COBIA Features

[NickF]

Hi Guys,
Just wondering if IX plans to implement two of the most exciting features into Cobia that were skipped in Bluefin

TrueNAS SCALE Release Schedule Explained

Stay updated with the TrueNAS SCALE Release Schedule, including Angelfish and Bluefin versions. Get the latest on planned features and release dates.

www.truenas.com

Are clustered Kubernetes and highly available VMs on the table for the next full release?

 

[morganL]

HA VMs are sort of in Bluefin with TrueNAS appliances. We are doing more QA work in SCALE 22.12.2.

Kubernetes clusters are delayed. The current focus is on CSI for clusters. There's a Kadalu CSI driver for Gluster that works with SCALE.

The plans for Cobia are getting more solid and will be discussed during Q2. The current focus is Bluefin.1 and .2.

 

[fenio]

Did anyone try Cobia nightlies and can tell me which kernel version is it shipped with?

 

[morganL]

Did anyone try Cobia nightlies and can tell me which kernel version is it shipped with?

6.1 is the plan, but it may change.

 

[fenio]

6.1 is the plan, but it may change.

Thanks for your answer. But do nightlies already use 6.1 or it's a plan to switch to it from 5.15 later on during development cycle?
I'm asking cause on my hw which is Odroid h3+ virtualization isn't super stable. From time to time my VM simply hangs and I have to restart it. A lot of people reported that this instability isn't the case on kernels 6.x so I'm thinking about switching to Cobia.

Logs when that happens aren't really helpful :/

 

[morganL]

Thanks for your answer. But do nightlies already use 6.1 or it's a plan to switch to it from 5.15 later on during development cycle?
I'm asking cause on my hw which is Odroid h3+ virtualization isn't super stable. From time to time my VM simply hangs and I have to restart it. A lot of people reported that this instability isn't the case on kernels 6.x so I'm thinking about switching to Cobia.

Logs when that happens aren't really helpful :/

At this stage, Cobia is not reliable for daily use. Its in development and will have many bugs. I'd suggest waiting for BETA.

 

[fenio]

At this stage, Cobia is not reliable for daily use. Its in development and will have many bugs. I'd suggest waiting for BETA.

I'm wondering how can I rephrase my question further to eventually get answer which kernel is currently included in Cobia ;)
I know the risks, I know that it's in early stage. But all I want to know is what kernel does it currently use.
Looking at github I'm still seeing Cobia related PRs for 5.15.x so I guess you didn't switch to 6.1.x but I simply need confirmation ;)

 

[morganL]

I'm wondering how can I rephrase my question further to eventually get answer which kernel is currently included in Cobia ;)
I know the risks, I know that it's in early stage. But all I want to know is what kernel does it currently use.
Looking at github I'm still seeing Cobia related PRs for 5.15.x so I guess you didn't switch to 6.1.x but I simply need confirmation ;)

The switch to 6.1 is scheduled to happen before BETA... but its when convenient for the Engineering team.

 

[fenio]

The switch to 6.1 is scheduled to happen before BETA... but its when convenient for the Engineering team.

Thanks for clarification.

 

[Hello_World]

Hi morganL,

Will Cobia provide more user-friendly functional design for individual users? Among the several communities I follow, there is a strong demand for SCALE to provide containers similar to those directly deployed through the command line and to support third-party management tools such as Portainer. Some of them realize their needs by installing Debian in a virtual machine and reading files through NFS, or using Docker in Docker. These methods are very unstable.

Some people tried to make suggestions through TrueNAS Forums and Jira (these features usually exist in Unraid or Synology), but because these requests are not common among enterprise-level users, they are usually rejected or postponed by iX. Some of these requirements are not complicated, such as more flexible hard disk hibernation management, using WebUI to display S.M.A.R.T history, etc.

From the perspective of the number of users, individual users are a large market compared to enterprise users. Perhaps TrueNAS can gain a higher market share by meeting the needs of individual users. In some cases, a one-time license similar to Unraid can be provided for functions that some enterprise users will not use but have strong demand from individual users, so that income can also be obtained from individual users. :)

 

[Hello_World]

Hi morganL,

Will Cobia provide more user-friendly functional design for individual users? Among the several communities I follow, there is a strong demand for SCALE to provide containers similar to those directly deployed through the command line and to support third-party management tools such as Portainer. Some of them realize their needs by installing Debian in a virtual machine and reading files through NFS, or using Docker in Docker. These methods are very unstable.

