TrueNAS might not be for you, if you are home user.

[urza]

I have been using TrueNAS since it was FreeNAS and before NAS4Free. So I have some history with it.

I LOVE ZFS. That is the primary reason I went with this NAS.

But.

Last few years, and especially with transition to TrueNAS Scale, I couldn't notice that I am not the target customer of the developers of this system. Which makes sense, I don't pay anything. iXsystems is making money from enterprise selling them their enterprise solutions based on TrueNAS. But this created misalignment in incentives between us - home users and the developers of this system.

The user experience for home users is not great. There are known issues and bugs and problems that we regurarly face adn forums are full of, but iXsystems doesn't do anything about them for years!! For example the bug with setting bridge between VMs and NAS on SCALE. I wasted two days on it before I figured working workaround. And there is many many people with the same issue.

Or another issue is that Apps on SCALE can't use folder that is part of samba share. Like what??? So what do you think are the apps on NAS used for? Plex, torrents, video, photo apps.. all these need to usually access the same folder with data that people aslo want to share over samba.

But because iXsystems assumes you are enterprise by default, they have some kubernetes settings about hostPathValidaton that makes this impossible. And they don't even bother so show you the solution in GUI when you are installing the app. You have to figure out by searching formus and finding many other frustrated people have the same problem.

There is a pattern there.

Oh and it's like very hard to reach actuall developers if you are just home user. I posted even on their bug tracking system few times, things got nowhere. It's like end users are walled of from devs. Maybe they just communicate with enterprise customers, idk.

Honestly don't know if I invested time in the right platform for my usecase.

Maybe something like Unraid where home users pay the (reasonable) licence fee would be better, because I would actually be the customer. But Unraid didn't have the ZFS, so I always choosed TrueNAS because of that. Wondering if it is maybe time for me to try someghing else..

 

[Johnny Fartpants]

Interesting point-of-view however I look at it quite differently. I actually work in Enterprise and use TrueNAS and if anything I get a bit upset that a lot of their focus is on Home Users so interesting how you think the opposite. I think iX have created a very versatile appliance in TrueNAS which can kind of be all things to all people and that's great but it does mean that the support and development is very broad so not everything will be fixed asap or even ever. My personal experience in creating bug reports or suggestions has been very positive. Not everything I have raised has been fixed or integrated but I get that as Im just one voice out of many. Its a very powerful tool and you have to decide if it suits your needs or not.

 

[Davvo]

The moment you switched to SCALE was the moment you willingly chose to hop from a tested product to a new, in-development one. TN has never been the appliance for everyone and will never be but it's free, flexible, and incredibly powerful; it requires however the user to go understand how it works.

Again if you wanted stability, going to an uripe SCALE was a mistake on your part... which makes it kinda hard to agree with the focus of your complaints.

Or another issue is that Apps on SCALE can't use folder that is part of samba share. Like what??? So what do you think are the apps on NAS used for? Plex, torrents, video, photo apps.. all these need to usually access the same folder with data that people aslo want to share over samba.

Not a SCALE user, but you likely just need to disable hostpath validation: this procedure was properly announced and shared in the forum, if you didn't read the warnings before updating it's on to you.

I sincerely hope you will find the solution that better suits your needs; as a CORE home user, my experience thus far has been great.

 

[danb35]

iXsystems is making money from enterprise selling them their enterprise solutions based on TrueNAS. But this created misalignment in incentives between us

You're talking like this is something new, and it isn't--the free software has always been the test bed for the Enterprise work, for as long as iX has been involved with what was once FreeNAS, and is now TrueNAS, which has been about 12 years now.

I'll agree that networking has been a pain point in every version that iX has released, but I don't see this uniquely affecting home users--unless the difference is that Enterprise users have paid support from iX to configure it properly. But it's been an issue with release after release of FreeNAS/CORE (usually affecting jails), SCALE has a weird thing where editing one interface takes down all the interfaces (presumably due to the way systemd handles networking), etc.

