ZimaBoard 2 Overview – Single Board NAS Server with Intel N150 CPU – ZimaOS Overview

The ZimaBoard 2 is an fascinating single-board server powered by an Intel N150 and operating ZimaOS, a simplified NAS OS with a variety of options akin to Unraid.

The ZimaBoard 2 itself solely has restricted storage, so it’s not a lot use as a NAS by itself, but it surely has loads of ports for expandability, and you should buy equipment, together with a tough disk tray to show it right into a 2-bay NAS.

Because of the self-build nature of this, it isn’t as accessible as different NAS {hardware} akin to Synology, QNAP, Ugreen, and TerraMaster, however it’s moderately effectively priced in comparison with the massive model names, and I’ve been notably impressed with ZimaOS.

I used to be despatched the Mini NAS Equipment with 8GB of RAM and 32GB of eMMC storage, and I’ve run it with a 4TB Seagate IronWolf and a 256GB Kioxia NVMe drive fitted through the PCIe slot. That gave me an affordable concept of how the board behaves each as a small file server and as a normal Docker host, which is realistically how most individuals will use it. I already run a mixture of mini PCs on Proxmox alongside UniFi networking at house, so I used to be primarily fascinated by whether or not ZimaOS might substitute a few of that with one thing less complicated.

ZimaBoard 2 Specification

The N150 is the half that does many of the work right here, and it’s value being clear about what it’s. It’s a 4 core, 4 thread Alder Lake-N chip constructed completely from effectivity cores, with a 6 W base energy score and a 3.6 GHz increase. In Geekbench 6 it lands at roughly 1,250 single core and three,000 multi core, which places it someplace close to a mid-range laptop computer chip from a couple of years in the past for single threaded work and effectively behind something fashionable for multi-threaded work. The built-in UHD Graphics 730 has 24 execution models and helps {hardware} decoding for H.264, HEVC, VP9 and AV1, which issues for media serving.

That’s not a criticism, as it’s the appropriate class of chip for a low-power always-on server. It does set expectations, although. It is a machine for operating containers, serving recordsdata and dealing with a few transcodes, not for compiling code or operating massive language fashions.

ZimaBoard 2 Mini NAS Equipment / Begin Equipment

IceWhale sells the ZimaBoard 2 in three configurations, and the variations are value understanding earlier than you order, as a result of the equipment should not low-cost so as to add later.

The Board Solely choice is the naked board with its aluminium heatsink chassis, the facility provide and a mini DisplayPort to HDMI cable. It has each SATA ports and the PCIe slot, so it’s totally useful, however you might have nowhere to bodily mount drives.

The Starter Bundle provides the cabling you could really join storage, together with the SATA Y-cable that splits the board’s single SATA energy header for 2 drives.

The Mini NAS Equipment is the one I used to be despatched. It provides a metallic laborious disk tray that holds two 3.5in drives, a cooling fan that connects to the 4-pin header, and the upper rated 60 W energy provide wanted to spin up two mechanical drives. The tray bolts to the facet of the board and turns the entire thing into one thing that appears like a correct, if barely industrial, 2-bay NAS.

Design, Ports & Meeting

The meeting of the Mini NAS Equipment was essentially the most disappointing side of this evaluate. There are not any directions included. It isn’t terribly tough to determine, however I don’t perceive why any firm would assume that is acceptable. I ended up watching a YouTube video of one other reviewer assembling it, and he additionally expressed frustration.

The elements themselves are fantastic. The chassis is a single piece of finned aluminium that acts because the heatsink for the CPU, which is why the board is fanless in its customary type. Construct high quality is nice, the end is even, and it feels significantly extra strong than the plastic shells on most funds mini PCs. It measures 140 x 83 x 31 mm with out the drive tray, so it’s genuinely small.

Port choice is the robust level. On the rear you get two 2.5GbE RJ45 ports, two USB 3.1 Sort-A ports, a mini DisplayPort 1.4 output good for 4K at 60 Hz, and the 12 V barrel jack. The entrance edge carries two SATA III connectors with 12 V energy output alongside them, so drives are powered straight from the board quite than needing a separate provide. One facet exposes a PCIe 3.0 x4 slot.

Two 2.5GbE ports is extra helpful than it first seems. It allows you to run the board as a router or firewall with pfSense or OpenWrt, or preserve administration and storage site visitors on separate networks, or just bond the pair in case your swap helps it. I’ve 2.5GbE all through my UniFi setup, so I ran one port for normal entry and left the second free.

The mini DisplayPort output is the one port selection I might query. It really works, and the adapter is provided, however HDMI is what virtually everybody has at hand. Some reviewers have additionally reported that the bundled adapter didn’t work with their shows. Mine was fantastic, however it’s the form of factor you solely uncover if you end up making an attempt to get into the BIOS.

