Used to be like you, then I moved from truenas core to scale where it’s now Linux and docker instead of freebsd and iocage jails.
So docker has this concept of persistent volumes. You configure all your settings in the initial setup command (docker compose) and define persistent volumes. This way you don’t lose your data.
Here’s an example, Plex. I run Plex in docker now. So my config directory is defined as a persistent volume. If I need to update Plex, or rebuild it or whatever, the container just updates and has all the data I need via the persistent volume. If the install is messed up or whatever I just get a newer image and run the docker compose and it fires up and mounts the persistent volume and off I go.
Basically it takes away the burden of having to figure out the OS configuration. Makes backups easier - and smaller. And the things are spun up, installed, and usable in seconds.
Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 1 year ago
Not sure the OS configuration is really a burden :-) I have several servers I have to keep up to date anyway. And backups aren’t really an issue, I just run rdiff-backup on everything to provide a year’s worth of incremental backups, which doesn’t really take much extra space. Maybe one of these days when I catch up on other projects I’ll look into it though.
cyberpunk007@lemmy.world 1 year ago
On truenas scale though it’s just tiles in a web browser, it’s super easy. And since it runs on ZFS backups are easier too. Just click your way through periodic volume snapshot tasks.
Definitely a bit of a learning curve but it’s a sleek setup once you understand.
Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 1 year ago
I’m not quite sure what “truenas” is? All of my stuff is individually installed, I decided a long time ago to split it up onto VMs that each perform an specific task. I have a main file server that runs zfs, then two servers to run the redundant VMs. There’s not really anything difficult about backups, I just add a cron job to run a script once a day and never touch it again, so I have backups of each VM but then the backups of the main servers includes the VM image files so each VM gets backed up twice. There’s a lot of info there but the backups of all the critical stuff only use about 6TB (I could actually cut that in half if I got rid of the backups from older machines).
So lets say I put in the time to learn how docker works, and then put in a lot more time converting all of my existing systems over to docker images… What exactly what I get out of all that effort? The thing that nobody’s been able to sell me on so far is that I don’t see how docker is going to make anything any easier, it just seems like it’s a “different” way to do things but nothing more.
cyberpunk007@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Your data footprint would be less. Maintenance is a breeze. If you update your image and it breaks, just roll it back. Less consumption of resources. No need to divide your storage and ram for VMs. There are millions of docker images so you can start something new in seconds. And the learning curve isn’t too bad if you’re on truenas scale. Truenas core is a NAS operating system built on freebsd (Unix), and truenas scale is built on Linux. Both use ZFS for the underlying storage.