TrueNAS – Welcome to the Open Storage Era

TrueNAS Electric Eel Performance Sizzles

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 23:41:56 +0000

After a successful release and the fastest software adoption in TrueNAS history, TrueNAS SCALE 24.10 “Electric Eel” is now widely deployed. The update to TrueNAS 24.10.1 has delivered the quality needed for general usage. Electric Eel’s performance is also up to 70% better than TrueNAS 13.0 and Cobia and ahead of Dragonfish, which previously provided dramatic performance improvements of 50% more IOPS and 1000% better metadata. This blog dives into how we test and optimize TrueNAS Electric Eel performance.

While the details can get technical, you don’t have to handle everything yourself. TrueNAS Enterprise appliances come pre-configured and performance-tested, so you can focus on your workloads with confidence that your system is ready to deliver. For our courageous and curious Community members, we’ve outlined the steps to defining, building, and testing a TrueNAS system to meet performance requirements.

Step 1: Setting Your Performance Target

Performance targets are typically defined using a combination of bandwidth (measured in GB/s) and IOPS (short for “Input/Output Operations Per Second.”) For video editing and backups, the individual file and IO size is large, but the number of IOPS is typically low. When supporting virtualization or transactional databases, the IO size is much smaller, but significantly more IOPS are needed.

Bandwidth needs are often best estimated by looking at file sizes and transfer time expectations. High-resolution video files can range from 1 GB to several hundred GB in size. When multiple editors are reading directly from files on the storage, bandwidth needs can easily reach 10GB/s or more; and in the opposite direction, a business may have a specific time window that all backup jobs must complete in.

IOPS requirements can be more challenging, but are often expressed as an expectation from a software vendor or end-user in terms of responsiveness. If a database query needs to return in less than 1 ms, one might think that this means 1000 IOPS is the minimum – but that database query might result in authentication, a table lookup, and an audit or access log update in addition to returning the data itself – a single query might be responsible for a factor of 10 or more IOPS generated. Consider the size of IO that will be sent as well – smaller IO sizes may only be able to be stored on or read from a smaller number of disks in your array.

Client count and concurrency also impacts performance. If a single client requires a given amount of bandwidth or IOPS, but only a handful of clients will access your NAS simultaneously, the requirements can be fulfilled with a much smaller system than if ten or a hundred clients are concurrently making those same demands.

Typically, systems that need more IOPS may also need lower latency. It’s essential to determine whether reliable and consistent sub-millisecond latency or low cost per TB is more important, and find the ideal configuration.

After deciding on your performance target, it’s time to move on to selecting your media and platform.

Step 2: Choosing Your Media

Unlike many other storage systems, TrueNAS supports all-flash (SSD), Hard Drive (HDD) configurations, and Hybrid (mixed SSD and HDD) systems. Choosing the media also determines the system capacity and price point.

With current technology, SSDs best meet high IOPS needs. NVMe SSDs are even faster and becoming increasingly economical. TrueNAS deploys with SSDs up to 30TB in size today, with larger drives planned for availability in the future. Each of these high-performance NVMe SSDs can deliver well over 1 GB/s and over 10,000 IOPS.

Hard drives provide the best cost per TB for capacity, but are limited in two performance dimensions. Sustained bandwidth is typically around 100 MB/s for many drives, and IOPS are around 100. The combination of OpenZFS’s transactional behavior and adaptive caching technology allow for the aggregation of these drives into larger, better-performing systems. The TrueNAS M60 can support over 1,000 HDDs to deliver 10 GB/s and 50,000 IOPS from as low as $60/TB. For high-capacity storage, magnetic hard drives offer an unbeatable cost per TB.

When your performance target is consistent sub-millisecond latency, and IOPS numbers are critical, systems like the all-NVMe TrueNAS F100 bring 24 NVMe drives. With directly connected NVMe drives, there’s no added latency or PCI Express switching involved, giving you maximum performance. With a 2U footprint, and the ability to expand with up to six additional NVMe-oF (NVMe over Fabric) 2U shelves, the F100 is the sleek, high-performance sports car to the M60’s box truck – lighter, nimble, and screaming fast, but at the cost of less “cargo capacity.”