My different criticism considerations the fan within the NAS package. It’s quiet in use, however it’s one other factor to mount with no steering, and its presence quite undermines the fanless promoting level. As soon as fitted, temperatures drop considerably, so most individuals becoming mechanical drives will need it.

Storage and Growth Choices

The 32GB of eMMC is the weakest {hardware} specification, and it’s value understanding what you really get. After ZimaOS takes its share, my board reported a 17.7GB ZimaOS-HD quantity, of which about 2.7GB was used at first boot. That’s sufficient for the OS and a handful of container pictures, and never a lot else. When you set up one thing like Immich or Plex with a big metadata library, you will have these app directories on a separate drive.

The 64GB mannequin on the 1664 board offers you extra respiratory room, and with the 16GB of RAM it’s the model I might purchase if funds permits. RAM is soldered LPDDR5 and can’t be upgraded later, so this can be a choice you make as soon as.

For precise storage you might have three routes. The 2 SATA ports take 2.5in or 3.5in drives and are powered from the board. The PCIe 3.0 x4 slot takes both the ZimaBoard Twin M.2 NVMe adapter, supplying you with two NVMe drives, or any low-profile card you want. The USB ports will take exterior drives, although I might not construct a NAS round them.

The PCIe slot is the half that offers the ZimaBoard 2 its character. Nothing else at this worth allows you to match a 10GbE card, an HBA, or a low-profile GPU. The slot is open-ended and sits alongside the board quite than above it, so bodily clearance is workable, although something massive will want mounting outdoors the chassis. With 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes you might have roughly 3.9GB/s of bandwidth, which is lots for a pair of NVMe drives or a 10GbE adapter, however it’s shared, so don’t count on to saturate each directly.

ZimaOS Worth

ZimaOS does have some licensing prices, although they’re negligible in comparison with Unraid. And with any official {hardware} just like the ZimaBoard 2, it comes with the ZimaOS+ licence included.

On the time of writing, the free licence offers you the core options, with as much as 4 disks and three members.

The ZimaOS+ licence gives all options with limitless disks and customers for $29.

Within the characteristic comparability, each subscriptions appear to supply the identical options, however I assume the paid choice could have extra over time.

Contemplating how Unraid modified their subscription mannequin, I believe it’s value forking out the $29, simply to lock in all of the options in the long run.

For context, Unraid’s entry stage Starter licence is $49 and now solely consists of one yr of updates, after which you pay once more to maintain receiving them. A one-off $29 for limitless disks and customers seems to be cheap subsequent to that, and in the event you purchase Zima {hardware} you pay nothing in any respect.

ZimaOS vs CasaOS

The 2 are made by the identical firm, IceWhale, and so they get confused consistently, so it’s value separating them.

CasaOS is a software program layer that installs on prime of an current Linux distribution, normally Debian or Ubuntu. You convey your personal OS, run an set up script, and CasaOS offers you an internet dashboard and an app retailer that sits over Docker. It runs on x86-64 and ARM, so it really works fortunately on a Raspberry Pi or an outdated laptop computer, and it’s free and open supply with no licence tiers in any respect.

ZimaOS is an entire working system. It’s constructed with Buildroot, ships as a picture you write to disk, and the foundation filesystem is read-only and up to date over the air as an entire picture quite than via a bundle supervisor. It’s x86-64 solely.

The sensible variations observe from that. ZimaOS handles storage correctly, with a graphical RAID supervisor overlaying RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 and JBOD, disk well being reporting, and SMB share administration with per-user permissions. CasaOS has none of that natively, and you find yourself configuring mdadm and Samba by hand. ZimaOS additionally provides the digital machine supervisor, the backup instruments and the distant entry service that CasaOS lacks.

The trade-off is flexibility. As a result of the ZimaOS root filesystem is immutable, you can’t merely apt set up one thing and count on it to outlive a reboot. Something you wish to add has to go in a container or in one of many writable knowledge directories. If you’re the sort of one that likes to tinker on the command line, that restriction will irritate you, and CasaOS on prime of Debian offers you the liberty you need.

For a NAS, I might take ZimaOS each time. The read-only root is a characteristic quite than a limitation, as a result of it makes the system a lot more durable to interrupt and far simpler to get better. If you would like a general-purpose Linux field that occurs to run containers properly, CasaOS is the higher match.

ZimaOS vs Unraid

Unraid is the apparent comparability, and the 2 techniques resolve the storage downside in numerous methods.

