I created a new TrueNAS VM from local Hyper-V server and installed Azure Linux Agent and cloud-init and uploaded the TrueNAS VM’s vhd with fixed size to Azure to create as image and deploy to Azure VM, but it is still failed.
ZFS needs direct hardware access to drives.
You can virtualize truenas, but then you need to passthrough a controller. I dont think you can get direct hardware access to the azure server.
Virtual disks = very high risk of catastrophic data loss
oic… so is that mean that the limitation is on the ZFS system instead of FreeBSD operation system?
I tried before to create a ubuntu VM on local hyper-v server and follow the Microsoft instruction then finally able to upload the vhd and deploy to Azure.
I mean, you could probably get it working, but YMMV. As @Farout mentioned, you won’t be getting direct access to the underlying hardware on an Azure server - and TrueNAS does not play very nicely with virtual disks.
That being said, give it a go as a PoC with some small disks and data you have copies of, why not! If these things are never tested we’ll never know
There are a couple of articles on running ZFS, in FreeBSD, in Azure, but none that I could find specific to TrueNAS CORE (which makes sense, as I personally can’t really think of a use-case where this would be a good idea):
Do it for the lols. Report back with your findings.
But if you’d like to use it more seriously. Then I would suggest that you’re looking for the wrong problem for your solution.
Another metaphor is to put your car on the deck of a tanker, and try to drive to your destination there.
Cloud services have many many many better ways to serve storage to your VMs, that is native and designed to work within that ecosystem,
TrueNAS is meant for onprem machines. Some hyper converge and virtualize to save on hardware. But the hardware is still there.
OR… I could be completely wrong. In that case, I will happilly read your tales of adventure. Happy travels
Agreed that cloud services provider have many other better options for the storage solutions.
Somehow i still need to try to deploy TrueNAS on Azure but seems Azure or TrueNAS appliance not allowed me to do that.
I tried upload a configured Ubuntu vhd on Azure and it successfully to boot but similar steps for TrueNAS vhd and it failed to boot. TrueNAS will reset or remove my updated config or installed pkg after every reboot. Azure also doesn’t have detailed instructions for upload custom FreeBSD image and deploy on Azure.
So… grateful that if someone can give me some recommendations about how to deploy TrueNAS on Azure… or actually not many ppl will do this… deploy TrueNAS on Azure…
You’d probably be one of the first, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing! Plenty of learning opportunities here.
If you’re having trouble installing CORE, give SCALE a go, Azure might play nicer with it