PsychoWards

You can still run VMs in Hexos, but you need to go to the Truenas Gui. VMs will only be supported in the future in the Hexos GUI. But Proxmox is likely the better OS for your purposes and just put Hexos in a VM. 🙂 If you run Hexos as the OS, the 64GB SSD is more then enough. If you want to run Proxmox then get a bigger SSD (512GB or more) and make sure it's not connected to the same controller ass your HDDs. (Best is getting a NVME SSD anyway for Proxmox and the VMs). If you use Hexos as OS, you need 3 SSDs (1 for the boot drive, at least 2 for a mirrored pool for apps and VMs) while you only need 1 SSD if you use Proxmox as the OS, since you can install everything on the boot drive. Check this video to get a good overview of all the WD drives: But you can also go for Seagate and their IronWolf (Pro) or Exos Range. Unless you go for 10gbps networking, the speed difference in the drives is not going to be really noticable/worth the extra cost for most users. I'm using Intertech rack-mounted server cases. They are big, offer a lot of space and airflow and are ugly as hell and are ment to be mounted into a 19'' rack. 🙂 So yeah, unfortunately I cannot give you any none rack mounted recommendations. 🙂 You can use some PowerLAN adapters in the meantime if needed. 🙂 Yes, the rest can run over wifi, just the server absolutely needs to be connected via cable. Fan noise and HDD noise are a real thing and can be annoying. You don't need to have it good looking but noisy in the living room you can also put it noisy and ugly in the garage or cellar 🙂 Haha, no, my country is a lot smaller, but has the same flag, just with lighter blue and alternate is also available here =D 😉 If you have any more questions don't be afraid to ask them 🙂 Also, once you have your server speced out make sure to post it here as well so that we can take a look to avoid common pitfalls before buying 🙂

Hey, the local GUI access is currently being rolled out to everyone in accordance to the purchase order and should be available to everyone in the next couple of days.

Hey, Seeing that you want to host a lot of VMs, may I suggest that you use Proxmox as the OS and Hexos as a VM. Proxmox is brilliant to run VMs while Hexos doesn't support VMs yet, you have to use the truenas gui and don't have the same flexibility as proxmox offers. Therefor, use proxmox ass your OS an Hexos in a VM. Just make sure to pass through the SATA controller to Hexos to give it HW level access and don't connect anything other then the Hexos drives to that controller. You can still just use Hexos as the OS and run your VMs in there, the initial Hexos setup is easier but you are not as flexible in the long run. There is no right or wrong in this one, both have there pros and cons. 🙂 HDDs: yes, avoid SMR drives as they are causing issues with ZFS. Go for CMR drives, but IIRC most, if not all 8TB drives are CMR anyway. Basically stay away from desktop and WD Red (non plus/pro) drives and go for NAS/Server drives. Check alternate if they still have refurbished server drives, might be a good starting point. And yes at least 3 drives now, to create a RaidZ1 which is expandable in the future. CPU: yes only AMD/Intel is supported. Intel iGPU from 12th gen onwards is brilliant for HW transcoding. 13th and 14th gen had problems where they died prematurely, but Intel supposedly fixed this with BIOS updates, but still a lot of people don't trust them, that's why some people don't recommend them. But you can still use them if you like, just make sure to use the latest bios and don't buy the F version as you mentioned. MoBo: whatever fits in the case and doesn't use a Realtek NIC. Typically ITX boards only have 1 pcie slot, so you can either use a GPU (for ML & LLM) or an Intel NIC or a HBA card. If you can go full ATX you don't have this problem anymore. Also most boards are either DDR4 or DDR5, you have to make your choice now. Almost no consumer CPU/MoBo supports ECC, so you will likely not be able to use your DDR4 EEC memory. Raid Controller: if you have enough SATA ports you don't necessarily need one. Network: wifi is a BIG no no! Neither Hexos nor Proxmox support WiFi you absolutely have to use a wired network connection, that's not optional but a hard requirement. Additionally Hexos doesn't not allow you to use your boot drive for anything else, so go with a small SSD (32GB are enough) if you use Hexos as your OS. If you use Proxmox, you don't have that limitation, there you can even install VMs on your boot drive.