Unraid’s complete motive for current is its array mannequin. Every knowledge disk is formatted independently and holds full recordsdata, with one or two devoted parity disks defending the lot. You possibly can combine a 4TB drive with a 12TB drive so long as your parity disk is at the least as massive as the largest knowledge drive, you may add disks separately with out rebuilding something, and in the event you lose extra drives than your parity can cowl you solely lose the information on these particular disks. For anybody recycling a pile of mismatched drives, that’s laborious to beat.

ZimaOS makes use of standard RAID. Within the Mix dialogue, you get RAID 5 described as balanced, needing at the least three disks and returning 66% or extra of the uncooked capability; RAID 1 described as secure, needing two disks and returning 50% or much less; and JBOD because the versatile choice. RAID 5 helps growth, RAID 1 doesn’t. Combined capability drives work, however the smallest drive dictates the usable capability per member, so that you waste house.

On the appliance facet the hole is narrower than it was once. Unraid has a big and mature neighborhood functions catalogue plus correct digital machine assist with GPU passthrough. ZimaOS ships with 146 apps within the official retailer on my set up, plus neighborhood shops akin to bigbeartechworld, and covers the standard suspects effectively. Unraid’s plug-in ecosystem is deeper, and its person share and cache drive dealing with is extra subtle.

The place ZimaOS wins is approachability and price. The interface is cleaner, the onboarding is much gentler, and it doesn’t ask you to grasp parity earlier than you may retailer a file. Unraid stays the stronger selection when you’ve got a stack of various drives or need critical virtualisation. ZimaOS is the higher selection in case you are constructing a two or 4 bay field with matched drives and need it working in twenty minutes.

ZimaOS Setup

Setup is the place ZimaOS makes its finest case. You join energy and community, discover the system in your community or plug in a show, and you might be taken via a brief web-based wizard.

The primary display screen welcomes you to the board, asks you to choose a language and settle for the privateness coverage. The second asks you to create a neighborhood account with a username and password. That’s it. There isn’t any cloud account requirement, no e-mail verification and no compelled sign-up, which is a welcome distinction to a number of of the mainstream NAS distributors who now push you in direction of a web based account earlier than you are able to do something.

You then get a brief introduction display screen overlaying the 4 primary concepts: combining laborious drives with RAID 0, 1 or 5, managing knowledge in Information, distant entry via the Zima Shopper, and including apps from the App Retailer. You possibly can leap straight to Information, the App Retailer, or the dashboard.

The dashboard itself is clear and darkish by default. Down the left you get the clock and date, a system panel displaying CPU and RAM use alongside bundle energy draw and temperature, a storage abstract with a well being indicator, and a community graph. The principle space carries notification playing cards and your app icons. After I connected my drives, a “Discovered a brand new system” card appeared itemizing the 4TB Seagate and the 256GB Kioxia NVMe with a Handle button, which is a wise little bit of design.

Storage configuration lives in Settings. The Create storage move gives two paths. Single use presents every bodily disk with its partitions and an Allow button, together with a Want Format warning if the prevailing filesystem shouldn’t be supported. Mix takes you to the RAID choice display screen described above. The entire course of took me a few minutes, and afterwards the dashboard reported a 4.27TB pool rather than the earlier 17.7GB eMMC quantity.

File sharing is equally easy. Proper-clicking a folder in Information offers you Obtain, Copy path, Get data, Migrate, Copy, Duplicate, Minimize, Rename, Star, Share through samba, Transfer to trash and Delete completely. Selecting Share through samba opens a dialogue with the folder title, storage location, a Time Machine toggle for Mac backups, and a member checklist the place every person will get Learn Solely or Learn & Write. As soon as created, the Handle Share dialogue exhibits you the precise paths to stick into Home windows Explorer and macOS Finder, with copy buttons subsequent to every.

That final element is a small factor, however it’s the form of small factor that separates good software program from sufficient software program. Telling a non-technical person to sort 192.168.1.16Documents, and giving them a button to repeat it, removes the necessity to Google (or ask AI questions).

Zima Shopper for Desktop

The Zima Shopper is a small desktop software for Home windows and macOS that does two jobs: it finds your ZimaOS system on the native community, and it establishes an encrypted peer-to-peer connection to it if you end up away from house.

The headline characteristic is that it mounts your ZimaOS storage as a neighborhood disk. Reasonably than manually mapping a community drive, the shopper presents the system in Explorer or Finder and allows you to work with the recordsdata as if they have been connected to your machine. Over the native community this labored effectively and efficiency was indistinguishable from a regular SMB mount.

The distant entry facet is the extra fascinating half. ZimaOS units up an encrypted peer-to-peer channel between the shopper and the system with none port forwarding, dynamic DNS or VPN configuration in your half. In my testing it linked reliably from outdoors the community with out me touching my firewall. That may be a actual comfort, notably for anybody who doesn’t wish to expose companies to the web or run their very own VPN.

