Feedback for developers: TrueNAS Scale as the main system on bare metal. Virtualization, apps, shares. Experience of regular user.

[urza]

Hi there, how are you doing people?

I wanted to give some feedback to TrueNAS Scale developers, I very much like the direction of TrueNAS Scale where it is going, but there is a lot of work to do still.

I was installing new system and was deciding between TreuNAS Scale, Proxmox and Unraid.

I decided to go with TrueNAS Scale because I am long term fan of ZFS. I was having my own home server based on debian with zfs for many years, then I switched to truenas core (which was great as far as storage goes but the story with apps and vitualization wasn’t so great).

My needs are:

• solid storage and network shares with snapshots
• Windows Server in VM for hosting some asp.net core apps
• Ubuntu Server in VM for hosting some linux services
• Some “dockerized apps” like Syncthing, sonarr and similar, maybe some db

My feelings so far:
Installation of TrueNAS was easy and without problems.
Setting basic things like pool and dataset and users and shares… all very intutive and easy, I like the GUI. Sharing seems to work flawlessly.
I very much appreciate the added 2FA auth option for admin web interface.
The basics are there, as far as storage and file shares go TrueNAS is rock solid, easy to user.. great.

Now the not so good parts - virtualization seem to be “rough around edges” … I spent whole day trying to figure out how to set the network interface so I can see from my VM (Ubuntu Severer) to my NAS and from my NAS to Ubuntu, and I still can’t get it to work :( My Ubuntu can ping internet and my router but not TrueNAS and my TrueNAS can’t ping my Ubuntu.
This kind of took the enthusiasm away and ruined the experience.
Also I wish TrueNAS would handle reboots and shutdowns more gracefully, for example HyperV will save the state of VMs when the host is restarting and then restore their state after reboot, so for example screen sessions are still there.

Then I tried to play with the apps. I must say I am not big fan of Kubernetes, I hoped TrueNAS Scale would fuction more like Docker+Portainer or something along these lines. My beleive is that there are maybe like five companies in the world that truly need Kubernets and the rest just does it because it is cool. Definately overkill and added complexity and overhead for small users like myself. Anyway I installed few apps from the official catalog just to test it, but I had some problem with Syncthing… something with permissions… I didn’t want to spend much time with it at this point, so I dont know what went wrong exactly yet. Then I tried to install some torrenting tools from TrueCHARTS catalog… like Sonnarr + Transmission. But because of how kubernetes works, the containers dont see each other, there is some more involvmenet to get this working and at that point I just gave up…

I will continue, because I really want to stick with TrueNAS Scale.. I love ZFS, I love how it allows to make snapshots of gues VMs, how easy the storage and network shares are.. but I also need some virtualization and that needs some love from devs, so hopefully it will get better and better.

And with the "apps" I am actually considering to create one dedicated VM with Ubuntu server + Docker + Portainer and run all apps from there instead of directly from TrueNAS with kubernetes. What do you thing about this?

Cheers and keep the good work
urza

 

[sretalla]

Now the not so good parts - virtualization seem to be “rough around edges” … I spent whole day trying to figure out how to set the network interface so I can see from my VM (Ubuntu Severer) to my NAS and from my NAS to Ubuntu, and I still can’t get it to work :( My Ubuntu can ping internet and my router but not TrueNAS and my TrueNAS can’t ping my Ubuntu.

Have you tried the complete steps in this post?

SOLVED - KVM Guest Cannot Ping TrueNAS SCALE Host (or vice-versa)

I created an Ubuntu VM with the default settings. This bridged the VM directly into my network (192.168.87.217). The FreeNAS host is 192.168.87.216. Neither can ping each other. I wanted to setup NFS on the FreeNAS host and have the Ubuntu VM mount the NFS share to access the files, but no...

www.truenas.com

But because of how kubernetes works, the containers dont see each other, there is some more involvmenet to get this working and at that point I just gave up…

Have you checked this out? https://truecharts.org/manual/Quick-Start Guides/06-linking-apps/

Maybe in general, use the TrueCharts apps.

And with the "apps" I am actually considering to create one dedicated VM with Ubuntu server + Docker + Portainer and run all apps from there instead of directly from TrueNAS with kubernetes. What do you thing about this?

You can do that if you want. It's only going to consume more resources than needed from your system and is just a band-aid on the problem of you not understanding kubernetes and how it works in SCALE.

You can always just run all the apps you want from the "Launch Docker Image" button or use the Docker Compose app from TrueCharts if you insist on not understanding Kubernetes.

 

[Kris Moore]

Now the not so good parts - virtualization seem to be “rough around edges” … I spent whole day trying to figure out how to set the network interface so I can see from my VM (Ubuntu Severer) to my NAS and from my NAS to Ubuntu, and I still can’t get it to work :( My Ubuntu can ping internet and my router but not TrueNAS and my TrueNAS can’t ping my Ubuntu.
This kind of took the enthusiasm away and ruined the experience.
Also I wish TrueNAS would handle reboots and shutdowns more gracefully, for example HyperV will save the state of VMs when the host is restarting and then restore their state after reboot, so for example screen sessions are still there.

The VM stuff in SCALE today is more or less a direct port of what was in CORE, which I admit is rough in places :) We'll expect more of that to mature and get better as SCALE evolves.