Need advice on my homelab architecture — Proxmox + ZFS vs TrueNAS

Hey everyone, I'm rebuilding/expanding my home lab and I'd really appreciate some opinions from people who have actually run these setups long-term.

I'm mainly trying to decide where NAS/ZFS should live and how I should split my services between two PCs.

My hardware

Server 1 — currently running Proxmox

– CPU: Intel Core i7-9700K

– Motherboard: Gigabyte Z390 AORUS PRO WiFi

– RAM: 16 GB DDR4-3600 (2×8 GB)

– Storage: 512 GB ADATA SX8200PNP NVMe

– PSU: Antec 650W

– CPU cooler: Paladin 400

– Case: Cooler Master MB511

– iGPU: Intel UHD 630

This machine is already running Proxmox VE.

Currently:

– Home Assistant OS VM

– Technitium DNS LXC

The 512 GB NVMe is basically intended for Proxmox/VMs/application storage.

I can upgrade this machine to 32 GB RAM if necessary.

—

Server 2 — currently spare

– CPU: Intel Core i5-7600K

– Motherboard: ASUS PRIME B250M-A

– RAM: 16 GB DDR4

– Storage: 128 GB SATA SSD

– iGPU: Intel HD 630

– GPU available but not installed: GTX 960 2 GB

This machine is not currently running anything.

I originally had an i5-2500K system with a 3 TB HDD that I was considering using as the NAS/PBS machine, but unfortunately that system is now completely non-booting, so I'm working with the two machines above.

What I want to run

Eventually I'd like to have:

– NAS / ZFS storage

– Immich

– Jellyfin

– *arr stack (Sonarr/Radarr/etc.)

– Download clients

– Frigate

– Home Assistant

– Technitium DNS

– Proxmox Backup Server

– Possibly some other self-hosted services later

I also want the NAS to store things like:

– Immich photos/videos

– Jellyfin media

– *arr downloads/media

– Frigate recordings

– General files/backups

I'm particularly interested in ZFS, snapshots, datasets, redundancy, and eventually having proper backups.

The architecture I was originally considering

My initial idea was:

i7-9700K

→ Proxmox

→ Home Assistant

→ Technitium

→ Immich

→ future Frigate

→ possibly PBS VM

i5-7600K

→ TrueNAS bare metal

→ ZFS/NAS

→ Jellyfin

→ *arr stack

Immich would keep its application/database workloads on the 9700K's NVMe while storing the actual photo/video library on the NAS.

Jellyfin would use the i5-7600K's Intel iGPU/Quick Sync.

But now I'm wondering if TrueNAS is even necessary

I came across this discussion:

"Reddit discussion about running ZFS/NAS directly on Proxmox" (https://reference-url-citation.invalid/0)

One of the users runs ZFS directly on Proxmox and uses Proxmox itself as the NAS, with Samba/NFS and scripts/cron/email notifications rather than putting TrueNAS in a VM.

The interesting part for me is avoiding another abstraction layer.

So I'm now considering something like:

Option A — TrueNAS bare metal

i5-7600K

→ TrueNAS

→ ZFS

→ SMB/NFS

→ Jellyfin + *arr apps

i7-9700K

→ Proxmox

→ HA

→ Technitium

→ Immich

→ Frigate

→ etc.

—

Option B — Proxmox + ZFS directly

i7-9700K

→ Proxmox

→ ZFS pool

→ SMB/NFS

→ HA / Technitium / Immich / Frigate / other VMs/LXCs

i5-7600K

→ Jellyfin + *arr + other workloads

—

Option C — TrueNAS VM on Proxmox

i7-9700K

→ Proxmox

→ TrueNAS VM with disk/controller passthrough

→ ZFS/NAS

→ other VMs/LXCs

i5-7600K

→ Jellyfin / *arr / additional services

I'm less interested in this option at the moment because I'm wondering whether I'm just adding complexity by virtualizing the NAS.

What would you do with these two PCs?

I'm especially interested in hearing from people who have actually used Proxmox + ZFS directly as their NAS.

A few questions:

1. Would you run ZFS directly on the Proxmox host and use SMB/NFS, or would you still use TrueNAS?

2. If using Proxmox directly as the NAS, would you run Samba/NFS directly on the Proxmox host, or put the file-sharing services in an LXC?

3. Is there any significant downside to having Proxmox itself manage the ZFS pool?

4. For my particular hardware, would you make the 9700K the Proxmox/ZFS machine and the 7600K the application/media machine, or the other way around?

5. Does it make sense to keep Immich on the 9700K with its database/application data on NVMe while storing the actual library on a ZFS NAS?

6. Would you put Jellyfin + *arr on the 7600K and use its Intel iGPU for Quick Sync?

7. How would you approach Frigate? I'd probably want its database/config on SSD and recordings on the NAS.

8. Where would you put PBS in this setup? I understand that a PBS datastore on the same physical machine/storage as the thing being backed up isn't a real disaster-recovery solution.

9. If I eventually buy another cheap machine specifically for PBS, would that change how you'd design the rest of the setup?

10. Most importantly: what am I overlooking?

I'm not particularly concerned about having a fancy GUI if Proxmox + ZFS can give me the functionality I actually need. I'm happy to learn ZFS CLI and write some scripts if that results in a simpler and more reliable architecture.

At the same time, if there are good reasons why TrueNAS is worth having for this use case, I'd definitely like to hear them.

I'm still at the architecture stage, so I'd rather change the design now than migrate everything later.

Thanks!