I do run Tailscale on mine as effectively, partly out of behavior and partly as a result of I need the identical entry technique throughout every thing in my house lab, and Tailscale is accessible as a one-click app within the ZimaOS retailer. If you’re already operating a mesh VPN, you could discover the Zima Shopper redundant.

Two limitations are value noting. There isn’t any Linux shopper from IceWhale, which is an odd omission for a Linux-based NAS platform, though a neighborhood challenge exists. And ZimaOS prompts you to put in the shopper pretty persistently within the Information interface, together with a full-screen promotional panel the primary time you open an empty folder. That will get outdated rapidly.

Zima Shopper for Cell

The cellular shopper covers Android and iOS, and the model I used recognized itself as 1.6.x within the launch notes banner on the dashboard.

Functionally it does what you count on. You get file shopping and add, photograph backup from the cellphone’s digital camera roll, and distant entry via the identical encrypted channel because the desktop shopper. Media recordsdata stream moderately, and the app handles massive uploads over cellular knowledge with out falling over.

The photograph backup is the characteristic most individuals will use, and it really works, although it’s primary subsequent to Immich or the Synology Pictures app. It copies recordsdata to a folder quite than constructing an listed library with face recognition and search. If photograph administration issues to you, set up Immich from the app retailer and use its personal cellular app as a substitute. The Zima Shopper is best regarded as a file supervisor with backup connected than as a photograph answer.

Efficiency on the cellphone is okay, the interface is clear and it mirrors the net UI carefully sufficient that you’re not studying two totally different merchandise. It isn’t as polished as Synology’s cellular apps, which stay the benchmark, however it’s effectively forward of what TerraMaster and Ugreen have been delivery once I final regarded.

File Switch Efficiency

The 2 2.5GbE ports are the theoretical ceiling right here, and the board will get very near it. Utilizing iperf3 between the ZimaBoard 2 and a wired shopper on my UniFi community, each ports returned round 2.35 Gbit/s in every route, which is successfully line fee when you account for protocol overhead. Operating site visitors throughout each ports concurrently didn’t trigger any apparent CPU bottleneck, which is value noting as a result of some low-cost 2.5GbE implementations crumble underneath load.

Actual-world SMB efficiency relies upon completely on what you connect. With the 4TB Seagate IronWolf because the goal, massive sequential writes settled at round 150 MB/s and reads at round 170 MB/s, which is the drive’s restrict quite than the community’s. Shifting to the NVMe drive on the PCIe slot, massive file transfers sat between 270 and 285 MB/s, which is near the sensible most for a 2.5GbE hyperlink.

Small file efficiency is a special story, because it all the time is with SMB. A folder of a number of thousand small paperwork dropped throughput to someplace between 25 and 45 MB/s relying on file dimension distribution. That’s regular behaviour and never a fault of the board, however it’s value realizing in the event you plan to sync massive challenge folders quite than media recordsdata.

The onboard eMMC is the slowest hyperlink within the chain. Sequential reads of round 340 MB/s are respectable, however writes of round 200 MB/s and poor random efficiency make it unsuitable for something write-heavy. Deal with it as boot storage solely, and put your app knowledge and any database-backed companies on SATA or NVMe.

One sensible commentary: in case you are copying to a single mechanical drive, 2.5GbE is already extra community than you want. The twin ports solely repay in case you are utilizing NVMe storage, operating hyperlink aggregation, or serving a number of purchasers directly. Anybody planning to fill each SATA bays with spinning drives would get no profit from the 5GbE on the TerraMaster F2-425 both.

Basic Efficiency

As a Docker host the N150 is extra succesful than its specification sheet suggests, largely as a result of most self-hosted companies spend their lives doing nothing.

My operating configuration included Dwelling Assistant, Immich, Plex, SABnzbd and Tailscale, which the App Retailer reported as 5 put in apps. At idle with all 5 operating, the dashboard constantly confirmed CPU utilization between 2% and 4% and RAM utilization round 10% of the 7.51GB accessible to the system. That leaves an excessive amount of headroom, and I might be snug operating twice that variety of light-weight containers on the 8GB mannequin.

RAM is the restrict you’ll hit first quite than CPU. Eight gigabytes disappears rapidly when you add something with a database behind it, and since the reminiscence is soldered you can’t do something about it. Immich particularly is memory-hungry when it’s operating machine studying jobs on a photograph library, and Dwelling Assistant with a couple of integrations and a recorder database will take a gentle chew. When you intend to run greater than a handful of companies, the 16GB mannequin is value the additional cash.

