Proxmox VE can serve NAS storage, but it takes deliberate configuration. Unlike Unraid or TrueNAS, Proxmox assumes no default NAS role. There is no SMB sharing wizard or NAS-style drive health dashboard, although the Proxmox Disks view can display per-disk SMART values. What Proxmox does have is a flexible ZFS implementation, LXC container support, and a Samba package available through apt that you install and configure yourself. If your primary goal is NAS storage, TrueNAS or Unraid is the better starting point. If your primary goal is running VMs and you want storage attached to the same box, Proxmox is worth understanding.
In short: Proxmox can share storage over SMB or NFS but requires manual configuration. One approach is running TrueNAS Community Edition as a VM inside Proxmox with direct disk or storage-controller passthrough. TrueNAS documentation says virtualized TrueNAS is intended for development or ad hoc proof-of-concept use and is not a supported configuration for regular production or critical data. A single Proxmox server can serve both hypervisor and NAS roles with the right setup.
What Proxmox Is Designed For
Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE) is an open source hypervisor platform. Its job is managing virtual machines (KVM) and containers (LXC) with enterprise features: live migration, high availability clustering, web-based management, and Proxmox Backup Server integration. Every design decision in Proxmox is oriented toward these workloads.
Proxmox stores its VM and container images in one of several storage backends: ZFS datasets, LVM volumes, directories, or network storage (NFS, iSCSI, Ceph). All of these are configured through the Proxmox web UI or CLI. Proxmox does not care which you use, as long as the storage backend can serve VM images.
The gap is NAS-specific management. Proxmox has no concept of a shared folder, no SMB share UI, no drive spin-down, no storage pool health display oriented toward NAS workloads, and no pre-installed SMART monitoring dashboard. These features exist in Unraid and TrueNAS because they were designed for home NAS use. Proxmox was designed for a different audience.
Three Ways to Run NAS Storage on Proxmox
Option 1: ZFS Dataset Shared via Samba on Proxmox Directly
Proxmox supports ZFS natively and can create ZFS pools directly on attached drives from the Proxmox installer or post-install via the CLI. Once a ZFS pool exists, you create filesystem datasets, install Samba via apt, configure smb.conf, and create SMB shares that point to paths in those datasets.
This approach works and is efficient: no VM overhead, ZFS checksums apply to all data, and Proxmox manages the drives directly. The trade-off is management. Samba share and permission changes require manual Samba/Linux administration, while Proxmox's web UI can handle some disk and ZFS pool operations. There is no web UI for this. If you are comfortable with Linux administration, this is viable. If you want a web interface for day-to-day storage management, it is not the right approach.
Option 2: TrueNAS Scale Virtualised Inside Proxmox with Disk Passthrough
Drives are passed directly from the host to the TrueNAS VM using PCIe passthrough of the storage controller (HBA) rather than Proxmox's virtual disk layer. TrueNAS then sees the drives directly and manages them with ZFS as if it were running on bare metal.
This combination gives you the best of both platforms: Proxmox's superior VM management for workloads like Windows VMs, game servers, and development environments; and TrueNAS's full ZFS stack with its web GUI, scrub scheduling, snapshot management, and replication for data storage.
This setup requires VT-d or AMD-Vi for passthrough and enough RAM for the host and guests. TrueNAS recommends passing physical disks or the entire storage controller where possible and requires at least 8GB RAM for the TrueNAS VM; total host RAM depends on the storage and guest workloads.
Option 3: TrueNAS Scale in an LXC Container
Running TrueNAS in an LXC container instead of a full VM reduces overhead compared to a KVM VM. TrueNAS documents virtualized installation in a full virtual machine and does not provide a Proxmox LXC installation procedure. This approach exists in community documentation but is not recommended for data you care about. Use a KVM VM for TrueNAS if you are virtualising it in Proxmox.
What You Give Up Compared to a Dedicated NAS OS
Running NAS workloads on Proxmox, whether directly or via a TrueNAS VM, involves trade-offs compared to running TrueNAS or Unraid on bare metal:
- Drive health monitoring: TrueNAS and Unraid have built-in SMART monitoring dashboards with email alerts on drive errors. Proxmox installs smartmontools by default; smartd is enabled and checks supported disks every 30 minutes, emailing root when it detects errors or warnings. Its web UI can show per-disk SMART values, but it lacks a NAS-oriented health dashboard.
- Drive spin-down: Unraid's per-drive spin-down is a home NAS feature with no Proxmox equivalent. All drives attached to Proxmox spin continuously unless you configure hdparm or sdparm manually and schedule it.
- Power efficiency: Proxmox is not optimised for low-power idle states. Idle power varies with hardware, active services, storage activity and disk power-management settings; spinning down idle hard drives can reduce consumption where the configuration supports it.
- Consumer-friendly management: Every storage management task on Proxmox requires either the web UI (for VM-level operations) or SSH CLI work. TrueNAS and Unraid provide GUIs for share creation, user management, and quota setting.
