if you're anything like me you are rightfully tired of paying for monthly
subscriptions it feels like every day there's something new that's demanding a
monthly fee whether it's a TV show you like your car's heated seats or a piece
of software that you need for work the corporate meta these days is you own
nothing you pay forever and you could
just lie there and take it or you can do what we do and use your hyper nerd
powers to push back you can load your
media into a private Netflix with Plex you can automate your home with home
assistant heck you can even host your own cloud photo backup with image the
problem is all of those things require at least some storage and more
critically some knowhow when it comes to setup and maintenance now I'm sure that
most of you are more than capable of figuring it out and you might even enjoy
the process but if you like me you probably also enjoy relaxing at the end
of the day without your family complaining that the garage doors won't open and that Plex is buffering
what if there was a way to take that complexity wrap it up in a nice little
package or interface if you will and make it so that anyone could be their
home's Tech hero okay maybe not anyone
but the truth is I have no idea exactly how user-friendly it is because even
though I invested $250,000 into the idea that became hexos
over two years ago I have literally
never tried it until today like right
right now Jake is it any good I'm not
telling you before our sponsor ODU don't let mismatching apps
slow down your business use ODU to make your life easier check out their
all-in-one business Suite using our Link in the video
description the story of why I decided to invest in this is actually kind of
funny John from their team reached out to let me know hey I'm leaving un raid
I'm going to embark on this crazy Journey would you like to be an angel investor and I kind of went yeah thank
you so much for thinking of me but I'm out then the very next weekend I burned
an entire evening fighting with a new trunz setup and well one thing led to
another and here it is to uh answer your
earlier question it's still pretty beta so there is a lot that's missing but
what's available today in the Early Access version they're launching it's
actually pretty promising exciting maybe but we should probably give everyone a
quick tldr before we get into that cool
hexos what you're seeing on the screen right now is an operating system like
say Windows but purpose built for running your own storage and your own
apps on your own Hardware whether that's at home or a small business now none of
that is special network attached storage or Nas operating system systems have
been around for longer than I have and we have featured similar software like
traz and unraid numerous times over the years the Special Sauce is that hexos is
designed to be easy to use even if you're not a jake what's that supposed
to mean it means show me how to set it
up nerd well you've got your USB right here have at her all got it yeah off the
floor now we could have used a fancy pre-built server like we usually do but
we figured it'd be better to show it off with something from eBay like this
Optiplex 3050 we got for 45 bucks it's got solid quad core bones but it's
missing storage and only had a 1 gig Network Port so we picked up a used 256
gig SSD to boot from an Intel 10 gig network card and a pair of 4 TB C8 Nas
hard drives which fit as long as you're willing to get a little bit creative
with the stubby from Mt store.com that brings our total before accounting for
bulk storage to a nice $69 nice we're going to have links to
those down in the video description if you want to build something similar now
we've already updated the BIOS and if you're rehabbing an old machine like
this it is a good idea for you to do the same install-wise then it's the same as
any other OS plug in a bootable installer USB you can make one of those
with the iso image and a tool like Rufus or etcher hold your system setup key
configure to select your USB boot device restart and you should be good to go oh
there is one thing if you want to run virtual machines or apps you're also
going to want to make sure that virtualization is enabled while you're in the system setup once you're in the
installer hit install select your desired boot storage administrative user
enter a password and hit install when that's done remove the USB installer and
reboot pretty simple but it will hopefully get even simpler in the future
how could that be simpler oh you're actually asking yeah I actually just
going to remove steps oh cool all right
with the system booted head to the hexos cloud dashboard and as long as your
system and you are on the same network it should automatically detect it and be
ready for setup hit claim enter the password you said earlier and this is it
I finally get to look at hexos and since
I know you guys are going to ask yes a self hostable app for the dashboard will
be available in the future but for now it's it's Cloud only save on magnetic
Cable Management screwdrivers and more at LTT stores Black Friday sale deals
are still going on now so check them out at the link below or at lm. g/ Black
Friday now you'll probably notice away that everything is pretty guided it does
compatibility checks for you to ensure that your Hardware is optimal and it
makes it easy to see if everything is working click on the hard drives let's
