Homelab advice

[Starrbuck]

Hi all! So recently I returned to running TrueNAS as my NAS solution and TrueNAS Scale has been awesome so far. TrueNAS Scale was not available when I built the system, so I did it with vanilla Ubuntu and made the NAS machine also the media center using Docker Compose and a stack of some of the typical applications. Now that I have the NAS on its own machine again, that is all it does and I have a second machine running Ubuntu with the media center apps.

I am wondering would it benefit me to run TrueNAS Scale on the media center machine, connecting to the media pool on the NAS box? If so, any good guides for this?

 

[Starrbuck]

I don't blame y'all for not answering, as I didn't give many details. Just a little update... I'm giving it a try, because it's fun. I am testing on different storage so I have my original Ubuntu & Docker setup to fall back on. Thanks for reading.

 

[Starrbuck]

So I did some experimenting yesterday and I was having real troubles with TN Scale's apps. Often the initial install of Plex, for example, would be fine as long as I did not change anything from the defaults, but if I modified the pod by changing the port numbers, for example, it would say Deploying but get stuck there and never complete. I'm not sure if I need better hardware. This machine is on an i7-7700K with 32GB of DDR4 and SSD storage. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[Etorix]

SCALE will work best if you're happy with default TrueCharts apps, and will be a pain if you want to make and run your own containers, or use ports below 9000.
If you're satisfied with your Ubuntu installation, an alternative could be to move it into a VM on TrueNAS—and you could even do that on CORE, no need for SCALE.

 

[Starrbuck]

SCALE will work best if you're happy with default TrueCharts apps, and will be a pain if you want to make and run your own containers, or use ports below 9000.
If you're satisfied with your Ubuntu installation, an alternative could be to move it into a VM on TrueNAS—and you could even do that on CORE, no need for SCALE.

Thank you for the opinions. I was trying to use the Plex app from Truecharts on a different port than the default (and a port over 9000) when I ran into that deploy problem. I am fairly satisfied with my Ubuntu & Docker setup but I wanted to learn Kubernetes as it is implemented in Scale and have the option of a GUI too with less command-line interaction. Core is definitely an option as well. You have given me some things to think about and I appreciate you taking the time to reply.

 

[Starrbuck]

So today I installed TrueNAS Scale on an old unused server I had sitting around, and it works better! The apps I've installed all work fine, so I think there is something wonky on my other machine hardware-wise. Additionally, this gives me a place to work out all the kinks while my other media server remains online.

 

[Whattteva]

I think part of the reason why you're not getting a lot of responses may be because a lot of users (like me) aren't very familiar with SCALE. I'm a long time CORE user and have never used SCALE and still really have no interest in using SCALE cause I don't need Docker and stuff and I prefer FreeBSD jails anyway.

 

[Starrbuck]

I agree, and I think that's a great thing about the two products. I'm having fun learning Scale for sure. Have a great weekend!

 

[truecharts]

SCALE will work best if you're happy with default TrueCharts apps, and will be a pain if you want to make and run your own containers, or use ports below 9000.
If you're satisfied with your Ubuntu installation, an alternative could be to move it into a VM on TrueNAS—and you could even do that on CORE, no need for SCALE.

We are a seperate unrelated project and do not make the default "official Apps"
Nor do we have the port 9000 limit.

 

[Starrbuck]

We are a seperate unrelated project and do not make the default "official Apps"
Nor do we have the port 9000 limit.

Since starting my testing on server-grade hardware, the TrueCharts apps I have configured so far are working flawlessly and on ports above 9000 just fine too. Thanks!!

 

[Daisuke]

TrueCharts is the way to go for setup uniformity and unparalleled community support on their Discord channel.

 

[Starrbuck]

Another update... It took me several days because I purchased some new and used parts for the old server, but I finally have all my apps online in TN Scale. Everything seems to be working really well--I'm impressed! I even discovered Prowlarr to replace Jackett and NZBHydra2 so that was a nice change leading to less complexity there.