Manage TrueNAS Storage via Natural Language

TrueNAS MCP Server

A production-ready Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for TrueNAS Core and SCALE systems. Control and manage your TrueNAS storage and virtualization through natural language with Claude or other MCP-compatible clients.

Automatic variant detection: The server automatically detects whether you're connected to TrueNAS Core or SCALE and enables the appropriate features.

🚀 Features

Universal Features (Core & SCALE)

• User Management - Create, update, delete users and manage permissions
• Storage Management - Manage pools, datasets, volumes with full ZFS support
• File Sharing - Configure SMB, NFS, and iSCSI shares
• Snapshot Management - Create, delete, rollback snapshots with automation
• System Monitoring - Check system health, pool status, and resource usage

TrueNAS SCALE Features (24.04+)

Automatically enabled when connected to SCALE

• Apps - Manage Docker Compose-based TrueNAS applications
• Incus Instances - Control Incus VMs and containers (SCALE 25.04+)
• Legacy VMs - Manage bhyve virtual machines

Enterprise Features

• Type-Safe Operations - Full Pydantic models for request/response validation
• Comprehensive Error Handling - Detailed error messages and recovery guidance
• Production Logging - Structured logging with configurable levels
• Connection Pooling - Efficient HTTP connection management with retry logic
• Rate Limiting - Built-in rate limiting to prevent API abuse
• Environment-Based Config - Flexible configuration via environment variables

📦 Installation

Quick Start with uvx (Recommended)

The easiest way to run TrueNAS MCP Server is with uvx:

# Run directly without installation
uvx truenas-mcp-server

# Or install globally with uv
uv tool install truenas-mcp-server

Traditional Installation

# With pip
pip install truenas-mcp-server

# Or with pipx for isolated environment
pipx install truenas-mcp-server

From Source

git clone https://github.com/vespo92/TrueNasCoreMCP.git
cd TrueNasCoreMCP
pip install -e .

🔧 Configuration

Environment Variables

Create a .env file or set environment variables:

# Required
TRUENAS_URL=https://your-truenas-server.local
TRUENAS_API_KEY=your-api-key-here

# Optional
TRUENAS_VERIFY_SSL=true                    # Verify SSL certificates
TRUENAS_LOG_LEVEL=INFO                     # Logging level
TRUENAS_ENV=production                     # Environment (development/staging/production)
TRUENAS_HTTP_TIMEOUT=30                    # HTTP timeout in seconds
TRUENAS_ENABLE_DESTRUCTIVE_OPS=false      # Enable delete operations
TRUENAS_ENABLE_DEBUG_TOOLS=false          # Enable debug tools

Getting Your API Key

1. Log into TrueNAS Web UI
2. Go to Settings → API Keys
3. Click Add and create a new API key
4. Copy the key immediately (it won't be shown again)

Claude Desktop Configuration

Add to your Claude Desktop config (claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "truenas": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["truenas-mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "TRUENAS_URL": "https://your-truenas-server.local",
        "TRUENAS_API_KEY": "your-api-key-here",
        "TRUENAS_VERIFY_SSL": "false"
      }
    }
  }
}

Note: This uses uvx to automatically manage the Python environment. Make sure you have uv installed:

# Install uv if you haven't already
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
# or
brew install uv

📚 Usage Examples

With Claude Desktop

Once configured, you can interact with TrueNAS using natural language:

"List all storage pools and their health status"
"Create a new dataset called 'backups' in the tank pool with compression"
"Set up an SMB share for the documents dataset"
"Create a snapshot of all datasets in the tank pool"
"Show me users who have sudo privileges"

# TrueNAS SCALE virtualization examples
"List all running apps and their status"
"Get the configuration for the sonarr app"
"Show me all Incus VMs and containers"
"Update the crypto-nodes VM to use 8 CPUs"
"Restart the plex app"

As a Python Library

from truenas_mcp_server import TrueNASMCPServer

# Create server instance
server = TrueNASMCPServer()

# Run the server
server.run()

Programmatic Usage

import asyncio
from truenas_mcp_server.client import TrueNASClient
from truenas_mcp_server.config import Settings

async def main():
    # Initialize client
    settings = Settings(
        truenas_url="https://truenas.local",
        truenas_api_key="your-api-key"
    )
    
    async with TrueNASClient(settings) as client:
        # List pools
        pools = await client.get("/pool")
        print(f"Found {len(pools)} pools")
        
        # Create a dataset
        dataset = await client.post("/pool/dataset", {
            "name": "tank/mydata",
            "compression": "lz4"
        })
        print(f"Created dataset: {dataset['name']}")

asyncio.run(main())

🛠️ Available Tools

User Management

• list_users - List all users with details
• get_user - Get specific user information
• create_user - Create new user account
• update_user - Modify user properties
• delete_user - Remove user account

Storage Management

• list_pools - Show all storage pools
• get_pool_status - Detailed pool health and statistics
• list_datasets - List all datasets
• create_dataset - Create new dataset with options
• update_dataset - Modify dataset properties
• delete_dataset - Remove dataset

