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by MezzoDelCammin 293 days ago
Shouldn't it be more of a "why" to install TrueNAS on a RPi?

The only reason I can see is "I have one that I don't use". Because otherwise...

Idle power isn't all that much better than a low power Intel N100 or something similar. And it's all downhill from there. Network transfer speeds and disk transfers will all be kneecapped by the (lack of) available PCIe lanes. Available RAM or CPU speeds are even worse...
1 comments
geerlingguy 293 days ago
That's addressed in the second section of the article:

> I've found numerous times, running modern applications on slower hardware is an excellent way to expose little configuration flaws and misconceptions that lead to learning how to run the applications much better on more capable machines.

It's less about the why, and more about the 'why not?' :)

I explicitly don't recommend running TrueNAS on a Pi currently, at the end (though I don't see a problem with anyone doing it for the fun, or if they need an absolutely tiny build and want to try Arm):

> Because of the current UEFI limitations, I would still recommend running TrueNAS on higher-end Arm hardware (like Ampere servers).

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esskay 293 days ago
On a somewhat related note, would you trust a Pi based NAS long term? I've not tried doing one since the Pi 4 which understandably because of its hardware limitations left a lot to be desired, but that part aside I was still finding the pi as a piece of hardware somewhat quirky and unpredictable - power especially, I can't count the number of times simply unplugging a usb keyboard would cause it to reboot.
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geerlingguy 293 days ago
I've run a Pi NAS as my 2nd onsite replica for over a year without a hiccup, it's using a Radxa Penta SATA HAT with 4x SATA SSDs, and a 2.5 Gbps USB dongle for faster Ethernet[1].

[1] https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/radxas-sata-hat-makes...

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ycombinatrix 293 days ago
totally agree. it becomes extremely obvious when applications are poorly optimized or have outdated build systems that don't support ARM.

imo, if the software doesn't work without issue on my Pi, it isn't good enough for prod.

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