Why it's Time to Move off TrueNAS Core...

Thinking about migrating away from TrueNAS Core? In this video, I break down the current state of TrueNAS Core, what's happening in 2025, and how to plan your upgrade or migration. With TrueNAS Community Edition coming this April and TrueNAS SCALE becoming more robust, it's time to talk strategies for both homelab enthusiasts and business deployments.

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Chapters
00:00 Why it's Time to Move off TrueNAS Core...
01:40 What WILL NOT migrate from TrueNAS Core
05:55 Virtual Machines
07:22 Exporting TrueNAS Core Settings
08:39 ISO TrueNAS Install and Importing Settings

[UnwalledGarden]

I did the upgrade in place and it was flawless. Kudos to the TrueNAS team for making that process so seamless.

[brucekeen]

I upgraded one of my three Truenas to scale since the Syncthing jail was useful for me. Since then, I have been having replication task issues between core and scale, having to reboot the scale and then finally erasing the pool. I also had these replication issues between core 10 and 11. In my case it is worthwhile upgrading all to scale. Apparently the time is now. Thanks Tom for helping us all out.

[calvinlindberg]

Just did my Core -> Scale migration a few months ago and love TrueNAS Scale too!

[kolifx]

Thank you so much for this clear and simple video, it was just what I needed to make the jump from Core to Scale. Can't believe how well this process worked.

[bikerchrisukk]

Good video Tom, I have done a test upgrade on less important machines and all went surprisingly well. As for the production ones though, I'm going to hold out until I have to, mainly due to a few jails being in active use. Thanks!

[sam_sheridan]

I had brought this up with them a week or so a go, as you correctly stated Core is considered "feature complete" but is still being supported with maintenance fixes.

I really should try scale, probably worth doing a video as a die-hard core (bsd) fan trying scale 🙃

Core has been absolutely rock-solid, and saved my arse a couple of times this week alone with clients.

[KannexMedia]

I don't use TrueNAS so I got nothing to do but watch. 😂 Thanks for the informative content, definitely interesting to watch the stuff you cover Tom.

[maxherman]

Glad I decided to not do Core years ago and to do Scale going forward. Been very happy with it. Just wish they made things like permissions a bit easier that you didn't need a degree is Astro physics to figure it out. If I have to look up a tutorial on permissions, it is too difficult, and this is coming from a guy who manages I.T. daily too.

[debugin]

Core is rock solid. Will wait until hardware needs replacing.

[TheFullTimer]

I imagine this could've been an April Fools bait and switch. "No, really. It's time to move. This is not a prank."

[cidercreekranch]

I wish moving from Core to Scale would have been smoother. In my case all of the data was lost. Thankfully I had move the important stuff off to backup and ended starting from scratch.

[RandomTechWZ]

Core is still fine if that's what you're already running and you're using it strictly for a NAS.

[Scott-phyk]

I have been on TrueNAS Core since the FreeNAS days, through several hardware upgrades. I really liked the stability of FreeBSD and iocage jails. In January 2025, I decided it was time to consider moving over to Scale.
With a little bit of planning and following the documentation, I made the switch from Core 13-U6.7 to Dragonfish via the software train change. Very uneventful upgrade. After getting my settings replicated on Scale, I upgraded again to Electric Eel. At this point, I was able to install Dockge, and deploy Docker containers for Plex, Tailscale, and backup solution.

60 days on Scale so far without drama. I really liked Core, but I am learning and benefiting from new features on Scale. The iX Systems guys made the transition pretty easy.

[MattWells]

My pool is encrypted and I don't trust my drives to survive through 4 resilverings to be able to decrypt them. Been meaning to build a new NAS to migrate to just not got around to it yet.

[learningtravel-zr]

Not moving yet, Core does everything I need it to

[notpublic]

Oh my... Glad I waited (procrastinating) upgrading my FreeNAS ... Um yes, I am still running FreeNAS and no it not exposed to WAN at all so I am ok but it's time to move on. TY for video!! ❤

[stephendetomasi]

I'll be sticking with a debian LXC with cockpit until truenas can make an LXC version of truenas scale. I run storage primarily on ewaste that doesn't have the ability to pass through controllers

[TrevorReimer]

I didn't move to scale because I realized our TruNAS Core was used as a hypervisor first and storage second. Moved everything to XCP-ng with proper VMs. We had a Synology NAS as well, so that became the storage system.

[vaidkun]

I use boot mirror setup on truenas core and did test migration to truenas scale and then test failed boot drive (few times) and it broke my boot mirror. When I asked for advice on truenas forums was told to not do boot mirror on truenas scale, it seems that people there know better what setup I want. Even if boot mirror saved me a lot of time and headaches when one of the boot drives died in the past, I had zero downtime. So, yah not migrating to scale if it breaks one of the core functions of my setup. I don't use my storage server for virtualization/compute anyway.

[breemetravel]

Not moving until I upgrade. Current setup is 4x 8Tb drives in a 1u antique chassis. When I out grow the space it will be a newer build.