But as a counterpoint, I think plugins as a whole (leaving aside how poorly they've always worked) are almost entirely an attempt to cater to home users. Even with the couple they've put out which did have a clear business use case (e.g., Asigra), the vast majority of them have always been home-oriented. I think that's largely the case with the Apps ecosystem on SCALE as well, though perhaps not quite so strongly so.

As to host path validation, sorry, that one's completely on you. It's in the release notes, and there's a sticky thread here in the forum that describes it further. It's a single check box to disable it.

Oh and it's like very hard to reach actuall developers if you are just home user.

I'm not going to disagree here, but surely Synology or Q-NAP are no better.

But Unraid didn't have the ZFS

Sounds like you might want OMV instead, which does do ZFS, and AFAIK it's completely free. Or there's always XigmaNAS, or whatever they're calling themselves any more.

 

[Arwen]

Yes, many times home, (aka free), users can't get good support for their issues. But, it is better today, (WAY BETTER), because we have Resources link at the top of all forum web pages. And people to write those Resources.


As for an App & SMB sharing a dataset, their is a specific reason for this to be normally blocked. If the App is setup incorrectly, the owner & permissions on files it writes are not shared with the users of the SMB. Meaning the App writes files as one user and another user wants to read the files, that may fail. So something like Plex would not work.

I can see that it seems simple to fix for home users. But, on the Enterprise side it's different. Thus, the host path validation thing that was introduced to SCALE.


One support solution that has been discussed before, is a subscription to TrueNAS for those that want "official support" on user supplied hardware. It still would not be Enterprise class, and have lots of gotchas. I can see a solution being presented, (like replace hardware RAID card with HBA), being declined by a subscription user. And yet they demand the problem be fixed, (because they are paying for it).

So any such subscription service would have to have a carefully worded, legally enforceable list of limitations. And still create people who end up angry.

 

[winnielinnie]

Even on Core, I come across some strange GUI bugs, which are frustrating to write bug reports about. There's a certain point where I'm thinking "I'll just skip this one and work around it."

The ones that do get fixed, it's like a weird uphill battle on the Jira Tracker. To the OP's point, it really is "enterprise comes before home users". In fact, iXsystems comes off as "skittish" with fixing certain things because it might require too much change in the code, which they are not willing to risk something possibly breaking for their established enterprise users. (I disagree when this approach is taken to such an extreme. You can justify not fixing anything because all fixes require a change in code...)

I really believe TrueNAS Core (and possibly SCALE) would be better served with a clear distinct "Community" edition.

Examples are Fedora to RedHat Enterprise and openSUSE to SLES.

The "Community" editions would allow more rapid development and take more risks. The matured code can then be adopted into the "Enterprise" editions if they are deemed mature and safe.

The reason I bump into so many bugs is because I use all parts of the GUI, daily. But I'm not keeping track of them anymore since I've been unmotivated to file bug reports in light of recent experiences.



Want a great example about how iXsystems is "skittish"? Please try to justify this decision:

In TrueNAS Core, the "Shell" feature is nearly useless. The text wraps barely even a third of the available screen space! On top of that, copying text is outright broken! The "Shell" is a poorly implemented feature, and it's embarrassing for an "Enterprise-quality" product. What are your options? "Don't use the Shell, or use SSH instead, or switch to SCALE where there is a greater chance something will be fixed or polished."

So then why have the "Shell" in the menu at all for TrueNAS Core? (Tell me how not fixing the broken "Shell" for TrueNAS Core makes sense. Whether for an Enterprise or Home user, how is it justified to leave this as a broken feature? Please don't say "Just fire up a terminal and SSH int your server." There's a reason the convenience of using a terminal directly in the Web GUI exists. The problem is... it's broken.)

I implore you to read the following two bug reports and their comments to understand my frustration:

[NAS-104469] - iXsystems TrueNAS Jira

ixsystems.atlassian.net

[NAS-120262] - iXsystems TrueNAS Jira

ixsystems.atlassian.net

Addendum: And don't get me started on how they're gutting features because they don't see much use from Enterprise customers. (If a feature is mature and complete, why gut it?)