While TrueNAS and OpenZFS cannot make HDDs faster than all-Flash, the Adaptive Replacement Cache (ARC) and optional read cache (L2ARC) and write log (SLOG) devices can help make sure each system meets its performance targets. Read more about these devices in the links to the TrueNAS Documentation site above, or tune in to the TrueNAS Tech Talk (T3) Podcast episode, where the iX engineering team gives some details about where and when these cache devices can help increase performance.

Step 3: Choosing the Platform

After selecting suitable media, the next step to achieving a performance target is by selecting the proper hardware platform. Choose a platform balanced with the CPU, memory size, HBAs, network ports, and media drives needed to achieve a target performance level. Ensure that when designing your system to consider any requirements for power delivery and cooling in order to ensure overall stability.

Depending on the number and type of storage media selected, this may drive your platform decisions in a certain direction. A system designed for a high-bandwidth backup ingest with a hundred spinning disks will have a drastically different design from one that needs a few dozen NVMe devices. Each system will only perform as fast as its slowest component; software cannot fix a significant hardware limitation.

Each performance level has different platforms for different capacity and price points. Our customers typically choose the platforms based on the bandwidth and capacity required now or in the future. For systems where uptime and availability are crucial, platforms supporting High Availability (HA) are typically required.

Community users can build their own smaller systems using the same principles. Resources such as the TrueNAS Hardware Guide can offer excellent guidance for system component selection, as well as the TrueNAS Community Forums.

A key feature of TrueNAS is that all of our systems run the same software, from our all-NVMe F-series to the compact Mini line. While TrueNAS Enterprise and High-Availability systems carry some additional, hardware-specific functionality, the same key features and protocols are supported by TrueNAS Community Edition. There’s no need to re-learn or use a different interface – simply build or buy the hardware platform that supports your performance and availability requirements, and jump right into the same familiar interface that users around the world already know and love.

Step 4: Configuring a Test Lab

Not many users have the opportunity to build a full test lab to run a comprehensive performance test suite. At the TrueNAS Engineering lab, we maintain a performance lab for our customers and for the benefit of the broader TrueNAS community user base.

There are three general categories of tests that the TrueNAS team runs:

Single Client: A single client (Linux, Windows, Mac) connects via a higher-speed LAN (faster than the target bandwidth by 50%) to the NAS. The test suite (e.g., fio) runs on the client. This approach often tests the client operating system and software implementation as much as the NAS, and IOPS and bandwidth results are frequently client-limited. For example, a client may be restricted to less than 3GB/s even though the NAS itself has been verified as capable of greater than 10GB/s total. TCP and storage session protocols (iSCSI, NFS, SMB) can limit the client’s performance; but this test is important to conduct as it is a realistic use-case.

Multi-client: Given that each client is usually restricted to 2-3GB/s, a system capable of 10 or 20 GB/s needs more than 10 clients to test a NAS simultaneously. The only approach is to have a lab with tens of virtual or physical clients running each of the protocols. Purely synthetic tests like fio are used, as well as more complicated real-world workload tests like virtualization and software-build tests. The aggregate bandwidth and IOPS served to all clients are the final measures of success in this test.

Client Scalability: The last class of tests is needed to simulate use cases with thousands of clients accessing the same NAS. Thousands of users in a school, university, or large company may use a shared storage system, typically via SMB. How the NAS handles those thousands of TCP connections and sessions is important to scalability and reliable operation. To set up this test, we’ve invested in virtualizing thousands of Windows Active Directory (AD) and SMB clients.

Step 5: Choosing a Software Test Suite

There are many test suites out there. Unfortunately, most are for testing individual drives. We recommend the following to get useful results:

Test with a suite that is intended for NAS systems. Synthetic tests like fio fall into this category, providing many options for identifying performance issues.

Do not test by copying data. Copying data goes through a different client path than reading and writing data. Depending on your client, copying data can be very single-threaded and latency-sensitive. Using dd or copying folders will give you poor measurements compared with fio, and in this scenario you may be testing your copy software, not the NAS.

Pick a realistic IO size for your workload. The storage industry previously fixated on 4KB IOPS because applications like Oracle would use this size IO – but unless you’re using Oracle or a similar transactional database, it’s likely your standard IO size is between 32 KB and 1 MB. Test with that to assess your bandwidth and IOPS.

