TrueNAS on QNAP TS-253A and some questions

TrueNAS General
1

Hi Community,

I want to install TrueNAS on my QNAP TS-253A to use some home hosted apps like Immich and Nextcloud. My questions are:

  • Do I need any license to use TrueNAS on my QNAP TS-253A ?
  • In TrueNAS I can setup RAID-1 for my both Disks in QNAP ?
  • How often are Apps like Immich and Nextcloud updated?
  • Which Backup methods are available, to backup my Immich / Nextcloud data external, like to S3 Storage?

Thank you very much and have a nice day.

Regards
Lukas

2

Hi and welcome to the forums.

No, the community edition is free to use anywhere and on anything.

Yes, we call that a mirror.

Depends on the community that maintain them but in my experience fairly regular.

Almost anything you can think of but the easy button to press would be TrueCloud Backup which is a partnership TrueNAS has with the cloud storage provider StorJ and is fully integrated into TrueNAS.

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If the intent here is about ‘can we retain the data and import the disks directly into TrueNAS’, unfortunately the answer is No. Please be prepared to copy the data out first from QNAP to another disk before you install TrueNAS. Do not loose the data for a migration, without backup.

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thank you @Johnny_Fartpants @smione for your answers. Sounds good for me, my QNAP TS-253A is currently unused, to I get it back to life and install TrueNAS on it :slight_smile:

Regarding security, some importants points which I have to look on?

Regards
Lukas

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Not sure where to start, depends what you’re doing. Don’t expose it to the internet, disabled SSH unless needed especially password auth, etc…

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I plan just to explose Immich and Nextcloud to Internet, but I see that Cloudflared is available so I don’t need to open any Ports in my Router.

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Just one more question: My QNAP TS-253A is a 2-bay which has 2 1TB SSDs. If I install TrueNAS on one SSD, means I can’t create then a RAID-1 with my both SSDs ?

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That’s right. I think your best option is to use a USB disk as bootable device for TrueNAS.

I understand it might not be ideal, but here you are limited with the disks/slots available, and this may be an acceptable option. If you decide to go this route, I would suggest using an actual USB disk, than a USB pen drive.

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Just installed TrueNAS on my USB Stick. In case of any usb stick issues, I think it should be possible to backup my config to be able to install on a new usb stick and restore it?

Or is it better to use an external SSD Disk instead of my USB stick?

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A usb disk will have more write endurance compared to the usb sticks. But if you are comfortable in backing up config and OK with the delays in restore, it should be fine.

May be this is fine for the initial configurations, and you will find out soon that you are making configuration changes during the initial days more frequently as you keep learning about the features available. So do not forget to take a config backup, every time you make a change. Also it may be a good practice to keep some screenshots of some key configurations that you make. it will become handy on later stage for better understanding of the technology.

Eventually, once your configuration changes reach a stable state, you may consider reinstalling to a USB disk and restoring the configuration so that you could stop worrying about usb pen drive failures.

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@smione perfect, thank you very much for your very helpful answers, and sorry that I missed your earlier answer regarding my question to SSD Disk / USB pen drive!

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Now a very important question: How to backup fully my apps (config & data) to be able to restore them?