Can You Use Proxmox as a NAS? What Works and What Does Not

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, no drive health dashboard, and no SMART monitoring UI. 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.

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 datasets (equivalent to shared folders), install Samba via apt, configure smb.conf, and share the datasets over SMB to the rest of your network.

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. Every change (new share, changed permission, new drive) requires editing a configuration file via SSH. 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

The most popular homelab configuration among advanced users is Proxmox as the hypervisor with TrueNAS Scale running as a virtual machine. 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.

The requirements for this setup: an HBA card that supports PCIe passthrough (LSI SAS HBAs in IT mode are the standard recommendation), sufficient RAM for both Proxmox overhead and TrueNAS's ZFS ARC (32GB minimum for a serious build), and comfort managing two operating systems with separate web interfaces.

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. However, TrueNAS is not officially supported in LXC containers and the configuration requires non-standard kernel parameters and privilege escalation that create security and stability trade-offs. 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 has no equivalent. You add this via the smartmontools package and configure alerts manually.
• 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. An Unraid system with drives spun down and no active VMs consumes significantly less power than a comparable Proxmox system with drives spinning.
• 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.

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. Most homelab builders prefer running TrueNAS inside Proxmox rather than duplicating its functionality manually.

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 work identically to ZFS on TrueNAS or any other Linux system. 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 (for production stability and support) requires a paid subscription, but the free no-subscription repository receives all the same updates with a slight delay. 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 needs at minimum 8GB for its own use, ideally 16-32GB for ZFS ARC on a home-sized pool. A practical Proxmox plus TrueNAS build starts at 32GB total RAM: 16GB allocated to TrueNAS, remainder for Proxmox overhead and other VMs.

Can Proxmox run Unraid as a VM?

Running Unraid as a Proxmox VM is not officially supported by Lime Technology and creates licensing complications (Unraid licences are tied to the boot drive's USB GUID). 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.