Since yesterday i am new to using TrueNAS, i have installed it on my home server (Dell PowerEdge T630) first to do some tests and figure out how it works, to be able to do a bigger in-the-future deployment as my main NAS and maybe some very minor apps/virtualization. Im mainly a Windows guy but im excited to try this out!
I have created a basic pool already with 4x 2TB HDD’s as ZFS2. I have also created a main Dataset with a few sub datasets:
One for a SMB network share
One for storing all VM images
One for storing all ISO’s
From my work i am used to VMware vSphere, where we can have a similar datastore where there are only ISO images stored. From the vSphere web GUI you are directly able to browse through folders and files, and also upload/delete files. I believe Proxmox also supports this from their web GUI
However i dont see any way/method within the TrueNAS web GUI where you can do this. Is this at all possible through the TrueNAS web GUI, does it need to be shared in some special way or is there a better way of doing such?
Truenas, as of now, doesn’t have a build in file browser from the gui. You’d have to create a smb/nfs share and map it on a different pc. As far as i can remember, there was a feature request to add a basic file browser to the gui, but there’s been no announcement for an ETA on that feature. If you’re using scale you could install filebrowser as an app, but you’d have to access it via a different webui.
I have just set up Filebrowser and was able to upload a .iso file to that iso specific dataset i have created.
However when i wanted to add that .iso as a disk image device to the VM the file wasnt there in that dataset. The amount of storage used on the disk also didnt change. Ive waited multiple minutes already, i thought perhaps stuck in ZFS Cache but that didnt seem to change during the upload. According to Filebrowser the file is there, but somehow its not? Im able to download it back from the Filebrowser UI just fine
I tried to do the same on the SMB share, there it uploaded directly and in the usage directly shows that the .iso is there. ZFS Cache seemed to go up accordingly too. If i go to the disk image config, i can only see the .iso under the smb share which is correct as that is currently the only file there.
Is this part of the filebrowser config perhaps incorrect?
Storage Configuration
Type: ixVolume
ixVolume Configuration: ACL NOT enabled Additional Storage:
Type: ixVolume
NO Read Only
Mount Path: NLGTNAS-TEST_CL01/ISO
ixVolume Configuration: ACL NOT enabled
Dataset Name: storage_entry
If i could upload an image i would
For clarification, this is what the data pool looks like:
NLGTNAS-TEST_CL01 (ZFS Pool)
ISO (139,5 KiB used, should have the .iso file)
NLBGDATA (4.44GiB used, does has the .iso file)
VIRTUAL_MACHINES (70,82 GiB used, VM Zvol is stored here)
As an aside, if you are going to store virtual disks (zVol or other) then you will be doing synchronous writes to these and to have even half way decent performance, they either need to be on a SATA / NVMe disk or you need an SLOG for your pool.
In theory a mirror triple would be needed to give you the same redundancy as your HDD pool, however:
A data SSD could be two-way mirrored with a replication to HDD as a third copy.
An SLOG SSD only holds data for c. 5 seconds and a mirror pair is probably adequate.
A SLOG SSD i could definitely add in the future. Right now its just mainly for testing and see how it all works.
Im trying to reconfig the storage configuration but i keep getting this:
Jan 3 12:34:50 NLBGTNAS-TEST kernel: overlayfs: workdir is in-use as upperdir/workdir of another mount, accessing files from both mounts will result in undefined behavior.
What could i be doing wrong? What paths should i set to what?
I tried to follow along with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCouS6Zw5vA But even then i keep getting that error. Im guessing my paths are incorrect.
As I said, if you can put the actual data on an SSD mirror rather than use an SLOG, but if the data is too big for SSD, then an SLOG is a necessary alternative.
@CaptainChaos37 did you end up figuring this out? I would also like an easy way within the TrueNAS web UI to upload and manage content on the instance.
Not sure if this is what’s being asked, but the filebrowser app from the Truenas catalog can serve as a rudimentary web-based graphical file explorer. By default it has no access to Truenas storage. The app can be configured to be granted access to specific pools, datasets, etc.
Example. From Truenas–Apps–filebrowser–Edit–Storage Configuration–Additional Storage. Granting access to a pool at /mnt/pool1. Note the Read Only checkbox which can be configured depending on intention/risk tolerance.
