One man's guide to setting up a TrueNAS Scale homelab server

TrueNAS General
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I’ve been working on my homelab server for a little while now, and after the upgrade to Dragonfish, I decided I wanted to document the setup process. I made this guide partly for me, so that in the event I ever have to rebuild this server (it’s already happened once) or build one for a friend/family member, I have a documented list of steps I should take. I also have relied heavily on TrueCharts Discord community and Reddit to a lesser extent to help me get here, and my hope was that I could aggregate what I learned so that maybe in the future, someone else could benefit.

Here is everything this guide covers:

  • Hardware setup
  • Configuring the UI, Storage, Users
  • Enabling SMB
  • Setting up alerts
  • Adding TrueCharts and getting set up to install apps
  • Establishing a domain, enabling HTTPS and Traefik
  • Installing Pihole
  • Accessing your server externally
  • Setting up LLDAP/Authelia
  • Creating VMs, installing and setting up Home Assistant

Some things to note:

  1. I realize that the value of this guide has gone down significantly with the latest announcement from iX Systems and TrueCharts deprecating support, but at least for the next 6 months, maybe it helps someone out.
  2. Where possible, I’ve tried to give every resource I’ve used credit and link to them. I’m not trying to steal anyone’s work, I’m just trying to pull in guides from different sources into one place.
  3. I know there are people that find some of iX Systems choices polarizing, and there are definitely people that find TrueCharts (and the community) polarizing. The point of this post is not to start the whole iX Systems vs. TrueCharts discussion. FWIW, not every TrueCharts interaction has been sunshine and roses, but there have genuinely been some helpful support staff and community members in there. Not every Reddit interaction has been great, either.
  4. I’m not an expert. I’m just someone who’s trying to set up a reliable, extensible platform to expand home automation and manage storage backups in his house. If there’s a glaring issue you see as you read through this, especially as it relates to security, please let me know so myself (and maybe someone else) can learn.
  5. I know all of this, or virtually all of it anyways, can be done in Docker. I know Docker has much more support across the community. So far, I’ve been able to accomplish everything I wanted to with these apps and a VM for Home Assistant. I’m going to start exploring Docker/Jails (I’d link Capt Stux here but I can only make a post with 2 links?), but I may hold off until at least TrueCharts posts their Electric Eel migration and make a decision from there.

Anyways, that’s all for now. I hope this helps someone.

P.S. I originally posted this on Reddit but decided to post here at the recommendation of a few others. If you have time, feel free to upvote the post so others can see it.

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