TrueNAS SCALE provides the ability to run Apps directly on the storage system, further expanding the capabilities of the traditional TrueNAS System. Apps have been steadily improving with each new release, with more improvements already underway for the upcoming TrueNAS SCALE Cobia release this Fall.
With TrueNAS SCALE, each App is effectively a Kubernetes Helm Chart that points to container images and provides configuration information to integrate multiple containers into an application. This makes Apps simple to deploy and run on TrueNAS SCALE. The Apps are collected together and then made available via Catalogs.
There is a default TrueNAS Catalog as well as the ability to load any number of unsupported 3rd party Catalogs and install Apps from their collections. Within each Catalog, there can be multiple groupings or “Trains” of Applications. Apps from different Catalogs can run on the same TrueNAS system.
More recently with the update of TrueNAS SCALE Bluefin, 22.12.2, we are pleased to roll out a new set of Apps to our existing TrueNAS Catalog. After updating to 22.12.2, users will see new Apps trains available in the UI, defined by their label names:
Community is our new Train of Apps that are either iX or Community-contributed. These Apps are generally considered “Community” supported, and iX will help to review and moderate changes being submitted by community users, but not directly provide support. This is a great place for aspiring App developers to collaborate on bringing new software packages to SCALE, either by the original developers of 3rd party software, or the supporting fan community.
Official has been the primary Train for Apps up until this point. Going forward, these Apps will be the ones that are periodically tested and maintained by TrueNAS engineers, and major issues will be investigated as they arise. Applications that begin life in the Community Train may over time migrate into the Official Train if they are high-quality and very actively used by TrueNAS users.
Enterprise is an exclusive Train for TrueNAS Enterprise appliances made up of Applications which are tested, maintained, documented, and generally have more enterprise-grade functionality for mission-critical use cases on TrueNAS. Software vendors of Enterprise Applications may wish to contact iXsystems to discuss the inclusion of their App(s) in this Enterprise Train.
With the upcoming 22.12.3 release, we will further improve the naming in the UI and change the “Official” Catalog label to “TrueNAS” Catalog label. This will help to better differentiate between which Catalog of Apps are being used, and which Train an App belongs to within the Catalog.
With these changes now live in 22.12.2, we are now open to collaboration with other App developers on our TrueNAS Apps Catalog hosted on GitHub. Users are encouraged to follow along with incoming changes staged as pull requests, as well as suggestions for new Applications. Aspiring developers can also read through our documentation on App creation and help review pull requests in-flight to ensure the latest and greatest Applications are always available on TrueNAS SCALE for all to run and enjoy.
Here is the current list of Apps in the TrueNAS Catalog:
TrueNAS SCALE 22.12.2 is Now Available
TrueNAS SCALE has inherited the storage functionality and automated testing from CORE. SCALE is maturing rapidly, and also offers a more robust Apps environment based on Linux, KVM, and Kubernetes. For that reason, SCALE is generally recommended for new users that need embedded Applications. The latest TrueNAS SCALE 22.12.2 has made significant strides in quality and reliability. Over 5,000 users successfully updated within 48 hours of its release and it is available for download here.
TrueNAS provides these choices and the ability to automatically migrate storage services and VMs from CORE to SCALE. Plugins and jails can be manually replaced with Apps. We encourage anyone looking for further advice or answers to questions to visit our Community Forums or Discord Channel.