I’m a noob who thought they knew what they were doing!
My trusty unraid server running off some ancient consumer hardware finally gave up the ghost due to hardware failure. Needing an alternative in a hurry, I thought I’d do things properly, and got an incredible deal on an R720XD with shitloads of RAM and storage, couldn’t be happier with the hardware.
It came with TrueNAS Scale already installed as it’s what the previous owner was running. Got everything NAS set up in a couple of hours and have been running an SMB share quite happily.
However, I also run a fair few Docker containers, and this is where the pain starts. I’ve spent so long trying to get things working, and have simply hit a brick wall. Everything I try yields another bizarre error message that requires hours to resolve, and I feel like I’m trying to track down the solution for some obscure edge case rather than doing something incredibly standard. But I’m trying to piece things together from multiple guides and videos, none of which contain the whole story, and most of them result in more errors that aren’t covered.
The TrueNAS forums look like a bit of a dumpster fire when it comes to these issues, particularly around containers, with things getting quite heated. The ‘official apps’ are extremely limited, TrueCharts extends functionality, but still limited, and not really working well for me. There seems to be a lot of friction with the devs of TrueCharts, and between people wanting to virtualise stuff and those who’s solution to these issues is running TrueNAS bare metal and not using virtualisation or containers. It’s like, yeah, you’re less likely to have issues if you ignore half the feature set. And if it’s only ‘supposed’ to be a file server, then it’s frustrating that running it in a VM is also ‘not officially supported’ too.
I tried spinning up a Debian VM and managed to get Portainer running, but once again hit an absolute mess with filesystems and permissions for any other containers I tried running. I know it’s to do with the quirks of TrueNAS and that the setup makes sense, especially for an enterprise focus, but this stuff just worked in Unraid as smooth as butter. I know it can be easier, and I’m just not having a good time. I want to be using containers, VMs and developing, not spending my 4th evening this week losing my mind over permissions so I can progress to the next error message!
Anyway
I am a noob, I liked Unraid, it worked, and TrueNAS Scale was probably never the right choice for me. But now I need to get redeployed quickly, and I’m looking for a path forward that gives me flexibility.
As I said, I like UnRaid, I’d quite like to give TrueNAS Core a try purely as a NAS, but I’m happy to stick with Unraid if that’s going to save some headache. I’d quite like to try both to be honest, set up a hypervisor so I can get Unraid functional quickly, then slowly work on TrueNAS.
So I’m thinking XCP-ng or Proxmox bare-metal, Unraid for NAS + Docker, TrueNAS to work on, and the ability to spin up more VMs.
Problem there is that Unraid is only ‘supposed’ to be booted off a USB. Once again, any discussion of any other way is ‘not supported’ and discussions on the forums inevitably lead to ‘why would you want to?’ or ‘you don’t understand’, implying you’re trying to get better speed or something. I know it runs in RAM, I just don’t really like having my config and license dangling off my server permanently (although I could try the internal USB), and virtualising it would be incredibly useful.
I could use Unraid as a hypervisor, I’ve heard of people adding a Proxmox VM to Unraid, which seems a bit bass ackwards on the surface, and doesn’t ‘feel’ right, but I guess if it works it’s fine. Unraid was absolutely rock solid stable for me, after all!
Again, I don’t think I’ve particularly been fair here, in fact, TrueNAS has impressed me in lots of ways, and I shouldn’t be critical of those doing development and answering the same questions over and over from people like me. I just need to get running, don’t have a huge amount of free time at the moment, and just want to get NAS+Docker functioning, but ideally in VMs to reduce the upheaval when/if I change things again!
Your help would be appreciated, as would the extra sleep!
My femboy, just switch back to UNRAID. You like it, are familiar with it, and it does run very well. It’s also pretty stable and extremely user friendly. TrueNAS can be installed as a VM and you can play around with it and learn the ins/outs. I wouldn’t concern yourself with Proxmox as the ease of “reduced upheaval” needs shared storage which all your storage is living in the box and therefore not shared. Make your life easier and just go with what you know and like.