Ever since this WD Red, meant for NAS, are SMR drives BS from WD, (and a bad support experience after a brand new drive died after 1 day) I've avoided them when there was an alternative, being it SSDs or HDDs. Nonetheless, very interesting video, to see what the differences really mean.

Hey, 1 account can have multiple licenses. If you want to be your own buddy backup you can buy a second license with your account, if you have a buddy who wants to be your backup buddy, that person can make an own account and buy it's own licence. However you cannot transfer a licence from one account to another account. I hope this was understandable

Just my 2 cents, but for me buddy backup is more important, since I have 2 Hexos servers and I can be my very own buddy and I'm not planning on every using a cloud service as storage (smartphone stuff doesn't count, you don't really have much of a choice there 😉 ) Additional Buddy Backup was one of the promoted features and there have been quite a few people asking about it since the initial release of the beta. Cloud backup on the other hand was not really promoted and as @Todd Miller mentioned there were far less requests for it so far. Therefore likely why they prioritised Buddy Backup over cloud storage. So from a commercial point of view Buddy Backup is a stronger selling point that sets Hexos appart from other NAS solutions. I'm not saying that cloud storage support should not be done, but at least this (forum) part of the community is currently more interested in buddy backup.

Likely unpopular opinion, but thank you!

Hey, yes unfortunately this seems to be normal for BX APC UPS. Those UPS are not the best ones and the driver does not work very well with them. The problem seems to be that the USB part of the UPS keeps disconnecting and reconnecting every couple of seconds leading to this messages. It's a known problem. My advice would be, if you can still return it, do so and try looking for an Eaton UPS or similar. https://forums.truenas.com/t/back-ups-bx1600m-false-battery-replacement-alerts/50688

Look into Jellyfin as a completely free alternative to plex (which has a subscription model for certain things) and none of your GPUs are supported by Hexos. With Truenas Version 25.10 currently only GTX16 Series or newer (RTX Series) are supported, supported for everything up to GTX10 Series was dropped. Also make sure your motherboard doesn't have a Realtek NIC, if it does, it's possible and highly likely that it's not supported. In that case you need to get another NIC, preferably Intel.

I forgot to answer about the Hexos license transfer part: Yes, that is possible and even very easier. On the Hexos website you just need to unclaim your old server and can then reclaim your new server, but It might take a couple of hours until your license because available again after unclaiming it from the old server.

Hey, please make sure you motherboard does not have a Realtek NIC, if it does, there's a high change that it will not work. In that case, you should get yourself an Intel NIC. Yes, everything over 32GB for the boot drive is wasted space, since you cannot use the boot drive for anything else then the OS. Apps are typically installed on a pool, this would be your HDD pool if you are not going to create a SSD pool as well. So your 250GB SSD is fine as boot drive, if you don't have a smaller one. Additionally, there is no write cache as other NAS OS might have, there is only a read cache, which doesn't offer a lot or any benefit with your use cases. So no, you don't need a cache drive, and big boot drive is just wasted space. 🙂

The reason Tailscale gets recommended so often is because it (and VPNs in general) is the most secure ways to access your services remotely. It's also pretty easy to install and get running. Nginx, on the other hand, is a completely different approach. To make lives a bit easier, let's take Nginx Proxy Manager instead of plain Nginx. Installing it is the easy part. The real work starts afterwards. You’ll usually need a domain, set up a DNS token for the certificate DNS challenge, configure something to keep your public IP updated, and create and manage all your subdomains. And all of that just to make your services reachable from outside your network. Once you’ve done that, your services are basically exposed to the entire internet. That means any device online can try to reach them. Because of that, you also need to put additional security measures in place to protect them from people trying to access or exploit them. Therefore only expose what you absolutely need to expose.

Happy to see that it's working now for you. 🙂 I still don't understand why this makes a difference which software you are using to create the USB drive, but hey at least it's running now. =D

Hey, you can basically look at any NAS or Server/Entreprise HDD WD Red Pro Seagate Ironwolf (Pro) Seagate Exos Etc... However they have all exploded in costs unfortunately. Looking at refurbished entrepris drives might also be a good alternative.

In that case, did you try another USB drive or just 1 single drive? Also try using Etcher instead of Rufus.