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UPDATE: As of 11/8, we have updated the ISO installer to run on version 25.04.2.6 of TrueNAS SCALE. Existing users should NOT reinstall to get this version. You can update from within the Activity card on the Dashboard (or the Notification). Hello and thank you for joining the HexOS beta program! You are an elite and vital part of this project and your participation is greatly appreciated. This post contains all the information you will need to get started with HexOS and how to communicate with our team during your beta experience. Disclaimer Beta Products, Software, and any related Services are still in development, and therefore, you are advised to safeguard important data, to use caution, and not to rely in any way on the correct functioning or performance of the products, software, or any related services. Beta Products and Services are provided to you “AS IS”, without any warranty whatsoever. Expectations During your participation in the beta, we expect you to do the obvious: use and test the software. But we also expect you to communicate with us when things don’t go right or if you’re having trouble. Please post feedback and let us know about your experiences, good and bad. That being said, please remember that this is beta software and early access. HexOS has a long and healthy roadmap ahead. Quickstart Guide For those that just want to get started, here’s the TLDR: Download the ISO here: https://downloads.hexos.com/TrueNAS-SCALE-25.04.2.6-HexOS.iso or https://hexos-downloads.sfo3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/TrueNAS-SCALE-25.04.2.6-HexOS.iso (SHA256 Checksum: e8ed99a322affe0969b82b866161a9f6acbc1561e3cc7b2efb2bf120ffe2e856) Use a tool such as Balena Etcher to image a USB flash device with the ISO. Boot your server from the flash device and install the OS to preferably an SSD. When given the option, opt to create the admin password in the installer (do not select the option to "Configure using WebUI"). Remove the flash device and reboot your server when the install is complete. From another device (mobile, tablet, desktop) that is on the same LAN as your server, login to https://deck.hexos.com using your HexOS credentials. Follow the instructions to complete your server configuration. NOTE: As of the 24.10.2.2 build of this ISO, configuring the admin password via the webUI option has been removed from the installer. However, if you select to create an admin password, but then attempt to "cancel" that process, the ISO will proceed with an installation with no admin password set. This is a known bug and the TrueNAS team will be addressing this in a future update to the ISO. Just don't cancel out of creating the admin password in the installer ;-). Hardware Requirements Booting HexOS is designed to support a wide variety of x86 hardware (Intel or AMD). The minimum requirements are a 2-core 64-bit CPU, 8GB of memory, and a 16GB or larger SSD boot device. However, depending on your needs for performance and applications, more resources may be required. Storage Pools Pools are made up of storage devices based on size and type (HDDs vs. SSDs). Storage devices in each pool need to be roughly the same size*. The OS boot device cannot be a part of a pool. Expandable pools require a minimum of 3 devices and can be grown one device at a time. Non-expandable pools can be created with 2 devices. Initial pool width should not exceed 8 devices. Maximum expanded pool width should not exceed 12 devices. At least one storage pool must be created to use HexOS. *In the event of slight variations (e.g. 240GB and 256GB), devices can be grouped, but total capacity for the pool will sacrifice the larger device’s excess storage. Build Recommendations HexOS has been designed so that a relatively modern PC can be easily transformed into a very viable home server. This means using standard HDDs/SSDs and using onboard controllers for storage/networking. However, since we’re based on TrueNAS, our hardware support is actually rather vast. For more detailed hardware recommendations for advanced builds, please refer to the TrueNAS SCALE Hardware Guide. Installing in a VM As HexOS is based on TrueNAS SCALE, it can be installed as a virtual machine as well. While the process should be fairly self-explanatory, please see the TrueNAS SCALE documentation for additional instructions on VM installation. Setup and Configuration Once the OS has been installed and rebooted, you will use a web browser on the same network as your server to register your system and complete the setup process. This can be a PC, tablet, or mobile device. Using a capable browser, login to https://deck.hexos.com. Beta 1 Features Our first release is focused on providing a streamlined user experience for setup and configuration and laying the framework for what’s to come. The main features of Beta 1 include: Setup and configuration wizard Configure your home server in minutes with ease. Analyze system health, with warnings for SMR HDDs. Auto-configure storage pools to safeguard against device failures. Securely manage your server remotely via Command Deck. Storage device management Detect error states and conditions and report through the dashboard Highlight individual storage devices and their respective faults Replace devices from storage pools due to failure or preventative maintenance Expand pools as little as one device at a time Folders and users Create and share folders over your local network. Easily manage permissions for secure access. Apps One-click deploy Immich as a personal photo library app. One-click deploy Plex as a home media server. Automatic folder creation for app storage. Dashboard / UI Access key statistics like CPU, memory, network, and storage usage at a glance. Monitor storage health and see alerts for errors or degraded pools. Manage multiple servers from a single, unified interface. Enjoy mobile-responsive design for effortless navigation on any device.

