deputyOS vs TrueNAS SCALE
TrueNAS is storage-first with apps bolted on; deputyOS is assistant-first with no storage ambitions. They pair better than they compete.
Last reviewed
Short answer: If you need storage, use TrueNAS; it is better at that than anything deputyOS will ever be. Run deputyOS beside it — mount the shares and let each do its job.
Where TrueNAS SCALE is the better choice
- ZFS: checksummed, self-healing storage with snapshots and replication
- Genuinely excellent backup and data-integrity guarantees
- Mature app catalogue and VM support alongside the storage role
- Handles bulk data — media, archives, shares — which deputyOS does not
- Long production track record in both home and business settings
Where deputyOS is the better choice
- Purpose-built for AI assistants rather than running them as an app
- Fleet management across several machines
- Remote access per device without exposing the storage server
- Air-gapped tier with baked model weights
- Runs on hardware far smaller than a NAS — a Pi, a mini-PC, a VPS
Storage-first versus assistant-first
TrueNAS SCALE is a storage operating system that also runs apps. ZFS is its centre of gravity, and ZFS is genuinely excellent: checksummed data, self-healing on scrub, cheap snapshots, and replication that works.
deputyOS has no storage story of that kind at all. It does not do RAID, does not do ZFS, and is not where your media library should live.
Why they pair well
deputyOS supports mounting SMB and NFS shares, and every mount is reviewable and revocable from the console. The natural arrangement is TrueNAS holding the data and deputyOS holding the assistant, with the assistant mounting what it needs.
That also keeps a useful boundary: an assistant with an agent loop that can run commands is not something most people want running on the box holding their only copy of everything.
Running the assistant on TrueNAS instead
You can. TrueNAS runs Ollama and Open WebUI as apps, and for a single machine that is a reasonable setup with fewer moving parts.
What you give up is what the appliance provides: a hardened baseline you did not configure, atomic updates with rollback, tunnelled remote access without exposing the NAS, and a fleet view if you ever run more than one.
truenas is a supported deputyOS target via a community template, so running it as
a VM on the same box is also an option — though giving your storage server an
agentic workload is a decision worth making deliberately.