jonp

This would require the app data folders themselves to be encrypted. Not impossible to do, but may not be with the first iteration of buddy backup. Definitely something we could consider!

OMG, I totally see the confusion now. I have edited that post and reworded it to be more clear. TrueNAS has no built-in means to do backups as part of their OS unless you consider rsync cron jobs/replication tasks as "backup". They don't facilitate the connection between servers or even setup the SSH permissions for you (you have to do all of that yourself). This is where our solution takes things a step further. We intend to make the experience much simpler. First you "friend" someone else that is a HexOS user (if you're doing the "buddy" approach). Then you will grant that user "permission" to backup to your system (and set a quota). Then they accept the request and authorize the backup in return (if you're doing that). Then we do the rest (establishing a secure VPN tunnel between systems, creating appropriate SSH users and handling the key exchange, etc.). You'll definitely be able to leverage the buddy backup system between two systems licensed under the same account. That would be silly of us to prohibit or unnecessarily complicate. I get the confusion. Buddy backup is just the marquee feature name for our backup solution between two servers. Every server needs a license. So if you and a buddy want to backup, you both have to have your own licenses under your own accounts. If you have two licenses for two systems under 1 account, you can use the same "buddy backup" system to handle that job as well. Apologies for muddying the water on my initial response. I can see how that had some folks confused, but I hope this clarifies.

Forgive me, but I'm really confused by what you're saying, which means there is clearly a disconnect in our marketing language and understanding with customers as well and I want to get to the bottom of that. Let's try some clarification here: Buddy backup is a feature that will allow two HexOS users (customers) to backup to each other's server in an encrypted fashion. There is no reason you cannot be your own buddy with a second license (e.g. you buy a second server license and put a server at a secondary location). If someone bought two licenses during black friday under two separate accounts, each account can backup to each other just the same (and if they want to merge those two accounts, we can handle that for the user). With this sale, however, we are not allowing someone to buy a second license to transfer to another user (as it would open the door to reselling licenses which we don't support). I get that the term "buddy backup" may not clearly identify that you can be your own buddy, but we thought it would be fairly obvious that if you could backup to someone else on a separate account, you could also backup to yourself on the same account. I think we could loosen the "encryption" requirement in the case of backups between two servers owned by the same account, but that's more of a technical detail than marketing. Let me know what's still unclear or how we can do better on the language here. Sometimes we can be a little too close to the trees to see the forest, so if you can help give us a better perspective, we'll work to improve our messaging in the marketing. Thanks!

Buddy backup will definitely work with two licenses under the same account. You will be your own buddy 😉

Fully acknowledge this isn't ideal but it is safe for now to take this approach. We will address updating your curation in place in the future.

Yes most definitely! We have the underpinnings for a language selector already in place, but we're deferring translation work until after 1.0.

As of today, yes, you can access your server from anywhere using deck.hexos.com. I have a discussion planned with the team to allow you to disable remote access which would be as simple as us verifying the WAN IP of the client device being used to connect to the deck and making sure it matches the server's WAN IP. When HexOS Local arrives, you will be able to even further reduce your cloud dependency, but there are some features like installing apps/VMs, configuring buddy backups, and e-mail notifications that will require a connection to our deck. Thankfully that connection is outbound from your server, which doesn't require you to open any ports on your firewall and expose the system to the wider net. We also do have plans to implement oAuth and 2FA in the future to further enhance security and options.

Absolutely. That is 100% doable.

We know about this problem all-too-well. The VM features will come in layers, but our plan is to try and get ahead of those kinds of problems by detecting hardware changes and automatically adjusting device ID mappings to your VMs before they start. This still needs a lot of R&D work and there are lots of potential gotchas, but I bet we can address a lot of common scenarios like what you've described. It gets more tricky when you have multiple GPUs in a system of the same make/model, as it's hard to know which one is which for assignment to VMs. I'd say that's a problem for after the initial VMs feature release for us to investigate further. Ultimately there will be some limits to what we can do, but we're going to do this as best as is humanly possible.

Correct. The additional licenses is for users that want to setup multiple systems of their own, not for buddy backups. @Todd Miller rightly called this out as confusing. What I meant to say is that you just can't transfer the license to another user. You can use buddy backups (as a feature) between two systems that you own and control (licensed under one account). Sorry for the confusion! Carry on!

It's hard to believe it's already been a year since we launched the HexOS Beta and the early access campaign. What a journey it's been! In today's blog post, we're going to provide a summary of this past year's accomplishments, a run-down of what's left to achieve our 1.0 release, what's coming next, an update on the AnyRaid project, and our HexOS Holiday Sale! Read all about it in our latest blog post: https://docs.hexos.com/blog/2025-11-26.html

To celebrate the holidays and thank our community for their continued support, we're excited to announce our HexOS Holiday Sale, starting today! Existing customers can purchase additional licenses for just $99 each, perfect for expanding your home server setup. New customers can take advantage of our special two-pack bundle for $298, with additional licenses available at the same $99 promotional price. Single licenses remain available at $199 until our 1.0 release in Q1 2026. This holiday pricing for additional licenses and the two-pack bundle is available through December 31st, so don't miss out on this opportunity to join or expand your HexOS experience. Please note: License transfers are not permitted. All licenses are tied to the purchasing account. Buy now from the HexOS Store!

Def not cloud only. If your isp/network supports peer to peer, we can coordinate that and then get out of the way. That is what's included in a lifetime license. If we end up having to relay traffic for some users, that will require a subscription as we will have to pay for the relay traffic, but obviously it will still be encrypted.

My fault. I dropped the ball on this one. I'll circle back to it next week to make sure we get it addressed. I know you aren't the only RSS user out there 😉

If there are still a plethora of users affected after Local is released, we would consider it. But if not, we would rather spend the time via support helping people up over this fence than engineer an entire solution for a handful of folks. Support@hexos.com is available to you at no cost.