see okay what do we got there oh yeah it's got the USB we don't need that
anymore oh yeah we can take that didn't follow our own instructions oops okay
and here's my storage yeah so it should
automatically set up your drives in the most optimal configuration which for us
you can see with only two 4 TB drives
is either a raid Z1 or a mirror I think
it's a mirror yep okay so that allows one of our drives to fail without any
data loss which actually does a really good job of communicating extremely
clearly yeah one drive can fail 4 tabes usable it's great what's cool is it'll
even create separate pools for ssds and hard drives if you have both so you can
put performance sensitive data like uh virtual discs for example on your ssds
and then all the rest of it on your cheaper mechanical storage it is worth
noting that if we had more drives which we could have if we threw an inexpensive
uh HBA card into our server it would configure it differently according to
ZFS best practices so if we had like five or six drives yeah but six drives
would probably do a raid Z2 so we could lose two without losing any data fun
fact by the way if you're not trying to do anything custom like setting a
non-standard array layout which by the way will be supported in future releases
all you have to do is click a few times click continue yeah I confirm that these
will be deleted I create a name for the server your dad's Dell uh confirm that
you're going to wipe the drives and that's it you've got your very own
network attached storage server ready to go yeah that means owning your data in a
way that is not annoying to manage kind of awesome in theory but what can it do
wait is it done already yes oh wow yeah that's pretty cool yeah huh this is this
is actually surprisingly friendly all of the features are
definitely not there but what is there is is polished so this is the dashboard
right hey you got your processor that's doing stuff you got your memory that's
also doing stuff yeah very clearly labels the speed that your networking is
operating at I didn't notice that that's cute yeah which one is that the one that's working yeah oh look at the
little graph right there nice most importantly our
storage Okay cool so what do we got here
uh we can expand this no we can't we don't have extra drives oh oh that kind
of expansion yeah I thought it meant expand the look at it the the view
drives you can do that okay cool I can view drives nice I think you broke D
break it I I think I broke it already oh you changed the networking settings oh
dude dude this is why I'm such a good beta
tester did I click apply oh yeah no I I totally clicked up you C 100% clicked
right that's why there was an alias there cool all right okay we're back in
the Das trying storage we're trying to look at the storage yeah I don't know
how we ended up there view drives hey look at that we got some drives let's
go hey healthy device ID temperature a
lot of parts of the dashboard like this have basic functionality but there is
stuff that's going to be added on later like eventually you'll be able to go hey
run a smart test which is checking the drive's health or see your old smart
test or schedule smart test but from a
basic standpoint anyway this is working
however we can't actually do anything with it yet there's another step that we
need to go through before we can use our storage over the network and that's
creating a folder or a share it does take a couple of extra clicks uh okay
add a folder line of share and then
managing permissions this is incredible this is
so need to add a user first simple uh
yeah sure fine I'll add a user L and
then I go into my folders oh boom brother
dude I sent some long emails to John oh
yeah bless his heart poor guy um talking about permissions and what a nightmare
it is on other Naas operating systems just Drilling in guys it's got to be
simple and this
dude this is the best I could have possibly hoped for are you telling me
you don't want to learn how to do acl's no no I just I just want to get my Linux
isos onto my network storage and off the
well right the idea here is that you can
make users for your kids your roommate your spouse whatever and everyone can
have their own private place to put files and you can either have readon
access or full access so I'm going to give myself full access I'm just going
to make this a public share which I wouldn't necessarily recommend doing but
hey it's there now so theoretically I can just access this share immediately
yeah here click on this though oh sure and then go click
browse there you go it tells you how to do it oh oh oh cute yeah and you just
copy paste and click enter and you're there I mean you didn't technically
follow the instructions they told you to map it but you're there and there
there's actually if you click the drop down it gives you the Mac instructions too oh cute yeah wasn't that so easy how
long did that take you could probably have done that in like 3 minutes look at
that it's done already yeah do another one let's go it's a mirror so we're
limited to the speed of one hard drive but I mean it just works right to be
clear there is nothing groundbreaking about having a network share and being
able to copy some flipping files to it but if you have ever set up trz you will
know that it takes a few more clicks and
probably some Google searches I have no idea what you're talking about yeah
sure but while Simplicity sounds great
in theory when it comes to trusting something that holds your precious data