Underneath sustained all-core load the image modifications. Operating stress exams, the bundle temperature climbed into the low 90s Celsius and the CPU throttled again from its 3.6 GHz increase to round 2.3 to 2.5 GHz, the place it stabilised. The chassis itself turned genuinely scorching to the contact. That’s anticipated behaviour for a passively cooled 10 W half in an aluminium case, and it’s the motive the NAS package features a fan. With the fan fitted, idle temperatures sat within the excessive 20s Celsius on my unit and sustained load temperatures stayed effectively away from the throttling level.

For transcoding, the UHD Graphics 730 handles {hardware} decoding of H.264, HEVC, VP9 and AV1, and {hardware} encoding of H.264 and HEVC via Fast Sync. In apply which means one 4K HEVC to 1080p transcode runs comfortably, and two will normally work if the supply bitrates are wise. Software program transcoding shouldn’t be value trying on 4 effectivity cores.

Thermals and Noise

With out the fan, the ZimaBoard 2 is silent. The aluminium chassis handles idle and light-weight hundreds with out issue, and for a board operating a couple of containers and serving recordsdata it can by no means grow to be an issue.

With mechanical drives fitted, the noise equation modifications anyway. My 4TB IronWolf is audible in a quiet room, and the provided fan provides little or no on prime of that. In a cabinet or a rack it’s a non-issue. On a desk beside you, the drives will trouble you earlier than the fan does.

The one configuration I might keep away from is operating the board passively inside an enclosed cupboard with sustained load. The heatsink depends on ambient airflow, and in a sealed house it can throttle. Match the fan.

ZimaOS Apps and Options

The App Retailer is the a part of ZimaOS I’ve been most impressed with. My set up listed 146 functions within the official ZimaOS retailer, sorted into Media, Productiveness, Dwelling, Networking, AI, Finance, Social, Developer and Others, with a search field and a Uncover part. You too can add neighborhood shops, and I added bigbeartechworld, which brings in an extra substantial catalogue.

Set up is genuinely one click on. Choose an app, press Set up, and ZimaOS pulls the container, units wise defaults for ports and volumes, and provides an icon to your dashboard. There’s an Set up Customized App choice for something not within the retailer, which accepts a Docker Compose file, so you aren’t restricted to {the catalogue}.

The Media class alone covers nzbfast, PodFetch, Audiobookshelf, Autobrr, Bazarr, Calibre-web, Deluge, Emby with and with out Nvidia GPU assist, Embystat, emulatorjs, FileFlows, Gopeed, HandBrake, Immich, Jackett, JDownloader2, Jellyfin, Jellyseerr, Kavita, Komga, Lazylibrarian, Lidarr and extra. Elsewhere you get AdGuard Dwelling, Precise Finances, AnythingLLM, Cloudflared, ESPHome, Excalidraw, FileBrowser, FreshRSS, Gitea, Glances, Grafana, Dwelling Assistant, Homebridge, Jenkins, Label Studio, Langflow, LibreChat, Logseq, MariaDB and a protracted tail of others.

Updates are dealt with from a single My Apps display screen with an Replace all button, which is a type of high quality of life particulars that Docker Compose customers find yourself scripting themselves. My set up had updates ready for all 5 of my apps inside a couple of weeks, so {the catalogue} is being maintained.

The principle weak point is identical as any curated retailer: you might be trusting IceWhale’s packaging. Some apps expose fewer configuration choices than you’ll get operating the container your self, and in the event you want an uncommon atmosphere variable you’ll find yourself within the customized app route anyway.

Backup Instrument

The Backup app handles three separate jobs, and it’s value separating them.

The primary is backing up units to the ZimaBoard. Time Machine assist is constructed into the SMB share dialogue as a easy toggle, so turning a folder right into a Mac backup goal takes two clicks. Home windows and cellphone backups run via the Zima Shopper.

The second is backing up the ZimaBoard itself to some place else. You possibly can push knowledge to cloud storage together with Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive, or to a different SMB goal. I examined a scheduled job to a different NAS on my community and it ran with out points.

The third is migrating in from an current NAS. ZimaOS can hook up with a Synology or different SMB supply and pull knowledge throughout, which lowers the barrier significantly in case you are transferring off one other platform.

What’s lacking is versioned snapshot assist of the type ZFS offers you on TrueNAS. ZimaOS documentation mentions ZFS, but it surely was not uncovered within the storage interface on my set up, and the RAID choices are all Btrfs or ext4 primarily based. For cover in opposition to ransomware or unintentional deletion, you might be counting on a duplicate elsewhere quite than on native snapshots. That may be a actual hole in contrast with TrueNAS or Synology.

Downloads & Media Administration

When you use Usenet or BitTorrent, every thing you want is within the retailer. SABnzbd, nzbfast, Deluge, qBittorrent, Jackett, Autobrr, Gopeed and JDownloader2 are all one click on away, and the total Sonarr and Radarr stack is accessible alongside Bazarr for subtitles and Jellyseerr for requests.