 

[jcizzo]

my only gripe is that i find many aspects of the interface or more aptly "the way to do things.." to be very difficult.. such as creating folder/datasets, access rights, acls, etc.. it's tough.. especially coming from a windows world. there is NO comparison in terms of reliability and performance between anything based upon windows and freebsd (freebsd all the way), however, in my VERY humble opinion, before including new features, bells and whistles, the software should be easy to use. my reasoning is simple; the more difficult and "geeky" one makes the interface, the more apt a user is to make a mistake, which (aside from the obvious usage frustration/aggravation) can lead to security issues. i believe the job of the engineer/admin is to design and implement an effective system. they shouldn't have to put much thought into getting it to work the way they need it. it's like firewalls; they should be easy to configure.. you're trying to secure your network. if one has to *figure out* how to make something work, they're gonna screw-up somewhere and potentially leave themselves vulnerable.

i LOVE the products, love what is being done to enhance *bsd.. but the process of setting up users, datasets/folders/acls, should be made to be simple(r) than it is. i believe ix would take off like a bat outta hell with their product lines if they focused on simplicity of the interface.

ALSO, take a page outta the documentation from the folks over at netgate.. absolutely close to, if not, THE BEST documentation i've ever come across... it is so good i've been able to use their documentation on configuring other devices.. just my .02

 

[Johnny Fartpants]

Simplicity can often come at a cost to functionally and bespoke/advanced configuration. Perhaps a wizard option for new users like they used to in FreeNAS would be helpful. Permissions are tricky and even trickier to explain and they also depend on your environment but agree documentation could be better in this area.

 

[jcizzo]

"Simplicity can often come at a cost to functionally and bespoke/advanced configuration"

i sorta agree, but when you're ultimately creating an interface that executes python scripts that in turn executes command line scripts, that's not the most difficult of task. it's not like developing an OS or even a true gui (like x windows or the windows gui). if one were to look at the gui of any of the linux distros, it's easier to manage shares through that. again, i'd never say its easy, but it doesn't have to be cryptic either.. whenever i look at it there's a lot where it seems to merely need a reorganization and layout of the interface to accomplish all of this (along with, eh-hem, documentation (ink-waay, ink-waaay..) ).. and now with the focus clearly being on scale, it kinda seems like a good move to keep ahead of the curve on those two fronts for scale.

 

[danb35]

Examples are Fedora to RedHat Enterprise and openSUSE to SLES.

I don't think RedHat is a positive example of anything right now.

There's a reason the convenience of using a terminal directly in the Web GUI exists. The problem is... it's broken.)

...and it has been for twelve years. It's always been garbage, and they've never fixed it. Whatever Proxmox does seems to work well (at least using my Mac; I'm able to copy/paste, use nano, etc.). And that is, IIRC, all F/OSS--so why doesn't iX use it?

 

[morganL]

I have been using TrueNAS since it was FreeNAS and before NAS4Free. So I have some history with it.

I LOVE ZFS. That is the primary reason I went with this NAS.

But.

Last few years, and especially with transition to TrueNAS Scale, I couldn't notice that I am not the target customer of the developers of this system. Which makes sense, I don't pay anything. iXsystems is making money from enterprise selling them their enterprise solutions based on TrueNAS. But this created misalignment in incentives between us - home users and the developers of this system.

The user experience for home users is not great. There are known issues and bugs and problems that we regurarly face adn forums are full of, but iXsystems doesn't do anything about them for years!! For example the bug with setting bridge between VMs and NAS on SCALE. I wasted two days on it before I figured working workaround. And there is many many people with the same issue.

Or another issue is that Apps on SCALE can't use folder that is part of samba share. Like what??? So what do you think are the apps on NAS used for? Plex, torrents, video, photo apps.. all these need to usually access the same folder with data that people aslo want to share over samba.

