Developer’s Notes

4 minute read.

Last Modified 2021-06-15 10:47 EDT

Recent Updates

04/09/2021 - ISCSI creation process completed. Cluster creation routines finished up and streamlined.

03/17/2021 - Large update to Cluster creation/management. Requires latest TrueNAS SCALE nightlies to work properly (API’s just changed on their end).

02/25/2021 - Initial nightly image release for TrueCommand 2.0

System Requirements

Docker Environment (64-bit AMD or Intel system)
2GB of RAM (recommended minimum)
20GB of disk space (recommended minimum)

Nightly Docker Images

Nightly images for TrueCommand are built every 24 hours. These images are automatically pushed to the “nightly” tag on DockerHub if they pass the automated QA testing procedure.

Download information:

DockerHub
Example in Documentation, replace “latest” with “nightly” in the docker pull commands.

Current Status

The nightly images are always considered a “work-in-progress” toward the next release of TrueCommand. They should be suitable for adventurous users and developers who are not afraid of diagnosing issues and opening up bug reports with the TrueCommand developers.

Ticket Tracker: Jira

Current Nightly Version: 2.0-Master

Summary of changes in version 2.0

Version 2.0 is a complete rewrite of the middleware and database used in TrueCommand, as well as a complete re-integration with the TrueNAS middleware for statistics and analysis. Early tests indicate a sharp improvement in the performance of the system (details below), and some of the new features that this enables in TrueCommand 2.0 are: NAS metrics and state updates in realtime - no more 30s delay!
The “Storage Explorer” interface lets you inspect the datasets and files on your storage pools, while also giving you easy access to creating and managing snapshots, shares, zvols, and more.
The “ISCSI Manager” is a new dashboard system that lets you view and create ISCSI volumes in bulk across your entire NAS fleet.
“Cluster Volumes” is a new dashboard system that lets you view and create clustered datasets which span across multiple TrueNAS SCALE systems in your fleet.
Marked performance improvements:
Docker image ~50% smaller
Network bandwidth usage ~40% less
CPU usage ~5% lower
Database growth rate ~99% lower

Table of features and current status (Timestamp references when the item status was last updated):

Feature	Status	Timestamp	Description
Users	OK	02/26/2021	Create and manage users and user permissions
Teams	OK	02/26/2021	Create and manage teams of users and permissions
Systems	OK	02/26/2021	Register NAS’s and maintain connections/status info
Alert Rules	OK	02/26/2021	Create and manage custom alert rules
Alert Notices	OK	02/26/2021	Rolling feed of alerts that have been triggered with comment and resolution systems
Alert Services	OK	06/07/2021	Submission of new alert notices to external notification systems (email/pagerduty)
Reports	OK	02/26/2021	Historical charts of system information
Logs	OK	02/26/2021	Security logs of changes from users
System Administration	OK	02/26/2021	Configuration of TrueCommand system (SSL certificates, licensing, AD/LDAP, etc)
Dashboard	OK	06/07/2021	Top-level look at NAS state and information
NAS Explorer	OK	06/07/2021	Detailed inspection/management of storage on individual NAS’s
Cluster Volumes	OK	06/07/2021	Create and manage clusters of TrueNAS SCALE systems (glusterfs)
ISCSI Manager	OK	06/07/2021	Create and manage ISCSI volumes in bulk

Migration Notice

Due to the change in database between the 1.x and 2.x versions of TrueCommand, there is an automatic database migration routine that will run the first time you start up the v2.0 image of TrueCommand.
Information Migrated:
User accounts
Teams
System Registrations
System Groups
TrueCommand System Configuration
NAS configuration backups
Information NOT migrated due to drastic changes in how these are performed now.
Historical metrics from NAS’s
Alerts (both rules and notices)
User-defined reports
Security Logs
When you are using an LDAP-enabled system for user logins, please have your non-LDAP admin user credentials handy before updating. The LDAP integration systems between 1.x and 2.x are different, and you need to login and verify that everything is still configured properly after the migration.

Minimum Supported TrueNAS Versions

Due to the changes in integrating with the TrueNAS middleware, the minimum version for full-support of functionality has changed with TrueCommand 2.0:

FreeNAS/TrueNAS 11.3 series - No longer supported. Does not provide realtime statistics or storage information, but you can still connect to them and use TrueCommand to initiate updates.
TrueNAS 12 CORE/Enterprise - Supported after 12.0-U3. 12.0-U2.1 and older are missing some key metrics in the realtime stats (disk/network usage metrics in particular), but work otherwise.
TrueNAS SCALE 21.03+ - Fully Supported (SCALE-20.12+ is supported excluding cluster functionality)