File Sharing

• list_smb_shares - Show SMB/CIFS shares
• create_smb_share - Create Windows share
• list_nfs_exports - Show NFS exports
• create_nfs_export - Create NFS export
• list_iscsi_targets - Show iSCSI targets
• create_iscsi_target - Create iSCSI target

Snapshot Management

• list_snapshots - Show snapshots
• create_snapshot - Create manual snapshot
• delete_snapshot - Remove snapshot
• rollback_snapshot - Revert to snapshot
• clone_snapshot - Clone to new dataset
• create_snapshot_task - Setup automated snapshots

App Management (TrueNAS SCALE)

• list_apps - Show all TrueNAS apps with status
• get_app - Get detailed app information
• get_app_config - Get full app configuration
• start_app - Start an app
• stop_app - Stop an app
• restart_app - Restart an app
• redeploy_app - Redeploy after config changes
• update_app_config - Update app configuration

Incus Instance Management (TrueNAS SCALE)

• list_instances - Show VMs and containers
• get_instance - Get instance details
• start_instance - Start an instance
• stop_instance - Stop an instance
• restart_instance - Restart an instance
• update_instance - Update CPU/memory/autostart
• list_instance_devices - Show attached devices

Legacy VM Management

• list_legacy_vms - Show bhyve VMs
• get_legacy_vm - Get VM details
• start_legacy_vm - Start a VM
• stop_legacy_vm - Stop a VM
• restart_legacy_vm - Restart a VM
• update_legacy_vm - Update VM configuration
• get_legacy_vm_status - Get VM status

Debug Tools (Development Mode)

• debug_connection - Check connection settings
• test_connection - Verify API connectivity
• get_server_stats - Server statistics

📄 Pagination and Response Control

All list operations support pagination to reduce token usage when working with LLM clients. Get operations support optional raw API response inclusion for debugging.

Pagination Parameters

All list_* tools support these parameters:

Response format:

{
  "success": true,
  "items": [...],
  "metadata": { ... },
  "pagination": {
    "total": 250,
    "limit": 100,
    "offset": 0,
    "returned": 100,
    "has_more": true
  }
}

Usage examples:

"List the first 10 datasets"          → limit=10
"Show users 50-100"                   → limit=50, offset=50
"Get all SMB shares (up to 500)"      → limit=500

Include Raw API Response

Get operations for apps, instances, and VMs support the include_raw parameter:

When to use include_raw=true:

• Debugging API response structure
• Accessing fields not included in the formatted response
• Troubleshooting integration issues

Tools supporting include_raw:

• get_app - App details
• get_instance - Incus instance details
• get_legacy_vm - Legacy VM details

Dataset Response Control

The list_datasets and get_dataset tools support an additional parameter:

Usage:

"List only top-level datasets"        → include_children=false
"Get tank dataset without children"   → include_children=false

🏗️ Architecture

truenas_mcp_server/
├── __init__.py           # Package initialization
├── server.py             # Main MCP server
├── config/               # Configuration management
│   ├── __init__.py
│   └── settings.py       # Pydantic settings
├── client/               # HTTP client
│   ├── __init__.py
│   └── http_client.py    # Async HTTP with retry
├── models/               # Data models
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── base.py          # Base models
│   ├── user.py          # User models
│   ├── storage.py       # Storage models
│   ├── sharing.py       # Share models
│   ├── app.py           # App models (SCALE)
│   ├── instance.py      # Incus instance models (SCALE)
│   └── vm.py            # Legacy VM models
├── tools/                # MCP tools
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── base.py          # Base tool class
│   ├── users.py         # User tools
│   ├── storage.py       # Storage tools
│   ├── sharing.py       # Share tools
│   ├── snapshots.py     # Snapshot tools
│   ├── apps.py          # App tools (SCALE)
│   ├── instances.py     # Incus instance tools (SCALE)
│   └── vms.py           # Legacy VM tools
└── exceptions.py         # Custom exceptions

🧪 Development

Setup Development Environment

# Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/vespo92/TrueNasCoreMCP.git
cd TrueNasCoreMCP

# Create virtual environment
python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: venv\Scripts\activate

# Install in development mode
pip install -e ".[dev]"

Running Tests

# Run all tests
pytest

# With coverage
pytest --cov=truenas_mcp_server

# Specific test file
pytest tests/test_client.py

Code Quality

# Format code
black truenas_mcp_server

# Lint
flake8 truenas_mcp_server

# Type checking
mypy truenas_mcp_server

📖 Documentation

• Installation Guide - Detailed installation instructions
• Quick Start - Get up and running quickly
• Quick Reference - Command reference
• Features Overview - Detailed feature documentation
• API Documentation - Coming soon

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

📝 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

🔒 Security

• Never commit API keys or credentials
• Use environment variables for sensitive data
• Enable SSL verification in production
• Restrict destructive operations by default
• Report security issues via GitHub Issues

📞 Support

• Issues: GitHub Issues
• Discussions: GitHub Discussions

🙏 Acknowledgments

• Anthropic for the MCP specification
• TrueNAS for the excellent storage platform
• MCP Python SDK contributors

Made with ❤️ for the TrueNAS community