This video revisits the virtualization capabilities within TrueNAS SCALE after a two-year hiatus, motivated by a project to build a high-performance desktop NAS/VM host using a 45 Drives HL8 case and a Mini Forum BD790i motherboard with a Ryzen 9 7945HX CPU. The initial plan encountered a hardware setback with a fragile m.2 SATA HBA, requiring a workaround using two different m.2 SATA controllers. The core focus shifts to evaluating TrueNAS SCALE as the primary hypervisor OS, contrasting it with the common practice of virtualizing TrueNAS on Proxmox or other hypervisors. While compute performance within a TrueNAS-hosted VM is strong, storage performance on a spinning disk array via virtual disks is shown to suffer from high latency. More significantly, the video highlights numerous usability issues and bugs within the TrueNAS SCALE virtualization management interface, including problems with the Spice VNC console, plain-text password entry, a broken GPU passthrough wizard, and GPU passthrough instability. The conclusion reached is that despite two years of development, TrueNAS SCALE's virtualization stack remains unsuitable for anything beyond basic use cases and cannot be recommended as a primary hypervisor compared to more mature alternatives.
Exploring TrueNAS SCALE Virtualization: Two Years Later
0:00 Revisit TrueNAS SCALE Virtualization: The video aims to evaluate the progress and state of virtualization features in TrueNAS SCALE after two years.
0:19 Project Motivation: The evaluation stems from a project to build a fast desktop NAS and VM host using a 45 Drives HL8 and powerful Mini Forum BD790i motherboard (Ryzen 9 7945HX CPU, 64GB DDR5).
0:27 CPU Performance: The Ryzen 9 7945HX CPU is highlighted as an extremely powerful CPU for compute tasks, outperforming older 32-core CPUs at lower power consumption.
0:29 Initial Hardware Challenge: The project faced an issue with drive connectivity as the motherboard lacked SATA/SAS ports, requiring an HBA.
0:50 Failed m.2 HBA: An attempt to use an iocrest m.2 SATA HBA with 8 ports failed due to the card's fragility and the leverage from the 8087 connectors.
3:44 HBA Workaround: A solution was found using two Silverstone ECS07 m.2 SATA HBAs, each providing five SATA ports, for a total of 10 ports (8 for HDDs, 2 for boot drives).
5:37 TrueNAS SCALE as Host OS: The decision was made to run TrueNAS SCALE directly as the host OS (instead of virtualizing it under Proxmox or similar) to allow ZFS access to the full server memory and simplify storage passthrough.
5:52 TrueNAS SCALE VM Capabilities: TrueNAS SCALE uses KVM and supports features like PCI Express passthrough.
6:04 Previous Evaluation: A look back at a previous evaluation from two years ago noted a lack of features like ballooning memory and interface polish compared to dedicated hypervisors.
6:49 VM Creation Process: Demonstrated the steps to create a VM in TrueNAS SCALE via the web UI, including setting basic information, console password, and configuring CPU/memory.
8:31 Memory Ballooning Added: Noted that dynamic memory allocation (ballooning) has been added, allowing VMs to use memory from a larger pool as needed, though caution is advised against over-provisioning.
9:38 VM Compute Performance: Compute performance within a TrueNAS-hosted VM is confirmed to be very strong based on Cinebench testing.
10:10 Poor Storage Performance (on HDD array): Virtual disk storage performance on the 7-disk HDD array was significantly disappointing, with high access latency (average 10ms vs ~0.03ms for NVMe), making the VM feel unresponsive despite high sequential throughput.
10:57 Spice VNC Console Issues: The Virtual Console window frequently stopped responding to mouse and keyboard input if the window lost focus, requiring closing and reopening it.
11:40 Plain Text Password: The Spice VNC console password dialogue displays the password in plain text while typing, identified as a major security oversight.
12:00 GPU Passthrough Wizard Bug: Attempting to configure GPU passthrough during the initial VM creation wizard consistently generates an error, preventing VM creation with the GPU attached and breaking the wizard flow.
12:57 Adding Virtual Display: If GPU passthrough is attempted via the broken wizard, no virtual display is created, requiring manually adding one via the devices menu.
13:06 Password Length Inconsistency: When adding a virtual display manually, the password length is limited to 8 characters, unlike the wizard which seemed to allow longer passwords.
13:26 GPU Passthrough Instability: Successfully passing through an Intel A310 GPU via the devices menu resulted in VM instability, including crashes during OS install and updates.
14:28 GPU Release Issue: After VM crashes during GPU passthrough, the GPU would not release back to the host, requiring a full TrueNAS reboot to free it up.
15:25 Lack of Progress & Regression: After two years, the author sees little progress in the virtualization frontend and notes regressions in usability (Spice issues, wizard bugs).
15:52 Missing Advanced Networking: Still lacks crucial advanced networking features like VLAN support, limiting enterprise deployment.
16:06 Conclusion on TrueNAS SCALE Virtualization: TrueNAS SCALE's virtualization stack cannot be recommended for anything beyond the most remedial use cases due to significant bugs, usability issues, and instability; better dedicated hypervisors exist.
17:03 Preferred Alternative: The author reiterates his preferred approach for an all-in-one solution: running Proxmox as the host hypervisor and virtualizing TrueNAS within it, allowing Proxmox to manage VMs reliably while passing storage control to the TrueNAS VM.
18:47 Beer Review (Iron Maiden Trooper): A review of Iron Maiden's Trooper beer (a British Lager), brewed by Robinson Brewery, noting its balanced hop and malt profile and suitability as a drinking beer.