True Command for two with less than 30 drives total?

[Dismal Wizard]

I'm about to add a new iX Systems Mini+ to take over primary file service duties here at Dismal Manor. The incumbent server will become a replication target for the new primary. Both systems are small, 10 TB or so usable with about 10 - 12 drives between them. No clusters or containers, etc. Just basic sharing and Roon Core and Plex to serve music and other media.

Does it make sense to use True Command in such a small basic-service environment?

If so, should True Command be hosted other than on my two TrueNAS servers (incumbent is home brew Xeon E3-1225 with onboard graphics that is lightly loaded with Roon Core, music library, and Time Machine spool volume).

I foresee only a replication task between the two but can the replication target be a hot standby for the primary? Interesting but probably totally overkill as have had no forced outages to this point.

Thanks for your thoughts and recommendations.

 

[Ericloewe]

It's free up to I-don't-know-how-many-disks, so give it a try!

I foresee only a replication task between the two but can the replication target be a hot standby for the primary? Interesting but probably totally overkill as have had no forced outages to this point.

Nah, not really. That's the sort of thing you can get with TrueNAS Scale, but you'd need at least three machines, in my experience [with Gluster, not TrueNAS Scale specifically].

 

[danb35]

It's free up to I-don't-know-how-many-disks, so give it a try!

Up to 50 disks, IIRC.

If so, should True Command be hosted other than on my two TrueNAS servers

That's iX' recommendation, and it kind of makes sense to have the monitoring/control platform independent of whatever it's monitoring/controlling.

 

[Etorix]

That's iX' recommendation, and it kind of makes sense to have the monitoring/control platform independent of whatever it's monitoring/controlling.

Kinda makes sense… but is still a minor pain in the lower back for home setups where there is no other server on which to set TrueCommand up—and TrueCommand would not even work on a Raspberry Pi, which is about the most expensive and most power hungry system I would consider for the sole purpose of running TrueCommand outside of the NAS it monitors.
Running TrueCommand within VirtualBox on a desktop PC makes even less sense! So I'd put TrueCommand on one of the NAS anyway. If TrueCommand is not accessible for monitoring, then, well, there's an issue…

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

So I'd put TrueCommand on one of the NAS anyway.

Same here. Same with e.g. vCenter in about every enterprise environment, I've ever seen. If your entire infrastructure is ESXi (or in our case TrueNAS) hosts, where else are you supposed to put those VMs?

 

[Adrian]

I run TrueCommand in a Docker Desktop VM under Hyper-V on a Windows 10 Pro PC. Not available for Home.
Other Windows virtualisation solutions are available, such as VirtualBox.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

And you keep that Win 10 Pro desktop running 24x7?

 

[Adrian]

And you keep that Win 10 Pro desktop running 24x7?

Yes. It is connected to my ancient Smart UPS 1500 with a serial cable.
It also hosts a Hyper-V FreeBSD VM, which acts as a syslog server and local mail hub. Fetchmail, sendmail, procmail, spamassassin and mutt. The old ways are best
Sadly, no matter what I do TrueCommand suffers from runaway alerts. Blow it all away, recreate from scratch (only 4 TrueNAS hosts), and once any alerts are present they start replicating. Been like this for a few months now I think.

 

[Dismal Wizard]

Sounds like we leave True Command to the pros. With just two boxen to wrangle, not worth the learning curve. Concur with preference to run on a small scale system dedicated to environment housekeeping.

I did get the beastie up in a Ubuntu Server Docker container in a bhyve on my little Xeon. It came up but fat fingered the admin sign in. Apparently, I didn't see something important on the cold start web page FireFox on an m1 iMac. Ubuntu installer was a pain. Maximizing the VNC window with the VM console in it had important tab targets off screen low. Cobbled environments generally suck.