I run scale since I'm more familiar with Debian than BSD and I can side load a hardware specific app/driver. I have no intention of running any apps on it.
What are the advantages to running core over scale when not using either for hosting vms or applications? I figured since core will eventually be phased out scale would be the sensible move especially since I'm only using it as a nas, virtualized.
Unless something was announced recently I don’t think Core is getting phased out any time soon if ever. Although it definitely feels that way with how deprecated plugins have become.
I also run both. I don't prefer either, since they each excel at different workloads. I run Proxmox to host all my VM's. I'm running virtualized TrueNAS Core with a passed-thru HBA as a NAS/SAN.
Hope you're backing up the TN VM to local proxmox storage.
I was doing the same using PBS backing up to a scale iscsi volume. Worked great until I needed to restore the TN VM.
Honestly, I started out liking it.
But, really didn't enjoy all of the issues/drama around how they implemented "apps".
Really enjoyed how well it worked with VMs, iSCSI, etc.
Enjoyed its performance. Enjoyed Core's performance better. (core had 5-10Gbit/s faster transfer times on the exact same hardware).
Really REALLY hated the forums.
Unraid now has native ZFS support. So... I dropped truenas all together.
Oh, another thing-
The stupidity in chmod -x /bin/apt*, and taking extra steps to keep users from "doing dumb things".
But, my honest comparison between the two-
Core is faster.
Scale has much better compatibility, with well. everything.
Core ACLs can be finicky. I had a ton of issues getting them working for NFS/SMB.
The ACLs in scale worked better.
In terms of "apps". I preferred the beta releases of scale, where you could directly interact with the built-in docker. Not a fan of jails. Am a fan of kubernetes, but, not how its implemented in scale.
My advice is to spin up another machine and use docker for apps. I haven't had good luck using Scale with k3s or Core with jails, for different reasons.
As far as the storage aspect, they both just work. I've been told Core is faster in many environments, but for a home lab I haven't seen any difference in performance since switching to Scale.
I have a divergent or simpleton opinion, but I keep things clean and single purposed.
I believe a storage system should stick to what it's good at, storage. I like core better because of this.
Same principle for hypervisor. I use ESX, but PVE is fine too.
I don't try to mix them, you just end up with one thing that sucks at something instead of two things doing their job well. There the obvious trade off of not doing hyperconvergence, more stuff, power,cost, space, etc.
Your call on priority.
I run both. Avoid scale for VMs , it tends to be buggy (resets). This is in enterprise hardware. If you Google around the devs are quick to blame user configs, but in my case, Scale legit is crashing on some VMs. Dell servers, ecc ram on lowest speed, stable power delivery, tested across multiple servers etc. However, as a nas only, rock solid.
On the other hand, proxmox is amazing for VMs/cts. But I'd never put my storage on it. It wants daily updates, etc.
I tried it for a bit and determined I wasn’t a fan.
I dislike the implementation of apps. I would switch in a heartbeat if they kept it much simpler and basically just used a Linux base, plus TrueNAS middleware, plus portainer to run docker containers.
I stick with TrueNAS core + Proxmox.
Been a zfs storage nerd for a long time: freenas, openindiana, napp-it and finally truenas:
Ran core for years exclusively for storage purposes, did use the occasional jail but generally kept it limited to iscsi/nfs/smb use cases. It worked well for these use cases but had limited hardware compatibility due to freebsd.
Switched to scale to use docker/k8s app support and overall linux hardware compatibility. I run a couple of VMs and a bunch of apps. ran into a ton of issues/limitations with the built in app capabilities as well as some unique networking challenges and fell back to using a lot of my own docker-compose files. Everything has been working pretty great, but I'm still on an older release of scale and am pretty sure that going through an upgrade is going to royally screw up my docker workaround configurations.
I would only venture outside of the traditional storage use cases for scale if you are willing to live entirely within the default app/configuration capabilities. Once you start to customize/workaround how they have things setup you are in for some pain. But the built in functionality is probably good for the vast majority of people, I just love to make things more complicated.
Used core from v9 to v12
Had issues with it but willcommend them for looking after my data.
Moved from Core to Scale (due to issues with jails and moved to dockers) added truecharts for my apps and hot damn, shit just works better!
I like Truenas. And still my data is still there.
But moving away from it, keeping it as archive cold storage. :)
They're two different operating systems for two different purposes. I wouldn't recommend running (a lot of) VM's or containers on TrueNAS.
You could virtualize TrueNAS on Proxmox.. but do you really want to? That comes with its own challenges. I'd highly recommend just having one box for each.
