Meet TrueCharts - the First App Store for TrueNAS SCALE
Enterprise storage does not need to be rigid and difficult. TrueNAS SCALE is scale-out storage and hyperconverged infrastructure that is also flexible. Key to that flexibility is the inclusion of Kubernetes for deploying containerized (e.g. docker) applications. Kubernetes allows single containers or pods of containers to be easily deployed on a unified infrastructure. A growing assortment of these applications are now preconfigured for easy deployment using a TrueNAS-enhanced implementation of Helm Charts.
Users and third parties can now build catalogs of application charts for deployment with the ease of an app store experience. These catalogs are like app stores for TrueNAS SCALE. iXsystems has been collaborating and sponsoring the team developing TrueCharts, the first and most comprehensive of these app stores. Best of all, the TrueCharts Apps are free and Open Source. TrueCharts offers a diverse set of easily-deployed applications for TrueNAS users, with more than 180 available apps to choose from. We’ve invited the TrueCharts team to write a guest blog to share the details.
TrueCharts
With streamlined Kubernetes support for its ”apps”, TrueNAS SCALE has made the big step of bringing Kubernetes to the masses while staying true to its Open Source philosophy by empowering the community to build their own apps and catalogs. This ability for users to pick their own favorite catalogs for apps has already proven to be popular. Meet TrueCharts, the first community apps catalog!
TrueCharts was built by the founders of a group who developed installation scripts for TrueNAS CORE, called “Jailman”. TrueCharts offers more than what Jailman was capable of: a flexible, user-friendly installer with a freedom of choice that users need and deserve!
Working as a completely independent project, the TrueCharts community has since invested an entire year carefully crafting tools that provide many of the awesome features that Kubernetes has to offer to the TrueNAS SCALE apps ecosystem. For example, all apps can be simply enabled with Traefik reverse proxy and Wireguard VPN capabilities. In addition to the official apps like Plex, Nextcloud, and Minio, TrueCharts adds a huge variety of apps including Vaultwarden, Handbrake, OpenLDAP, Photoprism, Pihole, Syncthing, and more.
TrueCharts was designed with one primary goal in mind: to serve as a solid framework for users who are new to Kubernetes while also exposing as many Kubernetes features as possible for experienced users. Where the official apps by iXsystems focus on easy deployment, TrueCharts focuses on those applications that need a bit more flexibility to customize the app for specific use cases and system environments. TrueCharts is managed from within the TrueNAS SCALE UI. Simply add the catalog and follow the Quick Start guides!
As the release of TrueNAS SCALE 22.02 “AngelFish” is getting closer and closer, the TrueCharts Team and iXsystems are already hard at work looking into a future of apps with high availability, dynamic scaling, and distributed storage. Want to know more about TrueCharts? Visit TrueCharts.org or come visit our great community: TrueCharts on Discord!
TrueCharts and TrueNAS = Endless Possibilities