Hello, my question is simple. Or at lkeast I hope so. I am in the midst of deciding what to do about a NAS at my Mothers house and it occurred to me that TrueCommand exists but I have no idea if it requires the use of hardware from iXSystems or if running TrueNAS is enough?
No, not really. It’s more intended to allow for management of multiple servers through a single interface. A better way to manage a remote NAS would be using some sort of VPN solution (which you’d need to use anyway to allow your TrueCommand installation to communicate with the remote NAS). Tailscale is quite popular for this purpose.
You need a 24x7 connection from the TrueNAS in question to the TrueCommand server - preferrably at the same location or through a VPN - to use TrueCommand. It’s an enterprise/data centre system management appliance for a fleet of TrueNAS systems as @dan already wrote.
It does not help with the “remote connection” part, that is assumed to exist.
I run one for fun/curiosity - see the screenshot for the status dashboard of my TrueNAS “fleet” of three systems. Yes, I have three TN servers that are always on, just like the virtual machine running TrueCommand.