I ran SABnzbd on mine, and the N150 has greater than sufficient efficiency for par2 restore and unpacking at full 2.5GbE obtain speeds. This was one of many areas the place the board stunned me, as a result of unpacking is genuinely CPU-intensive and I anticipated it to grow to be a bottleneck. It didn’t.

The one factor to plan round is the eMMC. Obtain purchasers write consistently, and pointing an incomplete downloads folder at 32GB of eMMC is an efficient approach to each fill it and put on it out. Put your obtain directories on SATA or NVMe storage from the outset.

Plex

Plex installs from the shop and is configured via its traditional net interface. {Hardware} transcoding via Fast Sync works, although you’ll need a Plex Go to make use of it.

In use, direct play is easy and {hardware} transcoding of a single 4K HEVC stream to 1080p ran with out buffering. Two simultaneous transcodes labored with 1080p sources however turned unreliable with two 4K sources at excessive bitrate. When you’ve got a family that commonly watches a number of distant streams, you’ll need one thing with extra graphics efficiency.

Jellyfin can also be accessible, and since its {hardware} acceleration is free, it’s value contemplating in case you are not already invested in Plex. Emby is there too, together with builds with Nvidia GPU assist, which is barely related in the event you use the PCIe slot for a graphics card.

Plex’s library scanning and metadata work is the place the eMMC exhibits its limits once more. Preserve the Plex software knowledge listing on sooner storage and the expertise improves noticeably.

Immich

Immich is the self-hosted Google Pictures various, and it’s the app I might level most individuals in direction of if leaving a cloud photograph service is the rationale they’re shopping for a NAS.

It installs in a single click on and its personal cellular apps deal with the digital camera roll backup correctly, with computerized add, background sync and the flexibility to release house on the cellphone as soon as recordsdata are safely saved. The net interface offers you a timeline, map view, albums, sharing and search.

The machine studying options are the place the N150 struggles. Face recognition, object detection and good search all run on the CPU right here, and the preliminary indexing move on a big library takes a very long time. I might let it run in a single day and never fear about it, since it’s a one-off job, however don’t count on the responsiveness you get from a machine with a discrete GPU. As soon as indexing is full, day-to-day shopping and search are fantastic.

Reminiscence is the opposite consideration. Immich’s machine studying container is the one hungriest factor I ran on the board, and on the 8GB mannequin it’s the primary argument for stepping as much as 16GB.

Dwelling Assistant

Dwelling Assistant is accessible as a one-click set up, and given how a lot good house package I run, this was the app I used to be most fascinated by.

The container model installs cleanly and runs effectively. CPU utilization is minimal, and the N150 handles a considerable variety of integrations and automations with out effort. The net interface is responsive and I noticed no efficiency distinction in contrast with operating it on a devoted mini PC.

The caveat is that that is Dwelling Assistant Container, not Dwelling Assistant Working System, so you don’t get the Add-on retailer. Issues like Zigbee2MQTT, ESPHome, Mosquitto and Node-RED need to be put in as separate containers quite than as add-ons. ZimaOS does have ESPHome in its personal retailer, and the others are all accessible as customary Docker pictures, so nothing is out of attain, however you might be wiring it collectively your self quite than urgent a button within the Dwelling Assistant interface.

USB passthrough for Zigbee or Z-Wave sticks works, for the reason that board has two USB 3.1 ports, however configuring it requires enhancing the container settings quite than a graphical toggle. In case your good house setup is already container-based you’ll discover this acquainted. If you’re coming from Dwelling Assistant on a Raspberry Pi with HAOS, it’s a step backwards in comfort.

Alternatively, the ZVM digital machine supervisor allows you to run Dwelling Assistant OS in a VM, which restores the add-on retailer at the price of some reminiscence overhead. On an 8GB board that may be a tight match alongside the rest.

NextCloud

Nextcloud is the apparent selection if you would like a full file sync and collaboration platform quite than simply SMB shares, and it’s accessible within the retailer.

It really works, and as soon as operating it offers you the acquainted Nextcloud expertise with file sync purchasers for each platform, calendar, contacts, and the Workplace doc enhancing that makes it helpful for something past storage.

It’s also the heaviest factor you may moderately run on this {hardware}. Nextcloud desires a correct database, a PHP stack and an internet server, and it advantages enormously from Redis caching. On an N150 with 8GB, it’s usable however not quick, and the net interface can really feel sluggish when a number of customers are lively. Put the information listing and the database on NVMe quite than eMMC and it improves significantly.