Some people tried to make suggestions through TrueNAS Forums and Jira (these features usually exist in Unraid or Synology), but because these requests are not common among enterprise-level users, they are usually rejected or postponed by iX. Some of these requirements are not complicated, such as more flexible hard disk hibernation management, using WebUI to display S.M.A.R.T history, etc.

From the perspective of the number of users, individual users are a large market compared to enterprise users. Perhaps TrueNAS can gain a higher market share by meeting the needs of individual users. In some cases, a one-time license similar to Unraid can be provided for functions that some enterprise users will not use but have strong demand from individual users, so that income can also be obtained from individual users. :)

Discussions on Reddit also pointed out some differences between TrueNAS and other NAS systems.

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com

 

[sretalla]

there is a strong demand for SCALE to provide containers similar to those directly deployed through the command line and to support third-party management tools such as Portainer. Some of them realize their needs by installing Debian in a virtual machine and reading files through NFS, or using Docker in Docker. These methods are very unstable.

Have you seen this?:

Use a custom "Jail" in SCALE? (Possible? Alternatives?)

Being less familiar with Docker/Kubernetes and containers, while having good results with Jails under TrueNAS Core, I'm curious if it's possible to do the following in SCALE: Have a standalone "from scratch" container with specific CLI tools, mount points, and the ability to SSH into such a...

www.truenas.com

 

[danb35]

to provide containers similar to those directly deployed through the command line

What exactly do you mean by "containers" in this context? "Launch Docker Image" is already in the GUI. Docker-compose is available as an app from TrueCharts. If neither of those does what you're asking for, what is it you're looking for here?

to support third-party management tools such as Portainer.

When TrueNAS already has its own management tool, it seems, frankly, silly to add or support another, conflicting management tool. If you want to use Portainer to manage your apps, there's certainly nothing wrong with doing so, but running it in its own VM seems like a perfectly sensible way to handle it, and far better than trying to have it run alongside the existing tools and inevitably conflict with them.

hard disk hibernation management

This is actively a bad idea, as discussed extensively in multiple threads.

WebUI to display S.M.A.R.T history

This is already present.

It doesn't really seem like you've thought your question through very carefully. "More user-friendly functional design for individual users" is not an actionable request, and most of the specifics you mention are already present. And, of course, the vast majority of us here are individual users, and find TrueNAS to be at least reasonably user-friendly and feature-complete (otherwise we'd presumably be using something else).

 

[Hello_World]

TrueCharts docker-compose does provide a solution to manage Docker using third-party tools, but SCALE restricts the mapping of directories, so host path management must be performed twice manually, "SCALE to docker-compose"
and "docker-compose to my app". This greatly increases the workload when more directory mapping and rights management are involved.

In fact, TrueCharts docker-compose is an inelegant compromise.

Have you seen this?:

Use a custom "Jail" in SCALE? (Possible? Alternatives?)

Being less familiar with Docker/Kubernetes and containers, while having good results with Jails under TrueNAS Core, I'm curious if it's possible to do the following in SCALE: Have a standalone "from scratch" container with specific CLI tools, mount points, and the ability to SSH into such a...

www.truenas.com

 

[sretalla]

In fact, TrueCharts docker-compose is an inelegant compromise.

I think you missed my point...

The "jail" style Linux container option is what I intended for you to look at.

Persistent Debian 'jail' on TrueNAS SCALE to install software (docker-compose, portainer, podman, etc.) with full access to all files via bind mounts. Without modifying the host OS at all thanks to systemd-nspawn!

Persistent Debian 'jail' on TrueNAS SCALE to install software (docker-compose, portainer, podman, etc.) with full access to all files via bind mounts. Without modifying the host OS at all t...

gist.github.com

 

[Hello_World]

What exactly do you mean by "containers" in this context? "Launch Docker Image" is already in the GUI. Docker-compose is available as an app from TrueCharts. If neither of those does what you're asking for, what is it you're looking for here?