you would hope that stability and security would also be priorities and
they are and it's kind of the coolest part see hexos is not a groundup project
that would have taken even more years to pull off and frankly would have been a
complete waste of time which is why the the team decided to build off of an
already respected storage system tras
for the uninitiated tras formerly known as frez has been around in some form or
another for nearly two decades and while their business focuses on reliable
performant open-source Enterprise grade storage something that doesn't really
need to be home user friendly they also love the idea of making it easier to use
which is why X systems is the other main
investor in hexos which gives them a Financial incentive to ensure that hexos
is a success this collaboration is super cool because even though hexos is built
for normies first all of that traz goodness is still under the hood if you
know where to look and where is that literally right here settings trass done
so if you want to do something hexos doesn't do but trass does you can drop
into the trass interface and override it no questions asked it also means that
hexos works with their existing Docker apps and virtual machine functionality
it's prettyy cool until beta 2 comes out in a few months you're only going to see
support for apps and as of shooting a few weeks before this video goes live
only Plex and image are curated for hexos so far Let's do let's do Plex and
then hit install okay and that's it
that's it that's literally it no configuring storage
paths assigning resources
negative okay what if my Plex I wanted
GPU acceleration or something like that have they got that solved that is not
there yet as you can imagine having only two curated apps not a huge priority at
the moment but in the future the idea would be you know like a drop down or a
checkbox yes I want to use my GPU but if you go back to folders now yeah you'll
see that they're exposed so now they're passed through as Network shares and if
you click on one of them like say media go to browse copy the path you can just
copy movies right over all right because of the design for userfriendly
these are public shares by default which I was like I get it I hate it but
I get it hexos test oh do we have any media files yeah
easy peasy dude this shouldn't be this
exciting this should just be how it's always worked this is a $69 computer
yeah just like any random ancient
machine yeah just throw this on it and
Nas even just having the permissions so that I can just click the one that says
movies and and that'll like if you do the intuitive thing yeah it'll probably
be right yeah and that's it okay so we can see everything here yep um I'm just
going to go to other videos despic just
like that boys hey and nobody can take
this content off the platform or take away your access to it that compared to
the other times I've had to fight with folder permissions in tras with Plex yep
wow okay now image this one's even more challenging
it's actually kind of mindboggling that
these guys have been working away on this after like me giving them some
funding and I have not even like asked
for an update you literally never even looked at it they showed me like uh a
really early couple like screenshots of what they were kind of thinking for the
vibe of the wizard yeah your email was basically I will only give you this
money if if you just don't talk to me about it until it's ready I don't have
time for I agree okay look at that so
that's it get started bloody H okay me I
mean we can't do anything about the setup process of the apps themselves but
well you might be able to actually but right now not a priority well put it on
your phone no way just download the app there is absolutely no way that that
just works you have image already okay I need to set a server end point
oh perfect okay uh allow full access oh oh
my God are you just going to how many photos are on this phone I a few there's
no like the photos we wouldn't want to see
in there is there I should certainly hope not so I just go to backup and then
I can select any uh album that I want to
back up from your phone from my from my phone and then I go back and I click
backup and then just boom Hey look it's
boom look at it go that's such a cute photo look at the kittens I know wow
look at that it works so you uploaded that whole folder and it's done which is
great as long as you're on the same local network but to truly replace your
expensive subscription services like Google photos you've got to be able to
use it when you're out and about that'll be covered they'll be curating apps that
allow you to have a reverse proxy setup with like a domain you could have
photos. lin.com and that would be a relatively secure way to do it and I
also pitched John on maybe working with cloudflare to integrate their access
zero trust setup which allows you to do that but without port for redeem and you
can even like password protect it with your Google account oh that would be
super cool um they're also going to have wire guard VPN integrated soon for easy
remote access and they also also plan to
offer a fully integrated remote access system by way of an inexpensive
subscription which yes I know a subscription but doing that for free
wouldn't be sustainable and it's not like you're forced to use it it reminds
me of Home assistant where the subscription is it's kind of more of a convenience thing you can 100% have home
