Truenas device - Mini X, 4 Core, 4xGbE, 32GB RAM

bruce_lee6

Cadet
Joined
Dec 26, 2022
Messages
5
Hello everyone,
I am new here and want to buy this device from Truenas official online store.
I am interested in: Mini X, 4 Core, 4xGbE, 32GB RAM
I am DevOps Engineer and I know Freenas and Truenas from company solutions built on their own servers and I like this SW
I am currently building my own home storage and want to buy some commercial solution because I don't want to use a big server and build storage on it.

My question is simple :)

How does the update work from these official Truenas devices. Do they have any version update limit? For example.. If I buy this device, is there somewhere written the max version allowed on this device? Or is there an option to update Truenas on this device until end of life.

Thanks a lot for any answers
Fero
 

jgreco

Resident Grinch
Joined
May 29, 2011
Messages
18,681
When you are buying a TrueNAS Mini, you are buying an appliance capable of running today's software. If, for some unlikely reason, it becomes unable to do so, it might require some tweak or alteration. For example, at one time, FreeNAS Mini's came with small SATADOM keys (I believe just 4 or 8GB) which ultimately had to be replaced when the OS distribution became larger than that. There is no artificial restriction that you only get a year's worth of updates or anything like that. However, if for example someday it became impossible to run the NASware on 32GB of RAM, you would then need to expand your memory.

Please note that I am not an employee of iXsystems and am just stating how things have been up 'til now. :smile: When you buy a Mini, you are helping to fund development and that's good for the project.
 

Ericloewe

Server Wrangler
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Feb 15, 2014
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20,175
Do note that TrueNAS Enterprise (not Core or Scale) is tied to a support contract for the hardware.
 

bruce_lee6

Cadet
Joined
Dec 26, 2022
Messages
5
Thank you for your answers.
I understand what you wrote to me and it is clear.
But the question from my side was very simple and I think we did not understand what I needed to know.
So I'll try to explain it more simply with an example.
I need to know just one thing. When I purchase a device, is the device limited to updates? or whenever a new version of truenas comes out, I will easily be able to update the device at any time, exactly the same as it is in the case of a clean installation on other HW, for example, supermicro, Dell and others? Will I be able to switch to the new version of Truenas on this device as well?

For example, if you buy a mobile phone, the current version of Android is Android 13. And the manufacturer will maintain support for the phone for, for example, a year, and it will be possible to update to Android 14 and higher version will not be possible to update it through the official way :)
And that's exactly what I don't want..

I would like to work with this device in exactly the same way as when I install Truenas on a Dell server and there is the possibility of constant OS updates.
 

Ericloewe

Server Wrangler
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Feb 15, 2014
Messages
20,175
It's all standard hardware, yours to use as you please. You can install whatever you want.
For example, if you buy a mobile phone, the current version of Android is Android 13. And the manufacturer will maintain support for the phone for, for example, a year, and it will be possible to update to Android 14 and higher version will not be possible to update it through the official way :)
And that's exactly what I don't want..
Yeah, Android's update situation is a blight on humanity. As if this hasn't been a solved problem for 30 years, but noooooo, OEMs just had to treat phones as disposable embedded systems...
 

jgreco

Resident Grinch
Joined
May 29, 2011
Messages
18,681
It's just a prebuilt server that's designed to run TrueNAS CORE. It should be able to run SCALE or Windows or FreeBSD or Linux just fine. It's just good standard computer server hardware.
 

bruce_lee6

Cadet
Joined
Dec 26, 2022
Messages
5
It's just a prebuilt server that's designed to run TrueNAS CORE. It should be able to run SCALE or Windows or FreeBSD or Linux just fine. It's just good standard computer server hardware.
Now i understand that, thanks you a lot for explaining jgreco!
 
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