraid is proprietary and is not ranked. Bare metal, not Railway.

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Ranked picks

  1. 1

    Proxmox VE

    AGPLv3 Debian hypervisor for KVM and LXC. Subscriptions buy the enterprise repo and support, not the license.

    When to pick it: Virtual machines and containers.

  2. 2

    TrueNAS

    Open-core NAS. Community middleware is LGPLv3/GPLv3; some enterprise modules are commercial.

    When to pick it: ZFS storage you share.

    2,607 stars in the catalog

  3. 3

    OpenMediaVault

    Debian NAS with a web UI and plugins. COPYING states GPL-3 unless a file says otherwise.

    When to pick it: A smaller NAS appliance if TrueNAS is more product than you wanted.

    7,007 stars in the catalog

  4. 4

    XCP-ng

    GPL-2.0 Xen-based hypervisor. Listed GitHub repo is the issue/wiki entry point.

    When to pick it: A Xen host if Proxmox is not the lineage.

    1,616 stars in the catalog

How they compare

ToolLicenseSelf-hostBest for
Proxmox VEGNU Affero General Public License v3.0MediumVirtual machines and containers.
TrueNASGNU Lesser General Public License v3.0MediumZFS storage you share.
OpenMediaVaultGNU General Public License v3.0MediumA smaller NAS appliance if TrueNAS is more product than you wanted.
XCP-ngGNU General Public License v2.0HarderA Xen host if Proxmox is not the lineage.

Related pages

FAQ

Proxmox or TrueNAS?
Proxmox if the job is VMs. TrueNAS if the job is disks. Many labs run both — /compare/proxmox-vs-truenas.
Where is Unraid?
Unraid is not open source. This ranking does not include it.
Is this Coolify?
Coolify is an app PaaS on Docker. Proxmox is the hypervisor under the VMs.
Are these free?
Licenses as listed. Proxmox subscriptions are support plus the enterprise repo. You pay hardware. Template users never pay c17.

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