assistant remotely accessible on your own but it is inconvenient um I pay for
it and there's even more the original reason for integrating wire guard was
actually for a feature that I have been begging John to create for n years well
buddy backup this is going to be super cool the idea is that if you and a paid
friend both have hexos you'll be able to easily share storage capacity with each
other in a safe secure manner that way I
could back up my stuff to a separate geographic location say for example your
house and you could back up your stuff to my house and both of the shares would
be encrypted I'm not giving you what no it it's encrypted I can't even access I
don't care I'm giving you my bites look the point is that you can have a
mutually beneficial agreement to give each other offsite backup you hear that
word said agreement what Jake oh you're
being so unhelpful right now the point is that you'd be able to
share capacity with each other uh or just file share with each other without
having to manually set up a solution for that which is very doable today y but a
royal pain in the ARs yeah the file sharing thing is I I could Vibe with
that uh man I got to tell you the real reason I want to do this is so that I
can just build a giant off site backup Target here and then like it'll be an
employment perk because as long as I provide it for people other than myself
then it's taxfree that means it's free right is it right off now here's the
pitch hexos is an awesome concept with
real backing and a passionate team but unlike tress which it's based on it is
not free there are real people behind this project and as much as I'd love to
it's not something that I can personally fund forever so with all of that said
Till the the end of the day December 2nd hexo's Early Access is finally available
to try out at the Black Friday only price of $99 for a lifetime license one
payment access for life including any and all future updates after the Black
Friday sale they plan to increase the lifetime pricing to $1.99 during early
access and then $2.99 when it goes retail with yes a cheaper monthly
subscription option coming sometime later to reiterate it is very beta there
will be bugs which you can report on the hexos forums and you shouldn't use it
for anything that you need to work flawlessly like it'll probably be fine
in terms of data Integrity since it's mostly just an interface for an existing
very stable and reliable product but I have to give you guys that warning
regardless it's also not going to be the only Nas software that we ever use or
mention again it's a focused product that is meant for the HB Creator and
Tech dad market so while it would work for a small business once it's ready
it's not going to replace a dedicated hypervisor like prox MOX for instance
and if you already have a true Nas system that's working perfectly fine it
doesn't yet support adopting an existing install so it'll require reinstalling
but hey if you like myself believe in the idea of owning your own data and you
want great Naas software that is actually user friendly like I do and you
can afford to mess around with it on a spare system the hexos folks and myself
would love for you to try it out and let them know know what you think if you
absolutely hate it during the beta you will be able to request a refund within
30 days and another separate note if
you're a typescript or n developer who loves the idea they're hiring and the
info will be in the description overall
hexos takes our $69 NZ up to
$368 not as nice but what I like is that
it's an ecosystem you're not locked into and that you can upgrade the hardware if
you want you can get a better machine or you can beef up your existing one and
worst case if you don't like hexos or if the company somehow implodes you can
just disconnect it from the dashboard and you're essentially running traz I
really hope that doesn't happen but I just wanted to make it clear here that
there will be options unlike all those users that are running those vulnerable
dlink nazes that simply will never be
updated to fix it brutal like this
brutal segue to our sponsor ODU if
you're running a business keeping track of a hundred different apps running at
once can be a pain but with odu's all-in-one business management software
you can combine all of those into one unified operating system that's right no
more worrying about how well one service syncs with another odu's apps are all
interconnected check out their CRM and sales apps which make lead generation
and closing deals a breeze their time sheets app helps you keep track of your
employees schedules and their accounting app lets you automatically create and
send invoices integrating with 28,000
Banks worldwide the best part is you only need to choose the apps that your
business needs and if you only need one single app to shore up some holes you
can even get access to that for free so start saving time and resources by
unifying your processes with ODU check them out in the description box for a
free 15-day trial or to set up a demo with their expert team if you guys
enjoyed this video why not check out my last home Naas build I cannot wait to
try this at my house because I have like some super sick plants I am completely
out of storage dude me too I'm at like 88% utilized so many Linux hard drives
are so expensive were you certified though
they're still expensive