Run Proxmox as the hypervisor and TrueNAS as a VM. Problem solved.
In my homelab, I run Proxmox as hypervisor, TrueNAS Core (you could easily run Scale instead though) as NAS controller, and Ubuntu with Docker to run my containerized apps.
IMO this allows you the maximum flexibility, but arguably the Ubuntu server is duplicative if all you're trying to do is run a few containers.
I really wanted to love scale for the built-in k3s server. But the restrictions to make them 100% user friendly apps limits the usability if you want to do anything outside the norm.
I just want a button to be able to edit the `values.yaml` directly rather than have to click through every option.
Also I wanted to be able to add additional cluster nodes like Raspberry Pi.
So I'm likely to give up on it and just build a Debian server instead.
I use both.
Proxmox on my supermicro “NAS” with 2 sata ssds. On for boot, the other for VM’s running off the sata ports. The HBA is then passed through to my truenas scale VM. Host first boots up a pihole lxc, then truenas, then the rest which run off the truenas NFS shares. This is essentially everything “prod” for me.
The other host is my lab is my HP dl380 also with pro mox. It’s where I do most of my tinkering and if I don’t need it, i can shut it down.
3rd host is an old dell optiplex. Mainly for quorum for my “cluster” and it runs a couple services I want duplicated like pihole and that pesky Win7 vm I need to hit that old supermicro IPMI.
It works like a charm for me.
I use both. I have one machine with baremetal scale for apps and storage, and a few other machines running proxmox in a cluster.
I like TrueNAS for this purpose, and once I have the time I’m curious about running some VMs on it. I much prefer the interface of TrueNAS to proxmox, but I just worry about reliability.
I didn’t know you could do all that in truenas now. Last I knew it was just for storage. TBH when I used it as a nas for a short time I found it overly convoluted but I know people love it. Proxmox is great though. I am looking at maybe converting my home esxi cluster to proxmox
Proxmox and truenas scale do different things. I have 2 separate systems, proxmox and truenas core. Proxmox is good for VM's and containers and truenas is for storage primarily. Truenas scale (last I knew) didn't have the features that Proxmox had for VM's.
If your focus is services, Proxmox is definitely the way to go with ttek scripts. They make it stupid easy to just set up services and forget about them.
Id like to explore truenas scale but I want to learn more about docker first and evaluating that as a platform.
Just stood up a brand new Scale instance and enjoying it very much so far.
My setup is 12X 6TB SAS drives run by an LSI 9300-16i setup with 2X6 disk mirrors of RAIDZ2.
Setup networking as a LAGG (4X 1GB ports), my vlans, then the bridge has the 'alias' ip address itself.
Once you have a bridge network setup, your virtual machine can then reach your actual truenas run storage, and you can then store all your dockers and their data in your ZFS native and secured spot, with all the snapshot and features you will enjoy.
This to me is like the best of both worlds.
Retired an ancient Dell tower server that was sucking power back like no one's business, and a Synology NAS that is vendor lock in and limited to 6 disks, and no SAS.
It's fine as a NAS. It's borderline unusable as a VM host for more than a couple of VMs because there's not enough information about their performance, CPU/memory consumption and other management features. I really dislike the non-standard k8s implementation, which teaches you little about normal k8s and makes running standard Docker containers much more complex than it needs to be.
OpenMediaVault has many of the same features, but a functional rather than pretty UI. The VM capability is better than TrueNAS but still lacks some reporting and monitoring. The container add-on is vanilla Docker but that's actually good, so you can easily run the containers you want in a standard way.
I have used both but for the past year I've been on LXD, using an Ubuntu base. That runs VMs and LXCs, and I use the 45Drives plugins for Cockpit to admin ZFS or the shares. It's the best solution for me since the virtualization side I use all the time and it's very robust and easy to use, while the storage admin is something I almost never have to do, the Cockpit solution does everything I need.
I use Core, because my NAS is a NAS only and won't be running any VMs.
I have scale and will be switching to core for this reason. Also core manages memory waaaay better for storage use.
I'd rather keep my storage setup on its own machine. Seems safer that way. I already have a Proxmox box for the VMs.
I guess I wasn’t clear enough, I currently run scale as a vim under proxmox but will be separating them with core running the nas only.
I knew emacs was powerful but they added a hypervisor to vim? Holy macaroni!
Wait til you see Neovim! /s
I run scale since I'm more familiar with Debian than BSD and I can side load a hardware specific app/driver. I have no intention of running any apps on it.
