I’ve seen mention of BlueIris for security cameras.
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Yeah… i tried an emulation solution a while back… it was unusably slow.
I’m hoping the parallels solution is faster, but not that hopeful.
I don’t use VM’s on Truenas so I did not vote. I use the Truenas servers primarily for computer backup storage and storage of images and so don’t need any VM’s on Truenas for any reason.
I do use a few apps on Truenas, like filebrowser and tailscale (in the very rare case I need server access while traveling) but as someone pointed out in a different thread when using pi-hole or something similar on the Truenas server; means loss of the network when Truenas is being updated, or pi-hole is being updated which might or might not be okay depending upon the situation. With the recent ongoing changes in networking, app base etc. in Truenas, this is risky for anyone.
Last few places I worked had separate servers for file storage, backups, applications, vision systems, floor automation and servers for any specialized needs.
At home I have as my primary computer a dual boot Linux laptop where windows is on a separate 1tb m.2 stick. Linux (1tb) and a data partition (1tb) is on another 2tb m.2 stick with Linux being the primary boot environment. Both windows and Linux have access to everything on the data partition so there is little need to duplicate anything for data. This setup works wonderful for what I require and I don’t need to try making something work almost as good, or almost as fast in a VM.
My primary setup gives each operating system complete access to any underlying hardware, maximum compatibility with native software/hardware, no chance of breaking a VM with an update etc. Reboot time is very quick (I9, 96Gb ram), so that is a moot point. If I really need windows and Linux both at the same time? I can always just remote into one of my other computers running windows or running Linux from either environment I’m booted into on the primary laptop. So far in the 6+ months since I have had this setup, there has been zero need for using both operating systems side by side at once. As a plus, since it is a laptop I can take it with me without need to setup any remote connection to the VM.
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What about 68000-era programs in Snow Leopard? ( 
)
For a colleague of mine it used to be Quicken personal finance. But I doubt there’s a common one across a large sample of users.
For me it is Grimms Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache (Grimm’s dictionary of German) that would in print take up at least two boards on your shelf.
Then I also have Digitale Bibliothek - a german legacy app with ebooks from before ebooks were a thing …
Stuff like that, legacy.
And I want them on my server and then published via Guacamole instead of on my Mac, because I want them accessible from anywhere, and nice ZFS based incremental backups etc.
On my current Mac with Apple Silicon they would not even run, and then you cannot reasonably do Time Machine backups (as great as Time Machine is for the average not very tech savvy user!) of VMs … Time Machine works on the file level, so a VM virtual disks takes up their whole size for every backup.
A Zvol with the VM on the other hand …
I know there are folks into gaming that need Windows on top of their Macs. I just want a couple of legacy applications, but - these are important and I want them to be safely backed up and available as long as I live … server based VM rules.
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I have a windows VM in my (windows) desktop. But since I access this VM via RDP, I plan to move it to my proxmox. I don’t know about other hypervisors, but VirtualBox’s multi-display support is subpar. Thus, rdp.
Usually, you can specify multiple dns-servers on your router (pi-hole ip first, google/cloudflare second). Did it several years ago – so far so good.
Sure, but then the ad-blocking function of the Pi-Hole goes away. DNS lookups for nastytrackingdomain.com fail on the Pi-Hole, so your system queries the secondary DNS, where it succeeds. Result: You still see ads.
AFAIK, pi-hole doesn’t fail (ad) dns requests but resolves them to something like localhost 0.0.0.0 (just checked it myself).
TBH, for a moment you made me think that all these ads for years were not from pi-hole lists not being perfect but from me being simp.
Yes one can setup fail-over, on a non response time out, but Dan makes a good point that you need to be careful in where the fail-over points to. I think the thread I remember pointed out it’s generally not a good idea to put services the server may depend on on.
As a general rule, if A depends on B, then make sure that B does not depend on A 
In other words, if the TN system depends on the Pi-Hole DNS server then either do not run the Pi-Hole DNS server on the TN system -or- have redundant Pi-Hole servers some of which do not rely on the TN system.
DNS is designed for redundancy and you should have at least 2 DNS servers that meet your need (if you need the protections that Pi-Hole provides, then you need 2 Pi-Hole servers). The resolvers that ask the DNS servers queries know how to handle multiple DNS servers configured.
I am just starting to play with Pi-Hole, up until now I was rolling my own ISC Bind based DNS servers. I am still investigating how to have two (or more) Pi-Hole servers synchronize their configuration and data (the existing script that people have pointed out is no longer being developed and only officially supports through Pi-Hole 5, current is version 6).
I didn’t get the point about being careful. The issue was “when pi-hole is not running, there is no internet”. I proposed a solution “when pi-hole is not running, there is an ad (what a surprise)”. I think it’s good enough for SOHO use.
I plan to eventually install the Pi hole Docker App to supplement the two RPis I have here. But first I have to learn how to sync them reliably.
IMO, pi-hole doesn’t deserve high availability (as long as it is used only for ad-blocking). However, if I were really into it, I would use the proxmox cluster HA. Or mb docker swarm. Or mb k8s.
I wonder why you need/want so many instances of pi-hole.
Never underestimate the benefit of high reliability internet depending on who you’re dating / are married to / the parent of / etc. 
Welp, if you use it not only for the ad-blocking but also as your only dns server, it makes sense. OTOH, you’ve said that you have two RPis. This means that you have already specified (at least) two dns server addresses on your router. So, as I have already mentioned, set the third address to google/cloudflare won’t make it worse.
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Not using pi-holes for DNS seems like a waste.
I also find that MacOS is pretty trigger-happy re: jumping from one DNS provider to the next. So having a third provider would kill as blocking. The current DNS also bypasses Comcast, which is a plus.
If there is one thing that is problematic, it’s schools insisting on using google docs which in turn seems to be also used for ad tracking. Hence certain URLs that appear to have dual uses then must be unlocked.
Anyhow, the third instance would run on a different architecture simply because I have found the Rpi OS to be less than stable on occasion. So this would be a docker running on Intel vs. the two pi’s running on ARM.
I setup a plain Debian (no gui just terminal) VM and configure everything myself to host certain workflows. Most of my apps run on the host itself in docker containers, and it’s great. Plan to use LXC containers in the future as well. But the Debian VM stays. I wrote a few systemd units as well to handle startup initialization and graceful shutdown.
Besides that I love to experiment with stuff. I create a vm, create snapshot, try something, revert, etc. It’s great.
My TN server is “Storage First”, and virtual machines on top 
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Before truenas 24.10, a VM was a way to install Docker and run those apps on truenas and a way to set those apps to a different ip address. Now with the truenas official apps running on Docker and plans to give offical apps the capability to set a different ip address, truenas VMs have a limited use case like running those network apps that perform better and have more functionality on a VM (HAOS).
I will continue to have a VM on truenas but it be much smaller and most of my VM workload will continue to run on a different system.
Downside of VMs: they can access host storage only by file sharing protocols.
Both Docker and jails support local mounts with full POSIX semantics. So you can for example share a MySQL Unix domain socket across jails. Or an SQLite database. Or a mailstore.
You cannot do this over file sharing or you will end up with corrupted data.
That’s why we love FreeBSD and jails so much here. Yes, Docker can do that, too, but it is much more difficult and less transparent to orchestrate.
Kind regards,
Patrick
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