Alright, let me get straight to the point—TrueNAS SCALE is not a bad system. In fact, it’s packed with features and has a lot of potential. But after spending some time building on it, I’ve decided it’s not going to be my baseline anymore. I’m switching back to Proxmox. Here’s why.
It’s Not About Bashing TrueNAS SCALE
Before I get into the problems I faced, I want to make something clear: I still think TrueNAS SCALE is a great product. I’m not abandoning it completely. I’ll continue to use it—but as a virtual machine inside Proxmox, not the main operating system running directly on the hardware.
The reality is, TrueNAS SCALE’s virtualization and container features still feel like they’re under active development. That’s not inherently bad, but for what I’m building, I need a stable and reliable foundation.
What Went Wrong
If you watched my previous video, I had just installed Nextcloud on TrueNAS SCALE. But it didn’t take long before I realized I had skipped some foundational steps. I needed to configure internal DNS, set up a proper Certificate Authority, and build out a Windows Domain Controller to handle all that. That’s when the real problems started.
I couldn’t attach additional storage to the Windows VM. Getting the domain controller up and running turned into a mess. After looking into it, I discovered that these weren’t isolated issues. A lot of users in the community were running into the same problems. Many pointed to the Fangtooth 25.04 release as a fix, so I went ahead and updated.
After the reboot? My datasets were gone. Apps disappeared. Everything I had configured vanished. At that point, I started to question if SCALE was ready for what I needed.
Why Proxmox Makes More Sense for My Build
TrueNAS SCALE has a lot going for it—especially the built-in app catalog, the Kubernetes support, and ZFS at its core. But again, it’s still in progress. Even the UI still marks the virtualization feature as "Experimental." And honestly, I can’t afford to build my whole lab on something that isn’t production-ready.
I initially avoided virtualizing SCALE because I didn’t want to deal with PCI passthrough issues. But in hindsight, that concern was overblown. I’d rather deal with passthrough challenges than risk breaking my setup every time an update rolls out.
Here’s the plan moving forward:
Proxmox will be the main hypervisor.
TrueNAS SCALE will run as a VM inside Proxmox.
I’ll leverage snapshots and rollbacks for safer testing.
My lab will be more stable and easier to manage.
Had I been using Proxmox from the beginning, I could’ve taken a snapshot before the update and simply rolled back when things went south—no data loss, no wasted time.
Final Thoughts
I know some folks will say I should’ve expected this—SCALE is still maturing. And that’s true. But I went into this hoping it would be stable enough to act as the foundation. Turns out, it’s not quite there yet. And that’s okay.
I’m sharing this update because I promised to document the journey—even the missteps. This is all part of the learning process. If you're considering TrueNAS SCALE vs Proxmox for your own homelab, hopefully this helps you make a more informed decision.
At the end of the day, I’d rather make this change now than be stubborn and try to “fix it as I go,” only to end up rebuilding everything later.
Stay tuned—I’ll be sharing more updates as I rebuild my environment on Proxmox. —stay geeking. Peace!