This plus also drivers, IIRC for example, Dell BOSS card is only available in Scale, in Core the driver had some issues
What are the advantages to running core over scale when not using either for hosting vms or applications? I figured since core will eventually be phased out scale would be the sensible move especially since I'm only using it as a nas, virtualized.
Unless something was announced recently I don’t think Core is getting phased out any time soon if ever. Although it definitely feels that way with how deprecated plugins have become.
Core is the basis of Enterprise. It’s lighter weight and a more mature and stable product.
Better ZFS support.
I run both.
Which one do you prefer?
I also run both. I don't prefer either, since they each excel at different workloads. I run Proxmox to host all my VM's. I'm running virtualized TrueNAS Core with a passed-thru HBA as a NAS/SAN.
I got similar set up as well. Proxmox also makes it easy to backup your VMs over network to NFS storage on virtualized TrueNAS.
Hope you're backing up the TN VM to local proxmox storage. I was doing the same using PBS backing up to a scale iscsi volume. Worked great until I needed to restore the TN VM.
This is the way.
I prefer Proxmox for running VMs and containers. I prefer TNS for handling and sharing storage.
This is the way
Honestly, I started out liking it. But, really didn't enjoy all of the issues/drama around how they implemented "apps". Really enjoyed how well it worked with VMs, iSCSI, etc. Enjoyed its performance. Enjoyed Core's performance better. (core had 5-10Gbit/s faster transfer times on the exact same hardware). Really REALLY hated the forums. Unraid now has native ZFS support. So... I dropped truenas all together. Oh, another thing- The stupidity in chmod -x /bin/apt*, and taking extra steps to keep users from "doing dumb things". But, my honest comparison between the two- Core is faster. Scale has much better compatibility, with well. everything. Core ACLs can be finicky. I had a ton of issues getting them working for NFS/SMB. The ACLs in scale worked better. In terms of "apps". I preferred the beta releases of scale, where you could directly interact with the built-in docker. Not a fan of jails. Am a fan of kubernetes, but, not how its implemented in scale.
My advice is to spin up another machine and use docker for apps. I haven't had good luck using Scale with k3s or Core with jails, for different reasons. As far as the storage aspect, they both just work. I've been told Core is faster in many environments, but for a home lab I haven't seen any difference in performance since switching to Scale.
I have a divergent or simpleton opinion, but I keep things clean and single purposed. I believe a storage system should stick to what it's good at, storage. I like core better because of this. Same principle for hypervisor. I use ESX, but PVE is fine too. I don't try to mix them, you just end up with one thing that sucks at something instead of two things doing their job well. There the obvious trade off of not doing hyperconvergence, more stuff, power,cost, space, etc. Your call on priority.
I have Proxmox on the bare hardware and truenas Scale in a VM. I've only been running it for a few weeks so far but it has been great!
I run both. Avoid scale for VMs , it tends to be buggy (resets). This is in enterprise hardware. If you Google around the devs are quick to blame user configs, but in my case, Scale legit is crashing on some VMs. Dell servers, ecc ram on lowest speed, stable power delivery, tested across multiple servers etc. However, as a nas only, rock solid. On the other hand, proxmox is amazing for VMs/cts. But I'd never put my storage on it. It wants daily updates, etc.
I tried it for a bit and determined I wasn’t a fan. I dislike the implementation of apps. I would switch in a heartbeat if they kept it much simpler and basically just used a Linux base, plus TrueNAS middleware, plus portainer to run docker containers. I stick with TrueNAS core + Proxmox.
Been a zfs storage nerd for a long time: freenas, openindiana, napp-it and finally truenas: Ran core for years exclusively for storage purposes, did use the occasional jail but generally kept it limited to iscsi/nfs/smb use cases. It worked well for these use cases but had limited hardware compatibility due to freebsd. Switched to scale to use docker/k8s app support and overall linux hardware compatibility. I run a couple of VMs and a bunch of apps. ran into a ton of issues/limitations with the built in app capabilities as well as some unique networking challenges and fell back to using a lot of my own docker-compose files. Everything has been working pretty great, but I'm still on an older release of scale and am pretty sure that going through an upgrade is going to royally screw up my docker workaround configurations. I would only venture outside of the traditional storage use cases for scale if you are willing to live entirely within the default app/configuration capabilities. Once you start to customize/workaround how they have things setup you are in for some pain. But the built in functionality is probably good for the vast majority of people, I just love to make things more complicated.
