Yeah, actually I had that setup for a brief amount of time, but I had issues because my system has too little RAM, and TrueNAS and Docker were constantly fighting over RAM, and the system hang frequently. For some mindboggling reason, if I ran TrueNAS and a Docker VM separately on Proxmox, were I could manually specify allowed RAM, everything worked perfectly fine, even though the available RAM was still very low. If I ever go down this road again, I’ll need to buy more RAM sticks.

I see, okay, I’ll try out containers then. So far, I’ve been able to migrate a ZFS Pool without issues, so I’ll start migrating them all, create a container that manages NFS and see if the existing Docker VM picks up the NFS shares successfully. Thank you for going in-depth and explaining everything to me. I’ve learnt a lot!

Huh, I hadn’t understood that Cockpit is another server OS that I can use. Okay, I’ll keep it in mind, thanks!

You’re right, their own app catalogue is stable, but I like trying out new docker apps constantly, and I feel like I’m limitted in my options if I only use their catalogue. Still, thanks for your replies.

You’re right, I misunderstood. I understand now, thank you for replying with detail. I’m currently still not over my “I like Hypervisors now” phase. If I go back to bare metal, I will most probably use the setup you described. Still, thank you very much, and I’m keeping this thread for future reference.

I see, okay, I understand now. Thank you very much for explaining that in detail!

Okay, I have one of the pools that is pretty empty and has non-critical data, and I think I’ll try migrating that first, and see if it’s imported correctly by Proxmox.

About Containers, I think I’ll have to do some more research because I think I haven’t fully understood yet how they compare to VMs. Or like, when I should use the one over the other. I guess I could have a Container with a bind mount to a dataset that I want to be able to share over NFS or SMB, and handle that from whatever OS I put in the Container, right? But, I could also have a VM do that, and though it wouldn’t be able to share the data with other VMs, it can do it over NFS, can’t it? What are the advantages of doing one thing over the other?

Well, in any case, thank you for your patience, for going over each detail and taking the time to correct me where I’m wrong. I’m learning a lot, so thank you!

Edit: fixing grammar

Yeah, but I don’t have two separate machines, that’s why I’m using Proxmox. And I used TrueNAS previously, with TrueCharts, and I wasn’t happy. It was pretty unstable and finnicky for me, and hard to go back to, after running docker in a clean Debian VM, which has been rocksolid so far. Still, thanks for your suggestion

Yeah, you’re totally right. Okay thanks, will do

Wow, that’s awesome. I think that’s actually the approach I’m going to go for. This way I don’t need to buy hardware, and I don’t need to work with TrueNAS anymore.

Where you talk about “walking the backups”, do you mean that you can actually see the entire file structure of the container? I mean, I don’t know how virtual disks are stored on the dataset. Like, as far as I know, a VM virtualized disk is just a file, right? So you’d have a ZFS dataset with a single file, for example? Could you then try and navigate the files inside this VM disk file, without the VM? Or did I misunderstand, and you’re mounting the dataset, somehow, directly inside the VM? Is that like a passthrough for datasets?

In any case, thank you for sharing so much information and for offering help. I may take you up on that, as it seems that this is the approach that I feel most comfortable with.

Okay, thank you, that’s good to know. However, I don’t have two separate devices that I can use to separate the NAS functionality from the Docker functionality, that’s why I was using Proxmox in the first place. And, I’m not sure how well Docker can run in OMV. But I’ll still keep it in mind as an option, thank you!

Thanks, I’ll keep it in mind

Yeah, it won’t happen again. I think I’ll migrate to managing ZFS directly from Proxmox, and then handle SMB in a VM or something, because I’m worried about compatibility, with the PCIe SATA card, as the system’s pretty dated.

Okay, good to know, thanks!

Okay, no VM, understood, but I do want to use a GUI for ZFS, because I’m basically a noob.

Okay, if Proxmox can handle all that, I’ll be glad to ditch TrueNAS. However, I’m afraid that I won’t know how to migrate. I’ve found this reddit thread about someone who tried to do the same thing (I think) and accidentally corrupted their pools. About skipping NFS shares, that would be a big improvement for me, but I’m very unfamiliar with bind mounts. If I understand correctly, you can specify directories that live on the Proxmox Host, and they appear inside the VM, right? How does this compare to using virtual storage? Also, how can I replicate the ZFS pools to an external machine? In any case, thank you for that info!

I’m already running TrueNAS Scale, but I’m unsure about the docker support. I did use TrueCharts and such, but it was very unstable, so I moved away from that.

Thank you very much for the detailed information. I’ll look into eBay again, maybe I can find a good offer that works. I’m unsure how to choose the number of lanes. Does that relate to the number of drives it supports? Also, in terms of cooling, would any PC case fan be enough, if strapped onto the HBA?

Thank you very much for the info. In the case of Raid Cards that can be flashed, is there something I need to look out for, besides the speed? Only HDDs will be used, so speed isn’t a priority.

I tried OMV in the past, but I found TrueNAS to be more intuitive… but that’s just personal preference I guess, and I’m not opposed to using OMV. Are you suggesting, then, that I run OMV on bare metal, and use it for everything? Or should it be inside a VM? If it’s the former, how easy is it to setup docker, because I’m not that familiar with OMV (it’s been a long time since I last checked it out). Is it like installing it in Debian directly? How does it handle the storage?