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Storage & Backup6 min read15 March 2026Mihail Raileanu

TrueNAS Scale: Business File Storage for Irish SMEs

Dropbox and OneDrive are fine for individuals. Growing Irish businesses need something faster, cheaper, and under their own control. TrueNAS Scale is the answer most of our clients land on.

The problem with cloud-only file storage

Most Irish SMEs start with Microsoft OneDrive or Dropbox because they're easy. They stay on them because migrating is painful. But as headcount and data volumes grow, the cost picture changes dramatically.

A 10-person team on Microsoft 365 Business Standard pays around €140/month. At 20 people that's €280/month. The storage included is generous, but you're also paying for licences, email, Teams, and all the rest, not just storage. The moment you need more than 1 TB per user, you're on custom pricing.

More importantly, cloud storage is slow for large files over Irish broadband. Engineers moving CAD files, accountants working with large spreadsheets, or media teams handling video all feel this. A local NAS on a gigabit LAN is 10-20× faster for day-to-day work.

What is TrueNAS Scale?

TrueNAS Scale is an open-source network-attached storage (NAS) operating system built on Debian Linux. It's developed by iXsystems and is the enterprise-grade successor to FreeNAS. The "Scale" version (as opposed to TrueNAS Core, which is BSD-based) adds clustering, VMs, and container support.

For most Irish SMEs, the relevant features are:

ZFS: why the filesystem matters more than you think

Most people don't think about filesystems, but for business data they should. Traditional filesystems like NTFS or ext4 don't verify data integrity, a bit flip in a drive can silently corrupt a file. You'll never know until you try to open it.

ZFS checksums every block of data. If a disk returns corrupt data, ZFS detects the mismatch and automatically restores the correct data from a mirrored drive (assuming you have redundancy configured, which RAIT always does). This is called "self-healing" and it's not available on any other filesystem commonly used in SME storage.

How RAIT deploys TrueNAS Scale

Hardware selection

We size hardware based on your data volume and growth rate. A typical starting setup for a 5-15 person company is a small form-factor server (like a Supermicro or refurbished Dell PowerEdge) with 4-8 drives in a RAIDZ2 configuration (equivalent to RAID 6, tolerates two simultaneous drive failures).

Redundancy and snapshots

Every share we configure gets automatic hourly snapshots retained for 7 days, daily snapshots for 30 days, and weekly snapshots for 90 days. This means if a staff member accidentally deletes a year's worth of project files, you have a copy from 5 minutes ago.

Off-site backup

Local snapshots protect against accidental deletion and drive failure. They don't protect against fire, flood, or theft. We configure automated replication to either a second site (if you have one) or to Backblaze B2 cloud storage, currently the most cost-effective cloud backup for businesses in Ireland.

Active Directory integration

If your business uses Active Directory (typically via Windows Server or Azure AD), TrueNAS can join the domain. Staff access shares with their existing Windows credentials, and permissions are managed through the same AD groups you already use.

What does TrueNAS deployment cost in Ireland?

Hardware costs vary significantly by your capacity needs. A well-specified system for a 10-20 person company typically runs €800-€2,000 for the server and drives. TrueNAS Scale itself is free and open-source, no licence fees, ever.

RAIT's installation and configuration service starts from €599, which includes:

Ongoing support is available as part of our managed services plans, which include 24/7 monitoring, proactive alerts, and remote management.

Want proper centralised storage for your team?

RAIT designs and installs TrueNAS storage systems for Irish businesses. Fast local access, automated backups, and no monthly storage fees.

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