But because iXsystems assumes you are enterprise by default, they have some kubernetes settings about hostPathValidaton that makes this impossible. And they don't even bother so show you the solution in GUI when you are installing the app. You have to figure out by searching formus and finding many other frustrated people have the same problem.

There is a pattern there.

Oh and it's like very hard to reach actuall developers if you are just home user. I posted even on their bug tracking system few times, things got nowhere. It's like end users are walled of from devs. Maybe they just communicate with enterprise customers, idk.

Honestly don't know if I invested time in the right platform for my usecase.

Maybe something like Unraid where home users pay the (reasonable) licence fee would be better, because I would actually be the customer. But Unraid didn't have the ZFS, so I always choosed TrueNAS because of that. Wondering if it is maybe time for me to try someghing else..

There are some good points here and its useful to respond:

Home users get free and Open Source software. TrueNAS gets free QA and a community that can advise us and help each other. We are thinking about options for professional support, but mostly for businesses.

TrueNAS SCALE is very much in active development and is not as robust as TrueNAS CORE. It is improving with every update and we are relying on early adopters to find and report issues. We have a software status page where we don't recommend SCALE yet for "conservative" users. It's getting closer, but there are some rough edges to polish - as you describe.

There are some situation where we have to decide whether to make things simple or make sure data is reliably protected. Because of the enterprise focus, we choose to make sure data is reliable. A home user that doesn't care about reliability may find this sometimes tedious. However, if we lose Enterprise customers, we can't fund the 50 person engineering and QA team and do the new products/releases. Some of the UI changes are mistakes.... its often difficult to think through all the use-cases for the software.

Bug reports are useful....especially if they are accompanied by descriptions here. We triage them and look for new bugs. However, there is no commitment to providing an end user with professional support. We really do rely on the community to self-help while we fix bugs and improve the docs.

Developers are encouraged to collaborate via discord.

Home users are recommended to collaborate here for support. There's a lot of experience and wisdom on these forums. Where someone has a hairy or critical problem, we often have iX staff engage. However, we really do need users to document their issues and test thoroughly.

We understand that this process is difficult for less technical home users. I'm not recommending TrueNAS to my mother. Less secure and reliable systems can be much easier to use.

 

[Arwen]

...
Some of the UI changes are mistakes.... its often difficult to think through all the use-cases for the software.
...

Arg, please don't mention The Release That Shall Not be Named.

 

[urza]

going to an uripe SCALE was a mistake on your part...

The problem is that they advertise Scale as the solution of choice for Apps. And as a home user I want to use all the usual Apps that we know and love. So what they communicate outsite is if your priorities are Apps, you should choose Scale.

 

[urza]

Thanks for your replies and answers everybody.

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

I wrote this little resource for [new] users containing a list of links to many topics, and a preface section saying if you use TrueNAS for Network Attached Storage and nothing else (on Enterprise-grade hardware) you'll be successful, it's great stuff. Wander outside that small box and it can get dicey.

That's really what TrueNAS does incredibly well: NAS. Other platforms work well for do-it-all systems, but aren't nearly as reliable for data storage. They're cheaper too: they run on consumer hardware with far fewer drives and the drives can be filled fuller and you can use your server as a workstation and lots of other plusses--but your data isn't nearly as safe, and by extension it cannot be. That's usually a rule of life, like an Indy car isn't good at hauling dirt, and a dump truck isn't great at going fast.

Put a different way, TrueNAS is the cold cereal of servers: it's never going to be an omelet with toast and jam, but it is going to get the job done dependably--however you will need milk for best results.

 

[Constantin]

When I bought my latest motherboard, I did so with the hope and expectation to run more things on my NAS than a storage appliance. With the benefit of more experience, I would have chosen the less expensive, and in my use case more-performant X10SDV-2C-7TP4F instead. While it only has 2 cores (compared to the 8 in my X10SDV-7TP4F) the -2C- variant runs at a higher clock speed. Since SMB is still single-threaded, the -2C- will have a better resultant SMB performance and it costs $500 less.