GREAT QUESTIONS! Answers below: When future versions of TrueNAS are released, we will test them internally before we make them available via an update mechanism within our UI. Most updates should be able to be applied immediately, but in the event we find a reason to delay the update, notice will be provided to the community. As a more direct question, we think most OS updates will be doable within 1-2 weeks of their TrueNAS SCALE release. You can disconnect us from your server at any time and just use the TrueNAS UI if you want. However, the "install" is still a HexOS install at that point, pointing to our app repo. If you want, you can reinstall TrueNAS SCALE native on your boot device, reboot, import the storage pools we created under HexOS, and continue using TrueNAS natively from there. Yes. If you do things that are destructive, they will have destructive impact ;-). To be clear, there is no safety net when you're navigating in the TrueNAS UI. No bumper lanes there to stop you from shooting yourself in the foot, so the TrueNAS UI is "Swim at your own risk!". We are a replacement management interface for TrueNAS SCALE. The primary focus in the early beta is ease-of-use. Longer term, we will build a docker container that will side-load with the OS to add additional functionality not natively available or part of the out-of-the-box TrueNAS SCALE experience. Buddy backups is a great example of a feature that we are building that will leverage technology in TrueNAS (e.g. replication), but will wrap it in simplicity and marry it with a service that makes connecting to other users far more automated. The app repo that HexOS points to is a clone/fork of the app repo provided by TrueNAS themselves. This allows us to continue to build out our app library independent from them, but also allows us to incorporate anything they do with relative ease. There is no method to adding additional app repos within TrueNAS (nor HexOS), but we do intend to support loading something like Portainer (or another equivalent) for advanced users that want to add 3rd party containers. The command deck will be required for certain functionality. It will ALWAYS be required for initial system provisioning. The main reason is that the HexOS installer does not include our UI and it never will. Instead, the local UI will be loaded via a Docker container that we will install after initial system provisioning. Think of it similar to setting up an iPhone or Android device. You need the Internet + a Google/Apple account to get going, but then you can turn on airplane mode and do whatever you want. Same idea here. The latter (when you receive the early access invite). I updated the terms policy to reflect this as well as it wasn't clear.

It is a must these days to have TailScale support, especially for secure remote access. It is far too easy to mess up a WireGaurd/OpenVPN Config, if the goal is security and simplicity, Tailscale VPN access should be a high priority.

I’m hoping that Tailscale support is also in the works - 🤞yes?

Not something I've seen mentioned other than the support for a VPN (WireGuard?) Being able to integrate into TailScale with their docker compatibility would be nice and something I currently use in my existing setup for security and remotely accessing resources, utilizing their ACL rules to limit access. Would be a nice consideration, I'm sure this won't be simple but a nice to have 🙂

+1 on this! and maybe passkey support as well?

The whole purpose of a NAS to keep data secure and resilient to data loss. Currently there is no way to backup and restore applications. Application Backups/Restore should be plug-and-play. Thoughts: First party implementation Simple Application independent Backup and restore applications Granular restore/backup individual applications Restore applications even on a new Hexos system from backup End-user should be able to browse application data through a file explore Breakaway from ZFS mindset like snapshots (abstracted away behind an advanced menu) and give users a simple traditional backup and restore option.

Hello, I hope to see tailscale and setup guide for it on day 1, I believe this is one of the main apps Or Tailscale not here due to their partnership with Unraid?

HexOS is a fully capable server OS on the back end, with all the difficult technical knowledge requirements that entails. The difference is that the front end is smoothed and curated for ease of use by those of us that aren't willing to devote weeks and months of our lives Its main focus is as a file storage server, but it can also host many interesting things such as local media servers (build your own netflix, spotify, etc), or game servers (minecraft, etc, etc), Voice communication servers like Teamspeak... the list goes on. Basically, its a platform to host and back up your files, AND host other apps if you want to.

i currently have a truenas scale server, which does what i need it to do, but is a huge pain to work with as an amateur. i bought the beta because i love the idea of having a simpler gui on top of the rock solid truenas base. i don't have the time or the hardware to spin up a second server running hexos to participate in the beta right now, but i'd love to be able to switch over to hexos eventually. therefore, having some method to "upgrade" from truenas scale to hexos eventually would be much appreciated. a nice way to do it in truenas's gui would be best of course, but i'd settle for a good written guide. as long as i'm able to bring over my existing datasets, i'll be happy. i don't think this is a priority feature to develop during the beta, but i'd like to see it eventually.

