I read of some users who have decided that running apps within TrueNas is too buggy and/or limiting and instead they run things on their home server on their own. What are they running these aps in then? ProxMox with individual OS for each service? I’m using Tailscale, Pi-Hole, and have a plex server I want to move from a desktop to this home server I am building.
I mean, I’m not 100% on the question here.
Are you asking if apps are buggy in TrueNAS? Work fine for me, is the short answer.
For a longer answer; someone will always have some sort of issue eventually. If you look at the forums, you’ll see lots of reports of various issues because people want help to fix them. On the other hand - I can’t imagine a world where anyone would waste their time to post that “everything is working great” every time they are happy.
If you’re asking if those specifics apps are working well on TruenNAS, I can confirm that at least Plex works great for me (I don’t have need for the others), even though there are posts where folks have had issues & the community helped them resolve them. I guess you can use the search feature for tailscale and pihole & see if recent releases have any major flaws for you, because 100% someone would post & ask for help. There is also always the option of manually installing instead of using the community catalogue, though that may require some effort being using the GUI.
If you’re asking for recommendations on what kind of OS to run for your server? It would depend on if you want to focus on something that is excellent for storing your data (assuming your build and configuration have been done correctly by you), but also has to secondary consideration of deploying docker apps and vms; if so TrueNAS is a good choice.
Otherwise if you just want some docker apps working, that can be accomplished by your preferred flavour of linux distro, apt install docker compose & then you go to town. I guess this’d be the answer to what are other folks running instead if they weren’t happy with TrueNAS? Though I doubt there’d be any need for individual machines or vms if there was a base understanding of how docker works, unless there was a VERY specific result that needed to be achieved, one beyond my imagination.
Either way though, at the very least, there is some hands on work to configure things correctly on each app that might not be intuitive no matter which option you pick.
Hopefully I managed to answer something for you here.
1 Like
I have been running PiHole, immich, and uptime-kuma for few months without any issues. Super glad to have ditched QNAP and Raspberry Pi… I am sure I’ll be running additional apps as I become more and more familiar with the ecosystem.
1 Like
I’ve been running few apps on native TrueNAS system for couple of months now, and it’s very stable.
I’m talking about Wireguard VPN, RustDesk and Traccar.
Done many updates till now without any problems.
1 Like
In addition to those concerns, some of us doubt iX’ long-term commitment to maintaining their apps. They’ve abandoned three apps ecosystems so far; I don’t see any reason to believe that this will be the one that they resource properly.
Why? I mean, running them on Proxmox makes plenty of sense, but each service in its own VM doesn’t make any sense to me. But you seem to be overlooking running individual Docker containers on TrueNAS, but without the apps infrstructure. You can do this using Portainer, Dockge, or straight Docker at the shell,[1] depending on which you prefer. And I think lots of us are taking that route–running the software on the NAS using Docker.
by which you can install other management interfaces like Arcane if desired ↩︎
1 Like
The easiest way is to simply install Dockge (my preference) or Portainer from the community apps, then use that to install and manage all other apps using docker-compose yaml scripts. Then you can just look at your self-hosted project’s “how to install” documentation page for their suggested docker-compose.yml script, copy that, tailor it for your system (mainly setting any storage paths), and install and manage it without dealing with some middleman who manages TrueNAS’s community apps.
It’s true, there’s no way to predict what they’ll do in the future for certain. However, all these popular self-hosted apps these days are using Docker for distribution, and docker-compose is normally used to install them, so it seems like it would be especially dumb if they abandoned docker and moved to something else, because that would just require even more work on their end.
I wouldn’t rule it out, but I’m not especially concerned about that possibility. My concern is more that they wouldn’t keep their apps up to date any better than they have the previous iterations. My feeling here is pretty much the same as with plugins on CORE–they kept iocage and jails, but pretty well abandoned maintenance of the plugins.
If at some point they do kick Docker to the curb, Dockge (which I also use) keeps all the compose files on disk where they can be easily migrated to some other tool.
1 Like
at its lowest level, a NAS system is nothing but an OS (freebsd or linux) + file sharing (samba). as such, you can definitively run VMs or containers on top of such a system.
but that would make the NAS system not that different from pve: an OS (linux) with the ability to run VMs or containers.
when i started, i had used pve + VMs (including truenas initially and fnos later) + containers. but as my comfort levels with fnos increased, i have come to the realization that i can just run pretty much anything i need from within fnos. so i’m moving away from pve → now I only run a virtualized version of fnos for secondary purposes.
sounds like others are doing something similar: fewer reasons to run pve.
I think it depends what your priorities and budget are. Recently I was at the mercy of TrueNAS to fix some bugs for a good 2 months since I wanted to stay on the early adopting edge. Finally they fixed an issue with not giving HDDs enough time to spin up.
Things like that you’re at the mercy or you rollback your version and pray the damage isn’t deep enough to intrude on your routinely app use(like it was for me).
A lot of happy campers use dockge, I’ve stuck with TrueNAS app catalog and custom apps. Hoping to be wise about what versions of truenas I upgrade to in the future, even though I love to help with feedback etc.
Understanding snapshots and/or your backup strategy that suits you best - aids in your decision-making as well.
This is yet another reason why I just run/manage my apps with Dockge: I don’t have to worry about some middleman being too slow to update an app when a new version is released. I can pull an update just as soon as it’s released by the official project maintainers.
there is a happy middle ground here. if you are using truenas, you are always at the mercy of the vendor.
if you go native (linux + samba), you are one step further to full independence but you are still at the mercy of the distro + samba updates…
there is a balance point somewhere in between. nothing is right or wrong here.