When Proxmox Is the Right Choice
Proxmox makes sense for home NAS-adjacent use when your primary workload is virtual machines or containers and storage is secondary. If you are running a Windows VM for gaming, a development environment, a home server running multiple services in isolation, and you want all of that on one physical machine with storage available, Proxmox is a reasonable choice.
Proxmox also makes sense if you want to experiment with enterprise-grade technology for learning purposes. The HA clustering, live migration, and Ceph storage integration in Proxmox are technologies used in production data centres. Running them at home provides genuine learning value that translates to professional skills.
Proxmox is not the right choice if you want a straightforward home NAS for media storage and file sharing, or if you are new to Linux and want a managed experience. Start with TrueNAS Scale or Unraid for those use cases. Both have clear upgrade paths to Proxmox-based setups if your needs grow.
Proxmox vs Unraid vs TrueNAS: NAS Capability Comparison
| Proxmox VE | Unraid | TrueNAS Community Edition | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Built-in SMB sharing UI | No, manual smb.conf | Yes | Yes |
| Drive health dashboard | No, manual setup | Yes, built-in | Yes, built-in |
| Drive spin-down | No built-in NAS-style control; manual configuration | Yes, per-drive GUI setting | Yes, HDD Standby and APM controls |
| ZFS pool management UI | Basic via web UI | Supported through the WebGUI | Full-featured |
| Docker container management | LXC or Docker inside VM | Community Applications plugin | TrueNAS Apps (Docker/Docker Compose) |
| VM management | Primary strength; KVM and LXC | Built-in KVM/QEMU | Built-in KVM/QEMU |
| Data integrity (checksums) | Yes when using ZFS | Yes on ZFS or Btrfs pools; traditional XFS array disks do not provide data checksums | Yes, all ZFS data |
| Snapshots | ZFS snapshots; also VM snapshots | ZFS snapshots and VM snapshots | ZFS snapshots with scheduling |
| Power for home use (idle) | Varies by hardware, workload and disk power-management configuration | Varies by hardware, workload and disk power-management configuration | Varies by hardware, workload and disk power-management configuration |
| Complexity for home NAS use | High | Moderate | Moderate |
Australian hardware note: A common approach is to pass an HBA or storage controller through to the TrueNAS VM, but TrueNAS also documents passing individual hardware disks; controller passthrough requires VT-d or AMD-Vi. LSI 9207-8i, 9211-8i, and similar cards (flashed to IT mode) are available on eBay AU from $25-60 AUD used. These are the standard recommendation across the homelab community for ZFS passthrough because they expose drives directly without a RAID layer. Verify the card is in IT mode (not IR mode) before purchasing; IR mode adds a hardware RAID layer that interferes with ZFS.
Related reading: our NAS buyer's guide.
Free tools: Old PC vs NAS Calculator and ZFS vDev Calculator. No signup required.
Related reading: our NAS explainer.
Can Proxmox replace TrueNAS entirely?
For a technical user comfortable with Linux administration, yes. You can share ZFS datasets via Samba, configure SMART monitoring, set up snapshot tasks via cron, and manage everything through the CLI. You lose TrueNAS's GUI for these tasks, but the underlying functionality is equivalent.
Does Proxmox support ZFS RAIDZ?
Yes. Proxmox has native ZFS support and can create mirror, RAIDZ1, RAIDZ2, and RAIDZ3 pools during installation or via the web UI post-install. These use OpenZFS RAIDZ layouts, but available features, defaults and management behavior can differ by OpenZFS version and platform integration. The difference is management: Proxmox has a basic ZFS management interface in the web UI, while TrueNAS provides a more comprehensive NAS-oriented GUI for pool monitoring, scrubs, and snapshots.
Is Proxmox free?
Yes. Proxmox VE is open source and free to use without a subscription. The Proxmox enterprise repository requires a paid subscription and provides more heavily tested packages for production use; the free no-subscription repository has the same features and generally receives package updates earlier, with less validation. Home homelab builders use the no-subscription repository without any functional limitation. A pop-up at login reminds you of the subscription status but does not affect any features.
How much RAM does Proxmox need to run alongside TrueNAS?
Budget RAM for both systems independently. Proxmox overhead is minimal (1-2GB), but each VM and LXC container needs its own RAM allocation. TrueNAS requires at least 8GB RAM for basic operation, while additional memory depends on drive count, clients and enabled services. Proxmox requires memory for its OS and services plus each guest, so total host RAM should be sized for the actual storage and virtual-machine workloads.
Can Proxmox run Unraid as a VM?
Unraid 7.3 and later supports internal boot and TPM-based licensing, and Unraid's official installer is intended for Proxmox and other compatible virtual environments. Some homelab builders have done it, but it is unsupported, may break on Unraid updates, and defeats the advantage of Unraid's hardware flexibility. If you want Proxmox plus NAS, run TrueNAS inside Proxmox rather than Unraid.
Deciding between Proxmox, Unraid, and TrueNAS for your build? The full three-way comparison covers the right choice for each use case.