When TrueNAS already has its own management tool, it seems, frankly, silly to add or support another, conflicting management tool. If you want to use Portainer to manage your apps, there's certainly nothing wrong with doing so, but running it in its own VM seems like a perfectly sensible way to handle it, and far better than trying to have it run alongside the existing tools and inevitably conflict with them.

This is actively a bad idea, as discussed extensively in multiple threads.

This is already present.

It doesn't really seem like you've thought your question through very carefully. "More user-friendly functional design for individual users" is not an actionable request, and most of the specifics you mention are already present. And, of course, the vast majority of us here are individual users, and find TrueNAS to be at least reasonably user-friendly and feature-complete (otherwise we'd presumably be using something else).

TrueCharts docker-compose does provide a solution to manage Docker using third-party tools, but SCALE restricts the mapping of directories, so host path management must be performed twice manually, "SCALE to docker-compose"
and "docker-compose to my app". This greatly increases the workload when more directory mapping and rights management are involved.In fact, TrueCharts docker-compose is an inelegant compromise.

The management tools provided by SCALE don't provide much advantage over Portainer, which is why most people look for other management tools. Most of them will not cause compatibility issues without using multiple management tools to operate the same container. A better solution is to have SCALE support multiple container management tools, but only allow one to run, which avoids most problems.

SMART history refers to the parameter history similar to "Hard Disk Sentinel" software, which can more conveniently observe the changing trend of each parameter.

The impact of frequent start and stop of the hard disk on the life of the hard disk does exist. Some scripts read /sys/block/<dev>/stat to determine whether there is data writing within a certain period of time, and then determine whether to send a sleep command. Compared with the timer, this mode is more accurate, and it can also limit the number of sleep times within a certain period of time, avoiding frequent sleep and wake-up as much as possible. For NAS systems that will be idle for several hours a day, this method can maintain a balance between energy saving and longevity. It is more convenient for SCALE to directly integrate such functions.

SCALE uses the smartctl tool to read the hard disk SMART information. By default, every read will wake up the standby hard disk. smartctl provides the "--nocheck=POWERMODE" parameter to avoid this situation, and SCALE also provides this function on the configuration page of the SMART service. However, no matter whether this parameter is configured or not, SCALE will disable SMART detection (hard disk temperature monitoring) for all hard disks with the standby function turned on, which is obviously unreasonable.

 

[Hello_World]

And, of course, the vast majority of us here are individual users, and find TrueNAS to be at least reasonably user-friendly and feature-complete (otherwise we'd presumably be using something else).

Although TrueNAS has an absolute advantage in terms of professional functions, there is still a relatively large gap compared to unRAID in terms of ease of use. unRAID has now added support for zfs. Without considering professional functions (such as high availability, cluster management, etc.), the gap between TrueNAS and unRAID (Synology) will be further widened.

 

[danb35]

A better solution is to have SCALE support multiple container management tools, but only allow one to run, which avoids most problems.

This doesn't make any more sense than asking that TrueNAS allow the use of Webmin or Cockpit to manage the system, rather than (or in addition to) the TrueNAS UI--the UI and the underlying middleware are literally what make TrueNAS TrueNAS. But really, my opinion on the question doesn't matter; that's up to the devs, and a Jira ticket is the way to bring it up.

 

[Hello_World]

This doesn't make any more sense than asking that TrueNAS allow the use of Webmin or Cockpit to manage the system, rather than (or in addition to) the TrueNAS UI--the UI and the underlying middleware are literally what make TrueNAS TrueNAS. But really, my opinion on the question doesn't matter; that's up to the devs, and a Jira ticket is the way to bring it up.

Thank you, I will submit a Jira ticket if anyone has the same idea as me.

 

[Hello_World]

I think you missed my point...

The "jail" style Linux container option is what I intended for you to look at.

Persistent Debian 'jail' on TrueNAS SCALE to install software (docker-compose, portainer, podman, etc.) with full access to all files via bind mounts. Without modifying the host OS at all thanks to systemd-nspawn!

Persistent Debian 'jail' on TrueNAS SCALE to install software (docker-compose, portainer, podman, etc.) with full access to all files via bind mounts. Without modifying the host OS at all t...

gist.github.com

Thanks. This is an interesting scenario, and if the resulting additional resource consumption is less than a virtual machine, it will be of great value.