Configuring Grafana Alloy on TrueNAS Scale

## Spark

I've configured Grafana Alloy on TrueNAS Scale to ship telemetry. Searching for prior art turns up plenty of "Grafana on TrueNAS" (visualization-as-app) and legacy InfluxDB+Grafana guides, but nothing specifically about Alloy — Grafana's unified collector — running on Scale.

## Why it could be interesting

**Confirmed gap.** Web search across "Grafana Alloy TrueNAS Scale" returns:

- TrueNAS App catalog Grafana entry — but that's the visualization server, not the collector
- Pre-Alloy guides built on Telegraf/InfluxDB or Grafana Agent — outdated stack
- TrueNAS dashboards on Grafana Labs — what to display, not how to collect
- Generic Alloy install docs — Docker/k8s/Linux/macOS/Windows; explicitly cautions that other OSes "isn't recommended or supported"

TrueNAS Scale is appliance-y Linux with three plausible install paths (custom Docker app, k3s/Helm via TrueNAS Apps, external collector talking to TrueNAS via API/SNMP). None has a published guide. Audience is small (TrueNAS-Scale users who are also Grafana-Cloud users or self-hosted Grafana stack operators) but underserved.

The post would cover:

- Why Alloy on Scale is awkward (appliance assumptions vs collector-on-host needs)
- Which install path I chose and why (vs the alternatives I rejected)
- What the running collector actually scrapes — TrueNAS Reporting API? Node exporter? ZFS pool stats? Container/k3s metrics from the apps catalog?
- Persistence + upgrade story (TrueNAS apps lifecycle vs Alloy version pinning)
- The gotchas (host networking, persistent volumes, TLS to Grafana Cloud)

## Open questions

- [ ] Format: tutorial (walk through one path start to finish) or explanation (compare the three install paths, recommend one)?
- [ ] Should this be paired with a downloadable Alloy config snippet / TrueNAS Apps manifest, or kept prose-only?
- [ ] Is this one post or two — install + scraping config split?
- [ ] How does TrueNAS's own Reporting / Netdata fit alongside Alloy, or does Alloy replace them?
- [ ] If the post lands well, does it warrant a companion TrueNAS Apps catalog submission for Alloy?

## Source material

- Setup notes (private, drafting context)
- [Grafana Alloy install docs](https://grafana.com/docs/alloy/latest/set-up/install/) · [Alloy overview](https://grafana.com/docs/alloy/latest/)
- [TrueNAS Apps Grafana entry](https://apps.truenas.com/catalog/grafana/) (visualization-side comparison)
- [TrueNAS Scale Graphite Grafana dashboard](https://grafana.com/grafana/dashboards/23204-truenas-scale-graphite/) — current dashboard prior art
- TrueNAS Community: [Metrics from TrueNAS Scale into Grafana](https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/metrics-from-truenas-scale-server-into-grafana.115903/) · [InfluxDB and Grafana on TrueNAS Scale](https://forums.truenas.com/t/influxdb-and-grafana-installation-docker-and-truenas-scale/28815) — pre-Alloy stacks