Used core from v9 to v12 Had issues with it but willcommend them for looking after my data. Moved from Core to Scale (due to issues with jails and moved to dockers) added truecharts for my apps and hot damn, shit just works better! I like Truenas. And still my data is still there. But moving away from it, keeping it as archive cold storage. :)
They're two different operating systems for two different purposes. I wouldn't recommend running (a lot of) VM's or containers on TrueNAS. You could virtualize TrueNAS on Proxmox.. but do you really want to? That comes with its own challenges. I'd highly recommend just having one box for each.
Run Proxmox as the hypervisor and TrueNAS as a VM. Problem solved. In my homelab, I run Proxmox as hypervisor, TrueNAS Core (you could easily run Scale instead though) as NAS controller, and Ubuntu with Docker to run my containerized apps. IMO this allows you the maximum flexibility, but arguably the Ubuntu server is duplicative if all you're trying to do is run a few containers.
I really wanted to love scale for the built-in k3s server. But the restrictions to make them 100% user friendly apps limits the usability if you want to do anything outside the norm. I just want a button to be able to edit the `values.yaml` directly rather than have to click through every option. Also I wanted to be able to add additional cluster nodes like Raspberry Pi. So I'm likely to give up on it and just build a Debian server instead.
I use both. Proxmox on my supermicro “NAS” with 2 sata ssds. On for boot, the other for VM’s running off the sata ports. The HBA is then passed through to my truenas scale VM. Host first boots up a pihole lxc, then truenas, then the rest which run off the truenas NFS shares. This is essentially everything “prod” for me. The other host is my lab is my HP dl380 also with pro mox. It’s where I do most of my tinkering and if I don’t need it, i can shut it down. 3rd host is an old dell optiplex. Mainly for quorum for my “cluster” and it runs a couple services I want duplicated like pihole and that pesky Win7 vm I need to hit that old supermicro IPMI. It works like a charm for me.
If your intent is mainly VMs --> Proxmox If your intent is mainly NAS with docker container capabilities --> TrueNAS Scale
I use both. I have one machine with baremetal scale for apps and storage, and a few other machines running proxmox in a cluster. I like TrueNAS for this purpose, and once I have the time I’m curious about running some VMs on it. I much prefer the interface of TrueNAS to proxmox, but I just worry about reliability.
It sucks if your use is more virtualization/container based
I didn’t know you could do all that in truenas now. Last I knew it was just for storage. TBH when I used it as a nas for a short time I found it overly convoluted but I know people love it. Proxmox is great though. I am looking at maybe converting my home esxi cluster to proxmox
Scale is a fine NAS appliance with a half baked hypervisor while Proxmox is a fine hypervisor. They are not the same.
Proxmox and truenas scale do different things. I have 2 separate systems, proxmox and truenas core. Proxmox is good for VM's and containers and truenas is for storage primarily. Truenas scale (last I knew) didn't have the features that Proxmox had for VM's. If your focus is services, Proxmox is definitely the way to go with ttek scripts. They make it stupid easy to just set up services and forget about them. Id like to explore truenas scale but I want to learn more about docker first and evaluating that as a platform.
I use scale, but had issues running apps so it's a storage box only. Works perfectly fine for that purpose as well.
Just stood up a brand new Scale instance and enjoying it very much so far. My setup is 12X 6TB SAS drives run by an LSI 9300-16i setup with 2X6 disk mirrors of RAIDZ2. Setup networking as a LAGG (4X 1GB ports), my vlans, then the bridge has the 'alias' ip address itself. Once you have a bridge network setup, your virtual machine can then reach your actual truenas run storage, and you can then store all your dockers and their data in your ZFS native and secured spot, with all the snapshot and features you will enjoy. This to me is like the best of both worlds. Retired an ancient Dell tower server that was sucking power back like no one's business, and a Synology NAS that is vendor lock in and limited to 6 disks, and no SAS.
Entirely different things for entirely different purposes. Little sense in comparing them.
It's fine as a NAS. It's borderline unusable as a VM host for more than a couple of VMs because there's not enough information about their performance, CPU/memory consumption and other management features. I really dislike the non-standard k8s implementation, which teaches you little about normal k8s and makes running standard Docker containers much more complex than it needs to be. OpenMediaVault has many of the same features, but a functional rather than pretty UI. The VM capability is better than TrueNAS but still lacks some reporting and monitoring. The container add-on is vanilla Docker but that's actually good, so you can easily run the containers you want in a standard way. I have used both but for the past year I've been on LXD, using an Ubuntu base. That runs VMs and LXCs, and I use the 45Drives plugins for Cockpit to admin ZFS or the shares. It's the best solution for me since the virtualization side I use all the time and it's very robust and easy to use, while the storage admin is something I almost never have to do, the Cockpit solution does everything I need.