You likely selected Move instead of Clone.
ah, so that wasnāt so clear. So if I clone it, then the hidden .ix-virt volume becomes the active volume and the existing HAOS zvol replicates and serves as a backup?
So, this is something that has changed between RC and the release.
I donāt understand why we now have to clone or move the zvol to use it. I already have it set up in the location I want it to be. Why canāt we just select and use the zvol as before? Obviously, I donāt understand why this change was required. Can someone please explain?
Does this get rid of the extra root drive that is being created? Or is the clone going to the root drive instead of having an empty root and a zvol attached?
It didnāt work like this in the RC - I have (well I had) a similar setup. I donāt understand why we canāt just set up our NAS with stuff where we want it to be. Why does stuff need to be manipulated and moved around? Is it really that hard to let us manage our own data locations. I was looking forward to eventually moving my primary HAOS back to TrueNAS, but not so much anymore.
My understanding of this, and Iām not a developer so that is second-hand, is that there were some significant performance issues with mounted zvols discovered in the early release versions, so that is part of the motivation. The other purpose, which is indicated in the UI help text, is to allow Incus to fully manage the instance volumes, which in turn exposes them for Incusās native backup/restore and snapshot functionality.
Work is in progress to expose these features in the UI.
Currently it does not, but I believe there is also development work in progress to allow you to select a volume and then make it the root disk or move it to the root disk at least, so an additional volume mount will not be needed.
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Thank you for the explanation.
When I update this guide, do you think it would be better to suggest a clone or move when importing the zvol?
My guess would be clone is more useful for people trying it out, since that allows for easier roll back to the 24.10 boot environment if needed.
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You can find an updated version of this guide using Instances on TrueNAS 25.04 in the Home Assistant Forums. I will update this guide when I have more time.
Do to the recent announcement - TrueNAS Virtualization Plans for 25.04.2 - the OP guide will not be updated since it is recommended to install new VMs using the Virtualization screens that will be restored in TrueNAS 25.04.2
The guide in the Home Assistant forums contains steps for using both Instances and Virtualization and will remain as such, however creating VMs using Instances will not be recommended.
TLDR; IMO; For many users, the Instances VMs section is probably perfectly safe. I am running HAOS in an Instance for some minor things right now.
My Personal Experience
While the Instances section is under construction, my entire homelab of 5 DNS servers, 2 stratum 2 NTP servers, 2 AD servers, a plex server, a local AI server/Ollama, HAOS and countless other random things on Ubuntu, are all running in dedicated VMs in the Instances section.
I have has been running on FT since Beta. I have been a VM user on TrueNAS for āhome prodā since before I worked here. Some of my VMās Iāve had since all the way back to Angelfish, and they were migrated there from ESXI. Some VMs have lived through all of that time. I just recently retired the last Server 2019 and Ubuntu 20.04 VMs, so that was a pretty good run to live through three hypervisor changes with VMWare->TrueNAS->TrueNAS Instances.
Migrating from non-Instances VMs to Instances VMs was far less painful than migrating from ESXI to TrueNAS in 2022.
Side rant: To be clear here also, before I came to iX I had professionally evaluated several potential replacements for VMWare due to being poor and having an expired Enterprise Agreement. I voted for Proxmox but my director ended up with HyperV because after I left he needed to let the team keep living in their Microsoft centric world. It was a very āK12ā thing for him to do. 
So like. Iāve seen WORSE pain in this area but in non-TrueNAS related contexts. 
I think I am more than your casual user and itās been very stable on 25.04.1 for my use case. But ofc, YMMV since it is Experimental, and there are probably some known improvements already in nightlies.
Backup coordination in both the old and the new systems of virtualization is a pain point for me, but I believe some development is underway for that already.
As far as HAOS specifically, I am still a Homebridge User but I am planning on migrating when I have timeā¦but competing priorities. So for now, I only know the few things I had tested in Instances worked in 25.04.0.
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I tend to agree. At least for HAOS, I thought the migration to Incus VMs was trivial. But some users had a hard time doing it. My reason to recommend the Virtualization page is to ease the pain of less savvy users moving forward, due to the following statement:
The guide in the Home Assistant forums gets far more views (itās almost 90k). Recovering the zvol was also trivial (thanks again for the hint), so Iāll also add the steps for that after 25.04.2 is released, and I can test recreating the VM to confirm it starts without issue. Iāll update both guides to match again when the dust settles a little more.
No objection there. Just trying to not scare people off It is still very much an option to use Instances, and both are in parallel in 25.04.2 for good reason.
Yeah no problem! and yeah, not even suggesting you update this here before .2 but just want to make sure it was said for readers of this thread (since I know it looks busy enough).
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The OP has been updated for TrueNAS 25.04.2
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Iām unable to create a VM in 25.04.2, and the system is saying āCan not retrieve responseā (as per screenshot).
Background:
Iām currently running haos in an āInstanceā, having migrated the previous Electric Eel VM zvol to an instance when Fangtooth was released. I moved the original zvol, rather than clone it (a mistake in hindsight, since I now have to remake an haos zvol - not difficult, but stillā¦).
So: Iām now trying to recreate a āclassicā VM in 25.04.2 using the VM name āhaosā, according to the guide posted above. Iāve downloaded the image, written it to my 50GB zvol, set up the zvol/CPU/RAM/networking all as per the guide.
But when I hit the final āNextā to actually create the VM, a drop down box appears saying āVirtual machine createdā with a green tick - but nothing appears on the UI (again, as attached).
Iāve tried clearing the browser cache, reloaded the page AND restarted TrueNAS.
Interestingly, when I try again to recreate the vm, using the same name āhaosā TrueNAS says āthe name āhaosā is already in useā. Iāve also tried creating the vm with a range of new / different names, still no avail, but whenever I re-use the name of a vm Iāve just tried to create, the same ā[name] is already in useā error is shown, so something must be saving somewhere, but nothing in the GUI.
I was about to ask, but then I saw your edit pop-up.
Out of curiosity, did you use the same name for this VM as the one you created under Instances? If youāre unable to load the Virtual Machines page, you may need to use the CLI to delete the new VM; however, Iām not exactly sure how to do that.
Iām sorry, I donāt have any other ideas. I think the error is more likely a TrueNAS issue, rather than a HAOS installation error. I would create a separate post with your screenshot.
Yes, but then I also tried using different names (āha_osā, āha_vmāā¦). Same issue.
Agreed. Will do so now.
Done: [SOLVED] Unable to create linux VM in 25.04.2
EDIT: My issue with VM is now solved - it was a TrueNAS bug:
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Surprisingly, I seem to be able to edit the OPās post, which poses a security risk. Perhaps the community administrator needs to check the backend permission configuration.
I was busy for a while and not able to update the post in a timely manner so I had made it a wiki.
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Hm, everything fine, instance booting and all, i can see ip from vnc, but gui is not reachable ā¦
I can ping google from haos shell. I can ping haos from my local machine.
EDIT: Dunno what was wrong, i made WM again, and now it works ā¦
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Glad you got it sortedā¦ Iām not sure of the cause but Iāve seen that happen a few times
Thank you for providing this guide!
I wanted to migrate my HAOS VM from incus (āContainersā) to libvirt (āVirtual Machinesā) under 25.10-BETA.1 - Goldeye.
Setting a fresh HAOS VM up using this guide, then using the HAOS built-in restore feature got the migration done in a few minutes only.
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