Item: TrueNAS
Rating: 10
Author: Rob Anderson

Overall Satisfaction with TrueNAS

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I've been using TrueNAS / FreeNAS (in earlier years) for out companies iSCSI Datastore in VMware.
It allows me to make use of older hardware to make secondary / primary NAS /iSCSI Servers.

I also use these servers to do nightly backups of all our VMs. The ability to use TrueNAS Core software
has really helped us out in the last 3 years especially.

We don't have to wait on new expensive hardware to get a new NAS / iSCSI server running. The chip shortage
has made it a very scary proposition to try and acquire new hardware in the face of such a shortage should we
have a failed server. It has let me leverage previous investments in hardware to cover any shortages in storage
availability.

Pros and Cons

Pros

iSCSI Datastores for virtualization.
NFS store for unix storage or backups over networking.
Very fast performance, sometimes outclassing SSD arrays even in NFS.
The ZFS filesystem has given use much greater flexibility.
Using their newer servers we could in theory scale to any height of required storage.

Cons

Better explanations of what a 'jail' is.
Update the UI to support easier creation or clearer creation of new arrays.
More plugin integrations.
The ability to run scripts to copy things locally such as to a usb RDX hard drive.
Proper USB 3.0 support.

Most Important Features

NFS backup stores.
iSCSI datastores.
Available to install on any hardware (TrueNAS core).
If we bought the TrueNAS servers themselves the advance replacements of hdd's.
General support available outclasses any storage solutions I've seen.

Return on Investment

Zero downtime while switching company storage.
Due to the availability I was able to avoid overtime as I was able to work during the day and the users were none the wiser.

Alternatives Considered

Synology DiskStation and QES (QNAP Enterprise Storage)

The support with TrueNAS is where it really shines. You can get support that if you purchase hard drives from them, they send replacements as soon as one fails. Automatically. If you have nodes in your server they will do the same. They also do advanced replacement, you don't have to wait to ship the failed drives away before you get a new one. Depending on the level of support you subscribe to you, you can even have the parts on hand ready to be replaced. This includes entire nodes. Most other solutions, despite being great do not have any ware near this opportunity.

Key Insights

Do you think TrueNAS delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with TrueNAS's feature set?

Yes

Did TrueNAS live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of TrueNAS go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy TrueNAS again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Synology DiskStation, VMware ESXi, Veeam Backup & Replication

Likelihood to Recommend

Their free TrueNAS Core has been an incredible boon. Using older hardware to create a great lab / array TrueNAS is amazing.

NFS Targets for running VEEAM backups over a 10Gb network it worked amazing. Using the ISCSI for datastores in VMware worked amazing as well.

I do hope they put some more work into the Virtual Machine UI. I don't know that I'd use TrueNAS to host VMs in a production environment.

Using TrueNAS

Users and Roles

They are mostly users who use the SMB filesharing protocol.
Myself, as sysadmin use the other features such as NFS and iSCSI etc. We have a rack mounted R20 as our main storage at our sister company. At our main location I've used a combination of TrueNAS Scale on bare metal systems to leverage previous assets to create a NAS with great specs.

I also have two installations of TrueNAS Scale installed as VMs for testing purposes and dedicated NFS stores.

Support Headcount Required

1 - I am the only one who is currently supporting our TrueNAS devices and installations.

We also have a paid support contract for our R20 install.

Business Processes Supported

NFS Storage for nightly backups
iSCSI Shared Storage for VM disks.
SMB Shares for file sharing
Installing and running apps without the need of VMs

Innovative Uses

The ability to aggregate 4 port network cards into a 40Gb connection
Free Storage server software.
The ability to reuse our old servers instead of retiring them every 4 years.

Future Planned Uses

More apps to reduce the need for VMs on vmware.
Virtual Machines on TrueNAS instead of relying on VMWARE which we are likely not renewing.
Networking and Storage practice / learning.

Likelihood to Renew

The software has been amazing. It has saved me a lot of headache in the past few years.