For most individuals, the mix of SMB shares for bulk storage, Immich for pictures and the Zima Shopper for distant entry covers what Nextcloud would do, with far much less overhead. I might solely set up Nextcloud right here in the event you really need the doc collaboration or the groupware options.

Digital Machines with ZVM

ZVM is the built-in digital machine supervisor, and its presence on a tool at this worth is notable. The N150 helps each VT-x and VT-d, so {hardware} virtualisation and system passthrough can be found.

In apply it’s best used sparingly. 4 effectivity cores and 8GB of RAM don’t go away a lot room for a digital machine alongside your containers, and the interface is straightforward in contrast with Proxmox, which is what I take advantage of for virtualisation elsewhere. It’s there in the event you want a Home windows VM for one particular process, or if you would like Dwelling Assistant OS with its add-on retailer, however I might not purchase this board planning to run a number of VMs.

PeerDrop sits alongside it on the dashboard and handles direct peer-to-peer file transfers between units, just like AirDrop or LocalSend. It’s a small characteristic however a genuinely helpful one for transferring a file to a cellphone with out establishing a share.

Energy Draw

Energy consumption is the rationale to purchase a machine like this quite than repurposing an outdated desktop, so it’s value being exact about what I measured.

The ZimaOS dashboard studies CPU bundle energy straight, and at idle with my 5 apps operating it sat between 2.6 W and a pair of.8 W, with a reported temperature of 26 to 29C with the fan fitted. That determine is the processor bundle solely, not the entire system.

On the wall, the board alone with solely the eMMC drew slightly underneath 10 W at idle. Including the 256GB NVMe drive pushed that to round 11 W. Including the 4TB IronWolf took idle consumption to roughly 21 to 23 W with the drive spinning, which is completely the drive’s contribution quite than the board’s.

Underneath load the numbers keep modest. Sustained CPU stress took the entire system to round 25 W with out drives connected, and peak draw throughout simultaneous drive spin-up and CPU load reached the excessive 30s. The provided 60 W energy provide on the NAS package has loads of margin.

To place that in context, at an electrical energy fee of 25p per kWh, operating the board with a single mechanical drive at round 22 W constantly prices roughly £48 a yr. Operating it as a diskless container host at 10 W prices round £22 a yr. These are figures I’m snug with for an always-on system, and so they evaluate effectively with the 30 to 40 W {that a} repurposed desktop would sometimes draw doing the identical work.

Spinning down idle drives will scale back that additional, although ZimaOS doesn’t expose drive spin-down timing as prominently as Synology’s DSM does.

Worth and Various Choices

You should buy straight from zimaspace.com or Amazon UK / Amazon US.

On zimaspace.com, pricing is as follows:

• ZimaBoard 2 Board Solely / 8GB RAM / 32GB eMMC Storage – $339
• ZimaBoard 2 Board Solely / 16GB RAM / 64GB eMMC Storage – $399
• ZimaBoard 2 Starter Bundle / 8GB RAM / 32GB eMMC Storage – $399 / $379
• ZimaBoard 2 Starter Bundle / 16GB RAM / 64GB eMMC Storage – $459.00 / $449.00
• ZimaBoard 2 Mini NAS Equipment / 8GB RAM / 32GB eMMC Storage – $469.00 / $449.00
• ZimaBoard 2 Mini NAS Equipment / 16GB RAM / 64GB eMMC Storage – $529.00 / $519.00

Based mostly on the ZimaBoard 2 Mini NAS Equipment / 8GB RAM / 32GB package I used to be despatched, the UK worth can be £353, which is £40 cheaper than the Amazon UK worth, although, in concept, you need to pay import charges (I doubt this can occur).

On Amazon UK, the pricing is:

• ZimaBoard 2 8GB – £320
• ZimaBoard 2 16GB – £391
• ZimaBoard 2 8GB Mini NAS – £393
• ZimaBoard 2 16GB Mini NAS – £455

When you solely get the board solely, you may later add the opposite bits:

• HDD Tray – £50
• ZimaBoard Twin M.2 NVME SSD Adapter – £22
• ZimaBoard SATA Y-Cable ZimaBlade – £13

Competing NAS choices embody:

• Beelink ME Professional 2 – N150 / 16GB / 1TB SSD / Helps 3x M.2 + 2×3.5in – £419
• Terramaster F2-425 – N150 / 8GB / 5GbE / Helps 2x M.2 + 2×3.5in – £332
• UGREEN NASync DXP2800 GT – AMD Ryzen Embedded R2514 / 10GbE / 2x M.2 + 2×3.5in – £413

Worth for Cash

Based mostly on the above choices, the ZimaBoard 2 Mini NAS Equipment prices greater than the TerraMaster F2-425, has slower 2.5GbE, and requires you to assemble the NAS.

