Roon on a TrueNAS hosted VM: any successess out there?

[Evertb1]

I have been a long time owner of a FreeNAS and later TrueNAS system. And I was happy with it. However at the end of 2019, personal circumstances made me decide to switch to an of the shelf NAS. This due to the fact that it looked like I would not be able to manage my TrueNAS system anymore. And I could hardly expect my wife to do that. So I sold my TrueNAS system and bought a Synology NAS (a good one but it still was painfull).

Now almost 4 years later my personal circumstances have changed for the better and I am fully capable again of building, configuring and maintaining a new TrueNAS system. However in the time we had that Synology box I expanded the use of it beyond what I was doing with TrueNAS. Because Synology makes it so easy. You can't fault them for the enormous amount of functions and applications that are available and easy to install. A lot of the things Synology offers can be done within TrueNAS with a little extra effort. But one of the things I am running on the Synology is Roon server (Core).

Roon Core is wunderfull and I like to keep it. But the thing is that I only want to have just one NAS/Server running 24/7 in my household. So running a dedicated Roon server is out. I have no illussions or expectations that sooner or later a Roon plug-in will pop up in the TrueNAS eco system, so that one is out. Luckely the builders of Roon developed a diversity of possibilities to run a ROON server.

The way I see it I have two possibilities:

1. Running ROCK in a VM. Rock is a customized Linux based OS with Roon server, developed for running on Intel NUC hardware.
2. Running Roon server for Linux on for example a Debian distribution also installed on a VM.

The thing is that I have no experience with VM's on TrueNAS at all. Back in the days I always was of the opinion that a NAS should mostly be just that: a NAS. But times, needs and wants change. I do have some experience with VMware (ESXi) though.

A search on the forum did not deliver much usefull info so my question to the community is this: Does anybody here have a succefull implementation of Roon running in a VM? And if so, what version of TrueNAS are you running and how did you go about it? As my Synology NAS is still running fine I am not in a hurry but I want to take my time do do my homework on the software before I buy new (used) hardware.

 

[edwi023]

I had some succes with roon server running in dockers using this docker image "steefdebruijn/docker-roonserver"
But having some problems using it under truenas cobia, cannot login using my roon credentials.

I'am also looking into a vm solution (maybe its more stable) but cannot compleet the install process as you need a keyboard to complete the installation, maybe iam overlooking something.

 

[danb35]

Well, there's Roon Server, and there's ROCK--the latter is an OS image that includes Roon Server and some other software, is intended to be installed on a NUC, and has some frankly pretty idiosyncratic requirements. I didn't have success installing ROCK even under Proxmox, though there's documentation out there for that. But installing Roon Server in a Debian VM is trivial, and then it's just a matter of setting up that VM to log in to whatever shares you want to access your music.

 

[Evertb1]

As I already admitted I am not in a real hurry and will take my time to sort things out. I just bought an old Supermicro motherboard (X10SL7-F) with a Intel Xeon E3-1230 v3 and 32 gig of memory. And the 75 euro's or 81.15 dollars I payed were a laugh. That gave me enough stuff to build me a bitsa (a device made of bits and pieces). Enough of a system to do some experimenting. Its already running with Scale.

For the time being I forget about ROCK. Though I already had ROCK running on an system build around an Asrock J4125 motherboard. Installing it was a breeze and it was running great, with a library of 60,000 plus tracks, but I am not so sure about running it as a VM.

The first thing I will try is running ROON server on a Debian VM. After 4 years not running TrueNAS at all, I am a bit rusty but it will come back to me. And although Scale is something complete different for me, I am under the impression that Scale might be better at hosting VM's then Core. Time will tell. For now my bitsa will only be for this experimenting so if I fail I just start all over.

Anyways @danb35 and @edwi023 thanks for your reaction. I had given up hope on any reaction at all. And I will update this post as soon as I have some results with that VM.

 

[edwi023]

i will keep an eye out on this post.
As i'am using a roon server docker (alron/docker-roonserver) i'am not being able to login to the server.
When i start my roon app on my mac it ask me to login, when i get redirected to the roon app it just stopt. no login, no massage so for now it's not rock( ;) ) solid for me.
This happens with different docker image's.
Thinking to look into roon rock to run in a vm, don't think i have no other choice.

Just a small update from my side with my experience.

 

[danb35]

Thinking to look into roon rock to run in a vm, don't think i have no other choice.

You don't need to run ROCK to run Roon Server. Just install your favorite OS in a VM (I used Debian), map whatever network storage contains your music to that VM, and then follow Roon's instructions to install the server.

Roon doesn't officially support Docker containers--though I don't know why that's the case.

 

[edwi023]

You don't need to run ROCK to run Roon Server. Just install your favorite OS in a VM (I used Debian), map whatever network storage contains your music to that VM, and then follow Roon's instructions to install the server.

Roon doesn't officially support Docker containers--though I don't know why that's the case.

i feel a bit stupid, didn't think about that and i just read your comment earlier.
Iam gonne give that a try :)

 

[RobKamp]

I had some succes with roon server running in dockers using this docker image "steefdebruijn/docker-roonserver"
But having some problems using it under truenas cobia, cannot login using my roon credentials.

I'am also looking into a vm solution (maybe its more stable) but cannot compleet the install process as you need a keyboard to complete the installation, maybe iam overlooking something.

I run this setup on TrueNAS scale for more than a year now.

Can you elaborate on the login?

 

[trionic]

@Evertb1 Where did your TrueNAS/Roon journey lead?

I am interested in your story because I might be switching from Emby on TrueNAS to Roon.

 

[Evertb1]

@Evertb1 Where did your TrueNAS/Roon journey lead?

I am interested in your story because I might be switching from Emby on TrueNAS to Roon.

For now my TrueNAS/Roon journey is on hold. My company sent me abroad for some time and the weekends I return to home are not sufficient time to look seriously in to it. Somewhere around the end of April my current assignment is done and I will return to the TrueNAS/Roon problem. For now Roon is running just fine on the Synology NAS. And if it's running fine on that Synology NAS with it's limited resources I can't think of any good reason why I should not be able to run it on a well equipped TrueNAS box. Time will tell.