Yesterday, we announced a new “Powered by TrueNAS” initiative to partner with innovative companies that deliver complementary solutions and services to our current products. We are enabling TrueNAS software to be embedded in solutions that address new markets.
The first partner is Eshtek, a startup building HexOS, a managed home server for non-IT content creators. There is a growing market for YouTube, Instagram, and other social media or entertainment content creators who need storage, virtualization, cloud backup, and an “easy button” for non-IT administrators to use. TrueNAS is uniquely positioned as the enabling technology with its rich functionality set and robust APIs. HexOS simplifies the user interface and automates the workflows to make it easy for content creators to use.
Eshtek was formed by some of the key players behind UNRAID and is backed by Linus Sebastian from LTT Media, a content creator with over 10 million followers in the home technology space. Linus created the most-watched TrueNAS video of all time when he replaced his media editing server. IX has partnered with them and will benefit from their future growth and business. In the future, TrueNAS Minis will be HexOS enabled.
HexOS is not a competitor to TrueNAS SCALE. If you have already set up your TrueNAS system, you’ve demonstrated your IT skills. You’ve probably read some of the documentation and made decisions about how you want to set up your system.
However, we know there are users who don’t have IT or Linux skills and don’t have the time or inclination to learn them. They may prefer to spend their time capturing and editing great videos. These users will have a choice of a simpler HexOS UI that makes automated decisions or the full-featured TrueNAS UI that enables any customization. It’s even possible for a user to start with a simple HexOS UI and then use the powerful TrueNAS UI if needed.
HexOS users will have their own forums and support, so don’t worry about an onslaught of YouTube creators who don’t know how to spell ZFS.
Oh captain my captain!! Thanks for the warm introduction here and explaining our solution to your community.
In addition to the blog post this week and the partnership announcement, we have a Q&A with NASCompares for next week and additional blog posts and content drops planned as we progress on our path towards release.
We are well aware of the technical prowess and expertise this community has to offer. If there are ideas or suggestions you have for us, we welcome them.
It’s also worth noting that in addition to partnering with TrueNAS, we are also engaged with the experts over at Klara Systems to further assist us in this effort. We are focused on working with the absolute best on this project to ensure we exceed meeting the needs of our customers.
Make sure to mention the big “no noes” when it comes to ZFS (port multipliers, SMR discs, RAID controllers, virtualisation without passthrough of a controller,…)
Also which special vdevs are safe to try out and which will result in complete data loss when they fail. EDIT → all of them ! Only log and cash can be safely removed
That would be “all of them” for the latter piece - any special vdev type is a critical part of the pool (although if data was written to pool before the addition of the special vdevs, there’s the possibility to recover it).
special vdevs are subject to the same removal rules as regular ones - that mostly being “no raidz allowed” - whereas log and cache can always be added, adjusted, or removed entirely (ideally in a controlled manner) regardless of your other vdev types.
Hey, be nice people. I mean, HexOS_Jon and I are enemies (him being Linux and me being BSD…BTW, Linux is like Emacs; stupid) but I still respect his abilities to start a project like this. Slack please.
Good luck, @HexOS_Jon.
Remember that while we can offer guidance of various strengths, from “you’re likely to see lower bandwidth from that Realtek card” to “you have SMR drives, it’s strongly recommended to replace those” to “overclocking your CPU and RAM using LN2 is a very silly idea and is likely to cause data loss” - but ultimately each user is responsible for their own decisions, their own level of acceptable risk tolerance, and their desired system form factor/budget.
We should always ask the questions and offer to educate, rather than presuming bad faith (or jumping to insults.)
We can say things like “Youtubers are stupid” or “Covid-19 was created in Linux” right? I mean, that’s more constructive criticism or forewarning than an insult in my book.
When one runs HexOS, they can later forgo the HexOS UI and use the TrueNAS UI instead, without needing to install/reinstall the system? (Like lifting a curtain?)
Or did you mean to say that HexOS can be used for a beginner to familiarize themselves with administering a NAS, which then allows them to switch to TrueNAS later?
You’re nuts!! They (because as we all know, big Bill is still calling the shots over there) were far too busy making snow in Texas to create a global pandemic (so they outsourced to Redhat). Systemd is obviously the delivery mechanism! *sheesh!*
I had a post flagged too. Ignore it, nothing happens (it’s not jury duty or anything). It’s all that hugs-and-kisses stuff built into forums now a days.