The ZimaBoard does have some benefits, although. ZimaOS is superior to TOS, and I might say it’s higher than the Ugreen UGOS as effectively. There are way more apps to put in, and the UI is way nicer.

You possibly can set up UNRAID, and even ZimaOS, on the above choices, however ZimaOS will set you again one other $30, or UNRAID is $49 however solely consists of one yr of updates now.

The ZimaBoard 2 additionally has the benefit of with the ability to use the PCIe port; in the event you use the Twin M.2 NVME SSD, it offers you an identical storage choices as above, however you would add a GPU, which supplies it much more versatility.

If you’re snug putting in your personal OS, I might say that the choice choices are higher total, however I believe ZimaBoard 2 has a sure attraction to it and is an efficient choice for individuals who wish to tinker with issues.

The Beelink ME Professional 2 is the one which makes the ZimaBoard 2 look costly on paper. For £419 you get the identical N150, double the RAM, a 1TB SSD included, and three M.2 slots in a significantly extra completed enclosure. What it doesn’t provide you with is the PCIe slot, and its M.2 slots run at decreased lane counts. The TerraMaster F2-425 undercuts every thing at £332 with 5GbE networking, which is the higher selection if uncooked file serving velocity is your precedence and you plan to switch TOS with one thing else.

The UGREEN DXP2800 GT is essentially the most full bundle of the three alternate options, and its AMD Ryzen Embedded chip is considerably extra succesful than the N150 for transcoding and virtualisation. UGOS has improved significantly, although I nonetheless discover its app catalogue skinny subsequent to the ZimaOS retailer.

The place the ZimaBoard 2 justifies itself is within the flexibility of that PCIe slot and the standard of ZimaOS. If neither of these issues to you, one of many alternate options will serve you higher for much less cash.

Professionals and Cons

What I appreciated:

• ZimaOS is the very best simplified NAS working system I’ve used, with a genuinely good app retailer
• PCIe 3.0 x4 slot for NVMe, 10GbE or a low profile GPU, which nothing else at this worth gives
• Twin 2.5GbE ports that each hit near line fee
• Low idle energy draw of underneath 10 W for the board itself
• Stable aluminium chassis with fanless operation in its customary type
• No cloud account required throughout setup
• ZimaOS+ licence included with the {hardware}

What might be higher:

• No meeting directions in any respect with the Mini NAS Equipment, which is inexcusable
• Soldered RAM means 8GB is a everlasting restrict on the cheaper mannequin
• 32GB of eMMC leaves solely about 17.7GB usable
• Mini DisplayPort quite than HDMI
• Thermal throttling underneath sustained load with out the fan fitted
• No snapshot assist and restricted account safety choices in ZimaOS
• Costlier than higher specified alternate options such because the TerraMaster F2-425

General

My total opinion is a bit combined, as that is basically two critiques: one for ZimaOS, which I believe is excellent, and one other for the {hardware}, which I believe is OK.

ZimaOS is the half I might advocate with out hesitation. It manages the tough trick of being easy sufficient for somebody who has by no means run a server whereas nonetheless giving skilled customers Docker Compose imports, SSH entry and a digital machine supervisor. The app retailer is broad, the storage administration is obvious, and the distant entry works with none community configuration. Positioned alongside TerraMaster’s TOS or Ugreen’s UGOS, it’s the higher product, and at $29 for a lifetime licence it’s significantly cheaper than Unraid.

The {hardware} is more durable to be keen about. It’s effectively made, the port choice is considerate, and the PCIe slot offers it a flexibility that nothing else on this worth bracket can match. In opposition to that, the soldered reminiscence, the small eMMC, the lacking directions and the worth relative to extra full alternate options all depend in opposition to it.

If you would like a completed NAS that works out of the field, purchase a TerraMaster or a Ugreen and be finished with it. If you would like a small, low-power, expandable x86 server that you may level at no matter challenge takes your curiosity, and also you worth software program that stays out of your approach, the ZimaBoard 2 makes an affordable case for itself. I might purchase the 16GB mannequin quite than the 8GB one, and I might funds for an NVMe drive on day one.

I’m James, a UK-based tech fanatic and the Editor and Proprietor of Mighty Gadget, which I’ve proudly run since 2007. Keen about all issues expertise, my experience spans from computer systems and networking to cellular, wearables, and good house units.

As a health fanatic who loves operating and biking, I even have a eager curiosity in fitness-related expertise, and I take each alternative to cowl this area of interest on my weblog. My various pursuits permit me to convey a singular perspective to tech running a blog, merging life-style, health, and the newest tech traits.

In my tutorial pursuits, I earned a BSc in Info Programs Design from UCLAN, earlier than advancing my studying with a Grasp’s Diploma in Computing.

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