But then how else can I overcomplicate things? You’re right, thanks, and also thanks for the heads up on Proxmox. I picked up an old Checkpoint 4800 for less than the 400g solid copper heatsink is worth which I will run Proxmox on, which will give me a chance to get to know it!
Haha. This is the way. For real though, just go with what you’re comfortable with in both time and headache. You know UNRAID and it worked for you in the past. Keep that as your prod box and then scrap together a lab, which you already have the makings of. Proxmox is excellent but without two hosts and shared storage it’s not really any net gain for you, it seems, vs running something you are comfortable with (UNRAID).
EDIT: INB4 someone gets sassy — HA is only “supported” with a minimum of 3 hosts. But it works just fine with 2 and a third host (raspberry pi or VM running outside the cluster) using qdevice.
I mean, this is why my NAS is just ubuntu and zfs and garden variety docker.
This is the way. I run stock Debian with LXC, you get what you ask for and that’s it.
I feel like you already have your answer, which is to install unraid, if you really just want to get it done.
But if you’re willing to take a little time to learn something new I’d go proxmox as it gives you tons of flexibility. You should be able to figure out quickly if unraid in a vm is going to work for you, and if not, abort and do bare metal.
If your concern is booting USB for unraid the solution is to sacrifice at least one of your drives as a boot drive, or if you have the room get a pair of small SAS drives and configure a raid 1 vol in the perc controller.
If your concern is booting USB for unraid the
solution is to sacrifice at least one of your drives
as a boot drive, or if you have the room get a pair
of small SAS drives and configure a raid 1 vol in
the perc controller.AFAIK the USB is the dongle that unraid runs at all. You have to boot from it. After the boot its loaded into the RAM. But without the USB drive you cannot boot at all.
That is why I followed the proxmox route.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters HA Home Assistant automation software ~ High Availability LXC Linux Containers NAS Network-Attached Storage
[Thread #19 for this sub, first seen 10th Aug 2023, 22:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Ooof you have me worried. My R720XD shipped out yesterday and is supposed to arrive Monday. My plan was to install TruNAS Scale on it to replace my old tower with unraid installed on it. I have roughly 25 docker containers that I run. What kind of errors did you see? It’s scheduled to be installed in the data center week after next so I don’t have a bunch of time to troubleshoot.
The server is amazing, way quieter than I expected, I had a whole soundproofed rack planned, but the fans just chill at 20%! I think it’ll be almost silent once I have the rack built.
Lots of people get on okay with it, and I’m not the most experienced, but docker problems with Scale seem to be common, and the direction TrueNAS is going with Scale isn’t going to make it any better.
I think Core is a bit better. But I’m definitely going to move away from it for Docker. Unraid was so easy for Docker, and I see it has ZFS support now, I’ll let you know how I get on.
Also, don’t forget the 720 has an internal USB port, because I did!
I bought the rear backplane for the dual 2.5 inch drives in the back. Going to throw the boot OS on it so I don’t have to worry about a USB drive dying or becoming corrupted. Good luck on your journey. Really interested to hear how it goes.
IIRC, the biggest issue with TrueNAS SCALE + Docker is that they really run the containers on a ‘hidden’ kubernetes cluster and obfuscate the standard docker and docker-compose way of doing things behind a gui with limited customization and poor field descriptions.
I found it much easier to spin up a VM on SCALE and run docker through that, although then you have to deal with multilayer networking.… To be fair, this was when SCALE was still in beta, so it has possibly improved since then.
Just to give you some insight on how someone else may do something similar. I currently have two hosts, one running Unraid only and a proxmox host. All of my docker containers are running in a VM in proxmox. I am currently in a situation right now where I’m having to rebuild my docker server (due to storage driver issue) and I can’t imagine if I had to do this on my unraid server it would be a huge pain in the ass. This way things are separate and I don’t touch unraid at all, ever.
