What I think about Scale apps as a new user and what should it become

[CheeryFlame]

Hello,

I wanted to make this post to share what I think about the applications on Scale, as a new user of TrueNAS. I would say that I'm using applications quite intensively and regularly. I have about 35 applications at the moment and the setup is getting very stable the more I learn about kubernetes.

What I think should be the top priority:

• Official backup solution; dumb proof, reliable and single/multi app backup/restore

What I like:

1. Kubernetes environment
2. One single operating system can be my NAS, my vms and apps
3. Ability to add custom apps train like TrueCharts

What I think should be fixed:

1. Fix Stop button with apps using a CNPG database
2. Host path validation seems problematic with apps, might as well stop supporting it officially

What I think should be updated in the gui:

1. Ability to switch between gallery and list (add) view
2. Ability to re-order columns by name, added on, status, catalog and train
3. Add columns: Name, Added on, Status, Catalog, Train, Version, Label, Category, Latest Event, Pods, Deployments
4. Ability to re-order columns' position
5. For each app line add blue button for: Open, Shell, Logs
6. Triple dot menu would contain: Edit, Stop, Upgrade, Rollback, Backup, Delete
7. Add a category system to categorize apps within sections
8. Add a tagging system to add a label name with a colored background
9. Customizable app icon
10. Customizable Open button

What I think should be added in future updates:

• Native support of postgresql, mariadb, sqlite, etc databases so they can be backed up easily
• Officially ix supported certificates like TrueCharts did that would work system wide therefore not limited to kubernetes
• Officially supported ingress implementation of Traefik no matter which app train you're using
• Officially supported VPN configuration on all applications no matter which app train you're using

What I think could be added but that is less important:

• Officially supported integration of Cloudflared to access apps outside
• Officially supported implementation of Authelia for securing apps
• Option for connecting vms and apps (metallb integration?)

^ basically this post would be what I consider my dream operating system managing my NAS, my vms and my apps. I'm new to self hosting but I think it'll become more popular in the future as streaming services are failing their user base which will get more people into self hosting. It make sense to me to have one operating system that would cover self hosting from Storage, VMs, Apps > Certificates > Client. I think TrueNAS has the potential to become #1 if they hire a team for their apps. OS' like Unraid look terrible and scary in term of reliability. On the other hand proxmox seems way too complicated for a typical home user that wants to self host his shit while not becoming a sysadmin.

This isn't what it should be, it's what I think it could be.

 

[danb35]

Official backup solution; dumb proof, reliable and single/multi app backup/restore

By this you mean an official backup solution for the apps themselves? Yes, I'd agree that should be a high priority.

On the other hand proxmox seems way too complicated for a typical home user that wants to self host his shit while not becoming a sysadmin.

I guess this is a matter of personal taste, but I don't think I agree--for VMs, which are the only direct overlap between what PVE does and what TrueNAS does, my experience is that PVE is far more straightforward to work with. Of course, PVE doesn't really have "apps"--the closest it has are the Turnkey Linux-based LXC templates, and the (very handy but third-party) Proxmox helper scripts. There's no ingress support, no (direct) certificate support (other than for PVE itself--just like for TrueNAS, though PVE's support is far more comprehensive in terms of supported DNS hosts), and no real way to bulk-update them.

IMO, it's really good to have both. If you want to do X, and there's an available app that does X and allows you to configure it to suit your needs, that's very likely to be the easiest and most maintainable way to get X done, and even more so if X requires working with the data on your NAS. But if X is going to require a different OS--perhaps a different version of Linux, or Windows, or macOS, or some Solaris or BSD variant--so that you need to use a VM, I've found PVE to be much more featureful and easy to use.

 

[CheeryFlame]

You're probably right for vms but I'm not an heavy user of them. For apps I really like that it's in the NAS where it's easy to create an NFS share mount point and voila. I hope to see Scale's apps upgrading forward in the future! Thanks for replying.

 

[joeschmuck]

I think I would like to see some of those things fixed/working as well. As for Proxmox, of course I use ESXi (free) and run TrueNAS as a VM, and then I still have ESXi to run other VM's. I rarely use TrueNAS to run VM's these days. That is my personal preference of course. I like the solid performance of ESXi. Also, I'm not a system admin trained person. So it would take me considerable time to create a web server or something like that.

 

[juronja]

Good suggestions!

- I second backing up apps. This could be a part of the restore. A good example is Home Assistant OS, their restore method restores everything, the database, the apps, ...
- VM management should be discontinued to narrow the scope of the project imho, it's just not reliable and is far behind hypervisors like proxmox. And it's really not that complicated once you get a few VMs running there are even helper scripts to help you started.
- I think you have this in Cobia now, not tested yet.

1. Ability to switch between gallery and list (add) view

 

[CheeryFlame]

- I second backing up apps. This could be a part of the restore. A good example is Home Assistant OS, their restore method restores everything, the database, the apps, ...

Clearly the most important thing at this time.

- VM management should be discontinued to narrow the scope of the project imho, it's just not reliable and is far behind hypervisors like proxmox. And it's really not that complicated once you get a few VMs running there are even helper scripts to help you started.

I don't agree with this since they would lose a lot of people, like myself, running TrueNAS as their hypervisor. They would lose a considerable amount of users to get feedback from. I like Scale for the reason I can scale with it and I don't have to use Proxmox. Too much overhead for my requirements. I'm running 2 vms. I'd be pissed to setup a whole Proxmox server just because of this. I believe in Scale serving as an hypervisor and within the upcoming years, there will be less and less concessions to be made for the end user as more features will roll out.

- I think you have this in Cobia now, not tested yet.

1. Ability to switch between gallery and list (add) view

Yes, I was very happy to see this change. Unfortunately Cobia is very slow to load the apps page at this time if you've got many apps from third party catalogs. It's even worst when editing and app. I created a ticket on this matter on Jira and it's been merged with another one, so my guess is that they're working on it.

 

[juronja]

Yes, I was very happy to see this change. Unfortunately Cobia is very slow to load the apps page at this time if you've got many apps from third party catalogs. It's even worst when editing and app. I created a ticket on this matter on Jira and it's been merged with another one, so my guess is that they're working on it.

Thank you for the feedback, I might wait with the upgrade then. Although TrueCharts stopped supporting Bluefin. So I hope the update is coming soon. Thank you for contributing.

 

[CountBuggula]

... I like Scale for the reason I can scale with it...

Out of curiosity, what do you mean by this? As far as I can tell Scale still has no ability to actually, you know, scale. There's no clustered Kubernetes, no VM failover/HA/migration. Everything's still stuck on a single Scale node - even more so now that clustered SMB shares are gone from TrueCommand.

 

[Ericloewe]

With no disrespect for the dev team, because the rug was sort of pulled out from underneath the roadmap, but yeah, Scale is something of a misnomer at the moment.