Trying to cram two hundred other functions into this NAS turned out to be a fools challenge. Zone minder doesn't work all that well (at least compared to Blue Iris), running Blue Iris in even a 4-core VM was a performance disaster, etc. But then again, the cores inside my motherboard are quite slow and VMs aren't expected to break the sound barrier. Less CPU-intensive plugins that likely work better are more-storage centric - cloud backups, etc. though I have never used one. I may yet attempt some docker stuff to run two pi-holes to supplement the physical ones.

Where I would really like to see iXsystems focus a lot more going more forward is the security of the UI. The current UI only allows "easy" SSL integration via only one provider, IIRC and the only way to noodle your way to a reliably-recurring a free, 90-day let's encrypt, acme, etc. "homeowner" SSL is following in @danb35 footsteps and going through a lot of CLI work around the limitations imposed by iXsystems. I would really like to see Cloudflare and other popular cert-issuers get integrated as well - especially without the the need to expose a NAS port to the internet.

A Plugin I'd pay money for is something reliable to dish out SSL certs from the NAS to the BOP here - gateway, switches, etc. I understand that this is a monumental challenge - but just starting with a few big brands would really help folk button up security at home - think Mikrotik, Ubiquiti, Netgear, for example. Some efforts have been made (see @danb35 routerOS repository) but as of routerOS7, the script doesn't execute as expected. I need to investigate all that. For a mere enthusiast TrueNAS operator, keeping track of all the steps in itself is quite challenging - requiring me to keep a record in case something breaks and it has to be rebuilt from scratch.

 

[boltran]

I have been using TrueNAS since it was FreeNAS and before NAS4Free. So I have some history with it.

I LOVE ZFS. That is the primary reason I went with this NAS.

But.

Last few years, and especially with transition to TrueNAS Scale, I couldn't notice that I am not the target customer of the developers of this system. Which makes sense, I don't pay anything. iXsystems is making money from enterprise selling them their enterprise solutions based on TrueNAS. But this created misalignment in incentives between us - home users and the developers of this system.

The user experience for home users is not great. There are known issues and bugs and problems that we regurarly face adn forums are full of, but iXsystems doesn't do anything about them for years!! For example the bug with setting bridge between VMs and NAS on SCALE. I wasted two days on it before I figured working workaround. And there is many many people with the same issue.

Or another issue is that Apps on SCALE can't use folder that is part of samba share. Like what??? So what do you think are the apps on NAS used for? Plex, torrents, video, photo apps.. all these need to usually access the same folder with data that people aslo want to share over samba.

But because iXsystems assumes you are enterprise by default, they have some kubernetes settings about hostPathValidaton that makes this impossible. And they don't even bother so show you the solution in GUI when you are installing the app. You have to figure out by searching formus and finding many other frustrated people have the same problem.

There is a pattern there.

Oh and it's like very hard to reach actuall developers if you are just home user. I posted even on their bug tracking system few times, things got nowhere. It's like end users are walled of from devs. Maybe they just communicate with enterprise customers, idk.

Honestly don't know if I invested time in the right platform for my usecase.

Maybe something like Unraid where home users pay the (reasonable) licence fee would be better, because I would actually be the customer. But Unraid didn't have the ZFS, so I always choosed TrueNAS because of that. Wondering if it is maybe time for me to try someghing else..

Hi,

Funny, this is exactly what I feel about TrueNAS. Unlike you, I am very new to TrueNAS, but it did not take long to run into the same problems as you. But it is not just my feeling, just yesterday I read a post by a developer that said almost the same thing. I am just quoting him from memory, but he said something along the lines, that TtueNAs "is not for the low-port-count home user", and "we should be thankful for the develper for providing this for us for free".

They are moving away from services (like OpenVPN, and Rsync) and into apps. Except those apps are unusable, for instance the app for the rsync module doesn't use the standard port of 873, and you can't force it.

