We can no longer store virtual machines where we used to, they must be in TrueNAS’s walled garden
We can’t snapshot them
Without snapshots we can’t replicate them for backup
This is not the fault of instances itself, it’s just how IX has configured it? So we’re in the same boat as with Apps now where I don’t use their GUI because it’s horrible to use and has unnecessary restrictions so I just use command line. I presume I can do that with instances as well.
The interaction with Apps and Virtual machines is absolutely terrible from both a UI and a UX perspective IMO.
I mean, some really great technical work going on behind the scenes, I really take my hat off to the team for much of this, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of UI / UX feedback getting back into the product.
I don’t understand the advantage of having this .ix-virt location as opposed to having the ability to choose the location of our VM’s like before either. It’s probably an attempt to simplify I guess, but with simplification comes limitation and people don’t pick up truenas to be like a QNAP or a Synology, I’d say many of us piick up truenas to get the ability to configure things a little more and do a little more with the product.
You have to have a lot more care, /var/incus, which is where the incus db is stored is not preserved between updates to the base OS, thus any changes you make beyond instance settings themselves will be lost.
Additionally, the middleware configures certain instance settings using raw values, and if the setting is not twiddled in the ui, there is potential for it to e over written during upgrade migrations or when the ui is next used.
OK thanks. At least I can manage that though - I was pretty careless when migrating my vm’s to instances, I had read the ‘import’ vm to mean import a drive location into instances, not literally import it / move it to a new location. I don’t even know what happened, but I lost access to VMS and had to restore from backup - which luckily I did have by some miracle I don’t even understand. Seems like right now, it’d be a lot safer to self manage it.
Lol I just made a post about this, almost lost data because of the exact question you are asking here. Extremely unfortunate we cant simply choose a zvol location for virtual machine to be installed on and its hidden behind .ix-virt or whatever. I barely understand it myself but im assuming given the red experimental notification that these things will change… I hope.
I spent the better part of 3 days thinking I was doing something wrong because the zvol I created wasn’t showing any data being written to it even though windows server showed 200+ GiB on the C drive. Just to find out the data for the VM is being stored in some other location (.ix-vert?)
I just want to create a replication for snapshots of the VM with the data stored in the Zvol of my choosing , I could be totally confused though.
This is correct, which is why I don’t view instances as fully usable in Fangtooth. Not being able to snapshot a VM eliminates one of the main advantages of virtualization.
However, IxSystems is working on adding snapshot functionality for instances and hopes to roll this out in Goldeye, likely due out in October. This is discussed in the latest Truenas tech talk podcast, available here: Catch the Latest from the TrueNAS Tech Talk (T3) Podcast.
Based on what is said in that podcast, it seems there is an outside chance of some alternate timing for the addition of snapshot functionality (either before or after Goldeye’s initial release), but it sounds like the the more likely scenario is that it will be rolled out in Goldeye.
For this reason, I am probably not upgrading until Goldeye and am staying with 24.10.2 (Electric Eel) until then, which is perfectly functional. YMMV.
, I could be totally confused though.