Look at queue depth. A local SSD will often perform better than a network share because of latency differences. Unless you use 100Gbe networking, networks will restrict bandwidth and add latency. Storage systems overcome latency issues by increasing “queue depth”, the number of simultaneous outstanding IOs. If your workload allows for multiple outstanding IOs, increase the testing queue depth. Much like adding more lanes on a highway, latency remains mostly the same, but with potentially greater throughput and IOPS results.

Make sure your network is solid. Ensure that the network path between testing clients and your NAS is reliable with no packet loss, jitter, or retransmissions. Network interruptions or errors impact TCP performance and reduce bandwidth. Using lossy mediums like Wi-Fi to test is not recommended.

In the TrueNAS performance labs, we run these tests across a range of platforms and media. Our goals are to confidently measure and predict the performance of Enterprise systems, as well as ensuring optimizations across the hardware and software stack of TrueNAS. We can also experiment with tuning options for specific workloads to offer best practices for our customers and community.

Electric Eel delivers Real Performance Improvements

Electric Eel benefits from improvements in OpenZFS, Linux, Samba, and of course optimizations in TrueNAS itself. Systems with an existing hardware bottleneck may not see obvious performance changes, but larger systems need software that scales its performance with hardware such as increasing CPU core and drive counts.

TrueNAS 24.10 builds on the 24.04 base and increases performance for basic storage services. Typically, we have measured up to a 70% IOPS improvement for all 3 major storage protocols (iSCSI, SMB, and NFS) when compared to TrueNAS 13.0. The improvement was measured on an identical hardware configuration, implying that the previous level of performance can be achieved with 30% fewer drives and processor cores for a budget-constrained use case.

“iSCSI Mixed Workload with VDIv2 Benchmark”

These performance gains are the result of tuning at each level of the software stack. The Linux OS has improved management of threads and interrupts, the iSCSI stack has lower latency and better parallelism, and code paths in OpenZFS 2.3 have made their own improvements to parallelism and latency. In the spirit of open source, the TrueNAS Engineering team helped contribute to the iSCSI and OpenZFS endeavours, ensuring that community members of both upstream projects can benefit.

Additionally, we also observed more than 50% performance improvements from changing media to NVMe SSDs vs SAS SSDs. Platforms like the all-NVMe F-Series can deliver 150% more performance than the previous generation of SAS-based storage.

Other highlights of the Electric Eel testing include:

Exceeding 20GB/s read performance on the F100 for all three storage protocols. The storage protocols all behave similarly over TCP. Write performance is about half as much due to the need to both write to the SLOG device and the pool for data integrity.

Exceeding 250K IOPS for 32KB block sizes on the F100. 32KB is a typical block size for virtualization workloads or more modern databases. This performance was observed over all three primary storage protocols.

Exceeding 2.5GB/s on a single client for each storage protocol (SMB, NFS, iSCSI) for read, write, and mixed R/W workloads. The F-Series is the lowest latency and offers the greatest throughput, but other platforms are typically above 2GB/s.

Each platform met its performance target across all three primary storage protocols, which is a testament not only to OpenZFS’s tremendous scalability, but the refinement of their implementation within TrueNAS to extract maximum performance.

Future Performance Improvements

Electric Eel includes an experimental version of OpenZFS Fast Dedup. After confirming stability and performance, we plan to introduce new TrueNAS product configurations for optimal use of this feature. The goal of this testing is to allow Fast Dedup to have a relatively low impact on performance if the system is well configured.

The upcoming OpenZFS 2.3 release (planned for availability with TrueNAS 25.04 “Fangtooth”) also includes Direct IO for NVMe, which enables even higher maximum bandwidths when using high-performance storage devices with workloads that don’t benefit as strongly from caching. Tests for this feature are still pending completion, so stay tuned for future updates and information on the upcoming TrueNAS 25.04 as we move forward with development.

The TrueNAS Apps ecosystem has moved to a Docker back end, which has significantly reduced base CPU load and memory overhead. This reduced overhead has enabled better performance for systems running Apps like Minio and Syncthing. While we don’t have quantified measurements in terms of bandwidth and IOPS, our community users have reported an overall positive perceived impact.

Evolution of TrueNAS

Given the quality, security, performance, and App improvements, we recommend that new TrueNAS users start their journey with “Electric Eel” to benefit from the latest changes. We will begin shipping TrueNAS 24.10 as the default software installed on our TrueNAS products in Q1 2025.

