TrueNAS Core-vs-SCALE home server scenario

[YujiTFD]

Greetings.

I'm sure such questions has been really annoying for the past months, so I will try to diversify mine.
I'm getting ready to migrate from DS918+ Synology NAS to the TrueNAS in ESXi 7.0u1 VM container (Xeon E3-1240v5@3.5GHz and 32GB DDR4 ECC RAM). The reason is a complete upgrade from unmanaged 1GbE to managed 10GbE network, where corresponding Synology's cost is unaffordable, thus, TrueNAS. For now I have 2 x 6TB WDC WD60EFRX and 2 x 6TB TOSHIBA HDWN160, which I'll connect with Dell H310 IT firmware flashed (pool configuration is going to be striped mirrors, so TrueNAS will be granted with 16GB RAM).

So, since I have ESXi for VM needs, I need help with torrent organization. As far as I'm aware, a torrent VM (I prefer qBittorrent myself) within a NAS machine is the only way for direct DL/UL, because if I'll fire up different VM for torrenting purpose, I'm gonna be using network access for NAS write-reading, which I would really like to avoid. And since CORE is FreeBSD-based, I'm afraid having little to none of it's knowledge will be a problem for me, where having Debian-based SCALE with Docker may present alot of opportunities.

And, finally, questions are these:

• should I be afraid of using CORE for aforementioned setup with ±1% of FreeBSD knowledge?
• will SCALE actually provide me with regular Debian experience, like apt get or shell usage and so on?
• can SCALE 21.04 already be used in home environment, but with critical data storage (family archive)?

Thank you in advance!

 

[sretalla]

should I be afraid of using CORE for aforementioned setup with ±1% of FreeBSD knowledge?

Don't be fearful... there are many similarities between Linux and Unix/FreeBSD.

With 16GB of RAM, you're certain to be pushing it to run VMs, so either FreeBSD Jails or Docker are the way to go for any of your applications with direct access to the NAS storage as you choose. (there's a plugin jail on Core for qBittorrent)

will SCALE actually provide me with regular Debian experience, like apt get or shell usage and so on?

Not really, but it is indeed Debian (of sorts)... it's a custom OS build, so don't count on all features being available and the apt library is also custom, so not all packages are available to install (it's not intended that you install packages on the appliance directly).

can SCALE 21.04 already be used in home environment, but with critical data storage (family archive)?

If you're using the word "critical", you should probably stay away from Alpha builds (and maybe also Betas). As far as ZFS integrity, there's unlikely to be issues with the data from that perspective, but various other factors could introduce risks you wouldn't want if there's no backup on another box.

 

[YujiTFD]

With 16GB of RAM, you're certain to be pushing it to run VMs, so either FreeBSD Jails or Docker are the way to go for any of your applications with direct access to the NAS storage as you choose. (there's a plugin jail on Core for qBittorrent)

First of all, thank you for your feedback. Now, AFAIK, I should be fine with 16GB RAM for my setup, future HDD additions will require more RAM for smooth operation. Nevertherless, the thing I'm worrying is that Jails' qBittorrent plugin wil fall behind after full-scale SCALE release, since Dockers repos are actively maintained, which I' not sure about Jails.

As for the rest I got the idea, thanks again. I hope there will be a reliable way to migrate from CORE to SCALE in the future just have to a choice.