Hi, today i bought the LT license and asked myself if there may be extended features for hosting gameservers like Minecraft, Left4Dead, Ragnarok Online and many more older games. I`d like to bask in nostalgia and try my best to "relive" better times 😆 So my question is: Is or will there be any kind of support/features explicit to hosting game servers. Best regards Clixxi

Please enable 2FA support for accounts.

It would be great to have an integration into home assistant to monitor our NAS + have automation abilities based on the data. is this something already in the works in-house? Or will we need to wait for a community integration?

Did not see anything about LXC support. I have been using that in Proxmox for multiple services. Even if it is in a VM that has GUI supported LXC options that would be a good workaround. Having the options to do DOCKER, LXC and VMs would be amazing to have out of the box.

Hi there! This is something we’ve gotten a lot of questions about and we will explore the possibility of “adopting” an existing TrueNAS installation or pool at a later stage.

When creating a new account it gives the option to select other countries with the address information.

Yes this is exactly what I'd hope, since I just spent a few days moving all my data on there and I'd need to spend a good couple days repeating that :p

Prob one of the best videos about it here

Currently the only 2 supported apps are plex and immich every other apps needs to be setup and installed from truenas currently

Its a Network Attached Storage with App such as Plex Media streaming that you can download. And other things in the future. they will eventually also have support for virtual machines and such. Network attached storage - Folders/files that can be accessed by any device on the same network Not sure if i answered your question or not

The recommendation limits are currently hard enforced, but will be soft enforced in the future. ZFS will allow you to do whatever you want, but we're guiding users to a best practices setup. The issue is that the wider a given pool, the higher likelihood for multi-device failure before the pool is repaired, leading to complete data loss.

This and/or integration for AMP by Cube Coders. I have been using this on Windows but having that integrated would be totally sweet.

I not a big user I'll probably only use qbittorrent and jellyfin

Yes, this is confirmed. Its why we went through such pains to make a responsive design for the UI/UX 😉

Don't worry, I know this is like talking about the castle at the end of the journey before we even take our first step! I wanted to start this more as a discussion/casual poll of our most wanted apps, however, so that when it comes time to expanding, there's a list of ideas/feedback ready to go! I'll start - I really want Tailscale support, be it natively, or official-unnoficial testing of the FreeBSD compile (if HexOS is built on the FreeBSD CORE image and not on SCALE - but either way!) that works on OPNSense/pfSense, or even in collaboration with Tailscale themselves. I think FreeBSD really needs some love to bring it more seamlessly to FreeBSD platforms and this is a perfect place to start, and if it's SCALE based, then I guess just testing and validation to make that oh-so-ideal one-click app deployment seamless! Bonus entry; HomeAssistant support, but both ways. if HA can be set up ON HexOS, AWESOME! I think, though, that it would also kick butt if HA could connect to HexOS and get info from it; drive health, usage, CPU util/temp, stuff like that! Big thanks to the Hex team and really looking forward to using this system!

NginxProxyManager and Tailscale are great but I'd personally love to see a built in setting for Cloudflare Tunnels. I recently did a setup for UpTimeKuma, which has it built in and it was gloriously easy. I can see how it might overlap with your paid business model but just throwing my coins in the wishing well.

Does the Plex application enable GPU pass through? If yes is it complete or partial? Most importantly is it easy to setup?

I would like to install Nginx Proxy Manager, DuckDNS, the Arr's (Sonarr, Radarr etc.), Jellyfin etc. If these could be direct app installs, this would be great.