Also, it's nice to knowing that if any of our current Synology devices were to die I can have an iSCSI system up and running very shortly.

I didn't give a 10 score because I find their support to be rather slow and pedantic. They test many things when the answer is right in front of them.

The compute sytem (not storage) we purchased from them came with pcie gen4 nvme's. They didn't work, but rather than believe me about the spec's in the motherboard manual saying the onboard was pcie3 ONLY they shipped me 2 replacements until I showed them an old pcie3 device worked just fine.

The part that rather frustrated me was the machine was claimed to have been tested / burnt in. How can this be true if the server won't even boot up into the BIOS?

Evaluating TrueNAS and Competitors

Products Replaced

Yes - We chose truenas for our sister company instead of Synology. The price for starting out with Synology was pretty high.

Also our company wanted support availability and we also wanted to learn more about TrueNAS for our main company as well.

Key Differentiators

Integration with Other Systems
Ease of Use
Other

We needed the storage to work between VMware, Proxmox, TrueNAS Scale / Core and Windows Servers/ Workstations as well as linux servers and workstations.

So far TrueNAS has accomplished all of this. I just wish there was a better way to pickup their hardware here in Canada.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

I'd ask more questions of the sales people.
I'd also ensure that the drives are actually supported for boot AND storage.

I'd also start the machine off with 4x10Gb SFP cards next time. I'd also give greater weight to whether or not they can ship from inside Canada. The times to ship parts were not ideal.

TrueNAS Implementation

Implementation Rating

The implementation went well after we got the boot drive working properly. The device was setup exactly as i asked with the hardware except for the boot drive.

The reason I chose 9 instead of 10 was the boot drive put us back about a week for the part to arrive. I ended up using a personal drive to show them that they were wrong sending use the gen4 drives.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

Change Management Lessons

Change management was minimal - This was a sister company so we were setting them up from scratch so there wasn't much to change on their side. To them it looks the same mostly.

I'm the only one who handles the configurations etc. To the users it just looks like a mapped drive on their windows workstation.

Implementation Issues

wrong boot drive shipped with server
fans were gearing up and down repeatedly when no load was present. they had to be RMA'd
Networking issues during setup made it difficult as this was supposed to be a headless setup.

TrueNAS Support

Support Rating

The support was responsive for opening cases.

However I found solutions to simple problems took far too long. When we had a bad power supply and we had another with the exact same firmware version they should have sent replacement for both. We had to file another case for the other PSU that started dyeing the same week. They also had to do a lot of troubleshooting to replace the fans that were not behaving as they should. I'm not a home user. I know when certain things are failing and the silly hoops the jump through made it frustrating. However, once we finally got the problem identified we had parts shipped out via advance replacement which was nice.

TrueNAS Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed Immediate help available Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response	Slow Resolution Escalation required Need to explain problems multiple times

Premium Support

We have a support contract for our R20 device. However you cannot get software support for Scale on other hardware. which is a shame. I get they cannot support unknown hardware but they should offer some sort of lesser support for the software only.

Bug Resolution

Exceptional Examples of TrueNAS Support

After our second power supply died on our compute system for running VMware we were able to piggy back on the first one and rather than following the same steps and delays they were able to read the old case file and agreed rather quickly with me that this was the exact same issue.

I had a new power supply shipped out the next morning and it arrived within about 3 business days.

I ended up sick so it was a few days before I could install it but they followed up with me to make sure that the PSU got installed and it was indeed working.

Using TrueNAS

Usability

The software is fairly straight forward and if you mess up the network interfaces you can login locally at the console and fix any issues that you may have had with VLANS etc denying you network access.

There was a little bit of annoying issues when setting up multiple network interface cards. Rather than keeping one interface setup with DHCP, when you add a second one with a new network it disables the first. Which makes it impossible to login again.

However if you wait it will revert. I learned after works that you need to set up the network cards and then go back and setup the first one again and THEN test / apply. After that it was pretty good.

The summary of the devices is very nice to. You get an accurate snapshot of how well your system is doing as soon as you login.