I made a journal for my experiences
different model from yours but stuff you may encounter during your setup.
But to go over your points
- not necessarily. If your nas (e.g. like mine has some 2.5’’ ssd slots internally, which are then connected to the backplane in the ts-877), has ANY ssd support whether it be 2.5’’ ssd or m.2 sata ssd or m.2 nvme ssd, then you can install that internally then boot from there.
However, i tried that with a pcie addon card for adding m.2 nvme using qnaps addon, it wouldn’t boot truenas from that. Also i wanted to use m.2 nvme rather than the 2.5’‘’ ssd which is capped at sata speeds. Hence the decision why i went with the usb m.2 nvme external enclosure solution for the truenas boot drive.
yes you can get 2 of these external usb m.2 nvme enclosures, then plug both of them into the usb ports at the back of the nas, then setup a raid1 that way. i only had 1 so i couldn’t do that. it just worked, so i didn’t bother, though i probably should for a more reliable nas setup.
i STRONGLY recommend, that when you setup truenas, that you confirm the status of your fans. Is the fans working? is it on? and is the speed fast enough? if not then you need to remember to go into the bios and set the fan to MANUAL, and set it to max fan speed. I tried to adjust fan speed but the airflow was too low. Only max speed seemed to work well.
another option for fans is it you can get a fan script to work, but i never could.
If your nas has a front LED panel, you need to setup a script for that so it can show it powering on, then the led turns off itself. If you don’t the led will be on all the time. previously in truenas core the scripts for led worked for me. But since moving to truenas scale, it no longer worked. So i gave up on that. One solution was just to put black tape to cover it, if it’s annoying.
as for still being able to rollback, i suggest that when installing truenas, install truenas on SSD internal or external. There is a DOM, DO NOT install anything on that. I also recommend DO NOT, physically remove it (though you can if you want to, it’s not worth the effort).
Just go into your bios and set NOT to boot the DOM. You can also additionally go into truenas and set a script not to boot dom (so it won’t be detected as a drive). But this script fails if you plug anything new into the usb ports at the back, this changes the lettering which causes that failure, so the dom will show up again. keep that in mind. So even without the truenas script, just simply not accidentally do anything with that dom, whenever ur in the storage drive selector. You will know which is the DOM because the capacity size is very low. Just ignore it.
To rollback to QTS (most probably if you plan to sell it off), just unplug the external usb, go into bios reset back to defaults (confirm that the dom is enabled and in the boot section), then boot normally. It will then boot QNAP as normal. Then update QTS.