TrueNAS Scale NAS platform was designed to work on x86-64 computers only, but there’s now an unofficial port for 64-bit Arm (Aarch64) targets running a UEFI bootloader, including the Raspberry Pi 4/5 SBCs and other higher-end Arm boards.
Previously known as FreeNAS, the community edition, FreeBSD-based TrueNAS Core was phased out in 2022 and replaced with the Linux-based TrueNAS Scale. iXsystems also provides TrueNAS Enterprise, a paid version with more advanced features, but all versions only work on 64-bit x86 machines. TrueNAS forum user Joel0 decided to change that and patched TrueNAS Scale to run on ARM (aarch64).
The main requirements are having a 64-bit Arm target, at least 8GB RAM, 16GB boot storage, and a working UEFI bootloader. The image has been tested with a QEMU virtual machine, and it should also work on a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 with UEFI, but it has not been tested. One user from the forum thread above has tested it on a Mac Studio M4 with VMware Fusion. The only known issue at the moment is that apps and containers do not work.
This could, for instance, enable a TrueNAS on a Raspberry Pi 5 fitted with a Radxa Penta SATA HAT as pictured above. Arm SystemReady-compliant boards like the Radxa Orion O6 should also be candidates, and even Rockchip RK3588 SBCs could be used since there’s an EDK2 UEFI firmware port that works on the FriendlyELEC CM3588 NAS kit, among many other boards.
If you want to get started and/or help with the projects, there are three main resources to look at:
- The ISO image (TrueNAS-SCALE-25.04.2-aarch64.iso) to run TrueNAS Scale on a 64-bit Arm target
- The source code at https://git.jmay.us/truenas/
- The issue tracker on GitHub. The repo is only used as an issue tracker, and there’s no code there.
There’s not much in the way of documentation, but I’m not sure it’s needed, since users simply need to be able to load an ISO image and follow TrueNAS documentation for installation and configuration. There’s also a recent interview of Joel May about the port on TrueNAS Tech Talk.
Via Jeff Geerling
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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