My wife and I live in the big city, and my folks (+2 of my siblings) live about 400 miles away. We all need a backup solution, so I'm building a pair of servers that will work as a team to give my whole family a solid data integrity plan, plus possibly some media and game server hosting and such. Overview: One server at each location. Servers will accept backups, files, etc from users devices Each local server will send copies of the local users' backups to the server in the alternate location. Each server may also be able to act as a media server as well, resources depending The Hardware: "Rincewind" - My local server Random-butt rack case from back when George W. Was in office. SilverStone 3x 5.25" ODD to 5x 3.5" HDD cage (SST-FS305-12G) 120 GB Kingston boot SSD 5x random 2TB HDDs (These need replaced before full deployment. Need at least 24TB usable to match the other server) Fujitsu 9211-8i HBA Supermicro X9scm-f LGA1155 server motherboard with IPMI Xeon E3-1240 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600Mhz un-buffered ECC RAM (Will upgrade to 32GB before full deployment) "TheLibrarian" - Remote server at the parent's house. Used Nanoxia Deep Silence 3 (iirc) 8x random 4TB HDDs that came with the case Crucial boot SSD Fujitsu 9211-8i HBA Supermicro X10SSL-F LGA1150 server motherboard with IPMI Xeon E3-1246 v3 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600Mhz unbuffered ECC RAM (Will upgrade to 32GB before full deployment) Status and Next Steps: Add SSDs for cache once feature is available Upgrade both servers to 23GB of ram Continue to test HexOS config before dployment Wait for Buddy Backup feature to be available for testing. Continue playing with plex, immich, etc. Find a dead nuts simple incremental backup solution for Windows Deploy Servers and set up local machine backups If anyone has any suggestions for windows backup software I would love to hear them! Attached photos show my current tech cave/homelab setup

Will there be an app? Desktop? Mobile? Will I be able to flag stuff to Buddy Backup anywhere on the nas rather than designating a speific foler. Are there going to be any local recovory options? Most of my friends are not that far could I drive over with copy what I need to a drive and go or is it web only. If I have a licence but dont have a server set up but my Buddy does would I be able to use the buddy backup?

On a side note it would be nice if we could name the licenses so if we have multiple it is easier to keep track of.

Haven't received a reply to the "Contact Us" message I sent, however, I do see my license now, and I did receive a "you can now log in" message. Great work, to whatever poor soul is spending their Saturday helping us poor internet strangers and our first world problems! 😄 lol

I just got my emails as well and I can log into my account now 😄

Sync folders to other Cloud storage solutions like Google Drive, Amazon buckets etc.

@Quacksel most austrian banks issue their cards with CC functions. Maybe you just will have to activate the CC function via your banking institute.

Hi there I know that the idea behind HexOs is to make a NAS OS easy for all, but is there a chance to consider an O365 or Google Workspace backup plug-in for small/medium businesses that would like to use this OS? Thanks

From @jonp said, lifetime license tied to account, not to device or machine so you are good to go, go grab yours now before the price increase at 3 Dec

Can someone send me a photo of which cards can be used for payment?

The app list has Plex and Immach as HexOS one-click installs, and a bunch of options based on TrueNas and says they'll need manual configuration. Minecraft and Palworld were included

Accessing the truenas ui to enable GPU passthrough. it does seem to work but your mileage may very.

Plex took about 15 minutes to installed. there were 0 settings or anything to configure. any setting (Currently in this beta version) to change goes back into the truenas UI

Just remember that if you want to move from a mirror of 2 drives to a raidz2 of four drives you would need to wipe and start over with the array, meaning having somewhere else to store the data temporarily.

There should be a path to "enable" wifi usage but not "support" it. Enabling it allows it's usage but if you want some help? Plug your box into an Ethernet port. We can (should?) have it both ways.

@Clixxi Hahaha...are you #2000?

Updated our terms page to be more clear: Hardware Transfers HexOS licenses enable users to claim servers for management. A claimed server deducts an available license from your account. If you wish to move your license to a new server, you must first disconnect the server from HexOS, which will return the availability of the license for claiming purposes.

That cpu is so overkill lol. If you're not planning on running very intensive VMs I'd get a cheaper cpu and put that money towards more storage or faster networking gear.

Hi there! Yes, HexOS will support both apps via docker and VMs. You can read more about it in our roadmap: https://hexos.com/blog/the-road-to-10

Would be wonderful, if there's a way to easily setup NAS as a cloud NAS, so i can hopefully access it from anywhere and replacing gdrive/onedrive that i'm currently use. Even though i'm tech enthusiast, often i can be lost when setting up NAS as personal cloud storage. Especially when my home (and many others) ISP doesn't offer public IP (multiple NAT). Hope you can adding this to the future development as soon as possible. Can't wait and very exciting.

tailsacale is definetely needed app..likewise jellyfin support.. I can see emby and plex already integrated.. But would love to see jellyfin too

I second this! Would love native Tailscale support. I don't see why a partnership should mean it's off the table - they support Synlology and QNAP after all. Tailscale doesn't have to expressly partner with/support HexOS directly, just be compatible (which the Debian-based SCALE should be, from memory!)