I was really enthusiastic about TrueNAS at the beginning because of ZFS, but now I am not any more. I use Unraid at home, and at an office where I run their backup, and I though I would replace them with TrueNAS. That plan is now canceled. Not that I had any problems with Unraid, just because the appeal of ZFS. In fact Unraid is very hackable, and forgiving, an it has been a fun to use. And for ZFS, with their new version, I think staring with 6.12.x, they are implementing ZFS, too. I think it is not fully baked yet, so I am not upgrading just yet, but I'll keep my eye on it. In the meantime, I concluded that for the use case I have, I can just build a server/NAS from scratch, using ZFS, on top of Slacware with probably less effort and frustration, without having to weed through forum posts. After all, a NAS supposed to be easy to use. Isn't it their major selling point? Just plug it in, and with easy graphical UI, with a few clicks you configure everything and in business in minutes. That is definitely not the case with TrueNAS.

 

[Johnny Fartpants]

It may just be me but I use TrueNAS and back in the day FreeNAS because of ZFS. I was completely sold on ZFS back in 2014 and wanted an appliance to fit my needs. If FreeNAS didn't use ZFS I would never have used it. Not only does it use ZFS but it doesn't hide the fact unlike many other storage appliances that I shall not name. It sounds obvious but I love the fact that a ZFS dataset is called a dataset in TrueNAS and they haven't felt the need to call it something different to try and suggest they are using their own proprietary thing again like many others. So long as TrueNAS stays with ZFS and keeps those features at its core I honestly can't see myself using anything else in the future.

 

[morganL]

Hi,

Funny, this is exactly what I feel about TrueNAS. Unlike you, I am very new to TrueNAS, but it did not take long to run into the same problems as you. But it is not just my feeling, just yesterday I read a post by a developer that said almost the same thing. I am just quoting him from memory, but he said something along the lines, that TtueNAs "is not for the low-port-count home user", and "we should be thankful for the develper for providing this for us for free".

They are moving away from services (like OpenVPN, and Rsync) and into apps. Except those apps are unusable, for instance the app for the rsync module doesn't use the standard port of 873, and you can't force it.

I was really enthusiastic about TrueNAS at the beginning because of ZFS, but now I am not any more. I use Unraid at home, and at an office where I run their backup, and I though I would replace them with TrueNAS. That plan is now canceled. Not that I had any problems with Unraid, just because the appeal of ZFS. In fact Unraid is very hackable, and forgiving, an it has been a fun to use. And for ZFS, with their new version, I think staring with 6.12.x, they are implementing ZFS, too. I think it is not fully baked yet, so I am not upgrading just yet, but I'll keep my eye on it. In the meantime, I concluded that for the use case I have, I can just build a server/NAS from scratch, using ZFS, on top of Slacware with probably less effort and frustration, without having to weed through forum posts. After all, a NAS supposed to be easy to use. Isn't it their major selling point? Just plug it in, and with easy graphical UI, with a few clicks you configure everything and in business in minutes. That is definitely not the case with TrueNAS.

ZFS is great because of data integrity and reliability...

However, that is not much good if your system is insecure and can be hacked. Rsync over ssh is more secure and is recommended.
The rsyncd app probably does not support port 873 because of the long-term security issues.

Yes, TrueNAS does add safety belts to ensure security. If systems get broken into and data is lost... we've failed in our mission. In our view ZFS and reasonable security are complimentary. If the community tells us otherwise, we will listen.

 

[winnielinnie]

Rsync over ssh is more secure and is recommended.

This is a moot point over a trusted local network. NFS is "insecure" for the same reasons. Yet using rsyncd and NFS over a local network is not considered dangerous, and is fully supported.

Rather than remove Rsyncd + Modules, why not leave it in, but warn the user with a disclaimer that it uses a non-encrypted stream and has no robust user authentication? (The same warning message can be applied to NFS as well.)

Without specifying IP/host whitelists, any client can connect to an NFS share or Rsync Module. This has always been true for a local network; but no one's saying to remove NFS. So why is Rsyncd being singled out?