Virtualizing TrueNAS - My best option?

TrueNAS General
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Hey all,
In light of the changes to TrueNAS apps coming in dragonfish and the loss of TrueCharts as a result I am rethinking my home server software stack as I switched to TrueCharts after having issues with some of the apps from the official iX catalog (plex and pihole I think?) and am wanting to avoid having anything beyond storage coupled to TrueNAS at all since it’s more of an appliance OS and not as flexible, at least not in a way I feel comfortable messing with, as a general purpose OS.
I installed Debian with no GUI but the SPICE interface is really flaky on macos with chrome. I can use SSH but it got me thinking more seriously about moving to a virtualized TrueNAS while passing through the HBA I bought when I built this server 4 years ago for that exact reason. Originally that was to be ESXi with VMUG but I don’t trust building anything where I may need to rely on broadcom’s benevolence.
My needs are relatively simple. I really need a handful of containers but would also love to be able to run a few VMs in a way that doesn’t feel like it’s part of an afterthought part of the system.
All that background is to set up my question:
Is virtualizing TrueNAS on Proxmox the most logical step for what I am wanting? I have experience through work with ESXi and lots of docker and kubernetes experience. If this was just a server with no NAS, I would just throw debian on it and spin up the stuff I need, add some KVM VMs and be on my way but I like TrueNAS’s WebUI and I want to keep this as simple as possible. I deal with so much of this at work and I just want something that works once I migrate my current setup. I am realizing that being reliant on iX or TrueCharts to not change anything or to keep tooling updated is just not a wise move for what I am wanting and feel like proxmox + truenas + containers/VMs is the right move.
I am however open to opinions. I have done a lot of reading here and other places but what I don’t want to do is migrate yet again, realize it has pitfalls/ issues or that there is a better/simpler solution. Maybe I am just looking for reassurance that my logic makes sense, I can’t be certain :sweat_smile:

Thanks in advance!

Server config:
SuperMicro X10-DRL-i
1x 2697v4
128GB ECC Memory
LSI 3008/9003-8i HBA
GTX 1080Ti (old graphics card being used for transcoding plex streams)
A handful of 512GB SSDs that can be used as needed (currently have a mirrored boot and 1 for apps but have 1 or 2 left. Not super high endurance but have 100GBW at most - not good for a ZFS cache but fine for containers and boot disks)

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3 Options:

  • Wait for Electric Eel and native docker
  • Use a VM
  • Use a Scale Jail
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Yeah my big concern is having to rely on iX or anyone else to not break shit or make major changes.
I figure I’m going to have to deal with new installs of all my apps that used truecharts so running it in a VM is probably the right move. Gives me flexibility. I have less confidence in iX after they shitcanned the BSD version so unceremoniously. 2ish years later and the final release isn’t tested to work properly with jails or apps lol.

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If you want to run your own services without depending on others, in my opinion, the best thing is to use docker-compose to construct your services yourself.

You can then store the compose files and datasets on your pool.

You can easily move the services from one docker host to another, be that a Debian host, or Ubuntu, or TrueNAS etc.

A good way to do this on the current TrueNAS is to create a debian sandbox with jailmaker (ie a “scale jail”), its basically a lightweight vm, but has full speed access to the data in your pool without going through network protocols.

I demonstrate the above in this video:

And, with the upcoming Electric Eel, you can skip the sandbox and run the same compose files directly on TrueNAS, if you choose.

Which I go through in this video:

If you decide to use the compose route, then you can easily move these compose files to other hosts etc, but the fastest access to your data will be running the stacks on the same host/kernel as the data.

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I am running my web server (Virtualmin) and pfSense as virtual machines (VMs) and I am going to wait for Electric Eel before doing any Apps.

I personally would wait for Electric Eel as it is not that far away (October I think) then you can have KVM for VMs and a new Docker system for all of your containerised apps.

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That’s true, with docker compose I am not locked in to using them on TrueNAS if something changes again down the line. I can create them on another machine ahead of time and migrate them to TrueNAS when electric eel comes. Appreciate the videos. I think more than anything I am looking for a reason not to deal with setting up proxmox and this is as good as any.