With the explosive popularity of Electric Eel, already more popular than Dragonfish and CORE 13.0, nearly all new deployments should deploy TrueNAS 24.10. Current TrueNAS CORE users can elect to remain on CORE or upgrade to Electric Eel. Performance has now exceeded 13.0 and the software is expected to mature further in 2025.

Join the Growing SCALE Community

With the release of TrueNAS SCALE 24.10, there’s never been a better time to join the growing TrueNAS community. Download the SCALE 24.10 installer or upgrade from within the TrueNAS web UI and experience True Data Freedom. Then, ensure you’ve signed up for the newly relaunched TrueNAS Community Forums to share your experience. The TrueNAS Software Status page advises which TrueNAS version is right for your systems.

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TrueNAS 24.10.1 “Electric Eel” is Charged Up

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 20:18:34 +0000

Following the highly successful initial release of “Electric Eel” the TrueNAS team is excited to announce the availability of the TrueNAS 24.10.1 update, downloadable from truenas.com/download-truenas-scale/ or within your existing TrueNAS installation. With over 60,000 adopters in a 6-week release period, 24.10 is the most popular TrueNAS release yet, and with good reason – it’s packed with several long-anticipated features like:

Docker Compose
RAIDZ Expansion
Updated WebUI with Global Search
Customizable Dashboard Widget
NVMe enablement for H-Series
Fast Dedup (experimental)

With its robust feature set, it’s no surprise that TrueNAS has seen record-setting adoption rate, with 24.10 already surpassing even the most popular versions of 13.0 and TrueNAS 24.04 to claim first-place on the charts. With the interest in Docker Compose powered Apps and reports of users leveraging the RAIDZ expansion, it’s the first time that an initial release version of TrueNAS has leapfrogged the previous one. Our previous release, TrueNAS 24.04 “Dragonfish” is still widely used both in Community and Enterprise installations, and is still the recommended version for our Mission-Critical users. For recommendations on when to update your system, visit the Software Status page..

Over 160 Improvements in the First Update

TrueNAS 24.10.1 adds polish and maturity to the “Electric Eel” release, with over 160 bug fixes and improvements included in the update. We expect this version to be just as popular as the initial release with our Community users, and anticipate some of our Enterprise customers who want to leverage the Docker features to add to the growing numbers. The TrueNAS team has already begun work on preparing the next update 24.10.2 – planned for release in February of 2025. The next major version of TrueNAS, codenamed “Fangtooth”, is scheduled to be available for BETA testers in February 2025. This version will include Incus support for LXC containers, further improve flexibility around IP addressing for Apps, and several other functionality and performance boosts. Additional details will be made available prior to the BETA version.

TrueNAS H-Series Gains NVMe Support

Our versatile TrueNAS H-Series gained even more flexibility with the release of 24.10, unlocking NVMe storage options on all existing units in the field. The H-Series is the perfect vehicle for delivering the power of TrueNAS in a compact (2U), power-efficient package, and with tri-mode SAS/NVMe storage options on all twelve bays, up to 360 TB of NVMe storage is available for all-flash solutions. When paired with the 4U 102-bay ES102 expansion shelf, the TrueNAS H-Series also supports up to 2.5PB of HDD capacity in a compact 6U total package, letting you leverage both performance and capacity in a single solution. With connection options available in 10/25/40/100 GbE, and up to 2 GB/s of storage bandwidth available from the TrueNAS H10 or up to 4 GB/s from the H20, the H-Series delivers incredible value and high availability at an attractive cost of ownership.

TrueNAS F-Series Grows NVMe Capacity

For our customers seeking maximum performance, the all-NVMe TrueNAS F-Series can now accelerate even more of your data with up to 5 PB capacity available, and 10 PB capacity expected in the near future. Both the TrueNAS F60 and F100 can be expanded with the ES24N, an NVMe-powered expansion shelf with the same robust enclosure management support of a traditional SAS expansion. Talk to a TrueNAS sales rep if you need more information.

Enhanced Performance with the latest OpenZFS Developments

All of the new features in 24.10 benefit from the latest development work in the OpenZFS filesystem and Linux protocol stack. With the latest TrueNAS 24.10.1 release, the performance team has observed up to 45% improvements in the most demanding workloads, including virtualization access over iSCSI. These performance improvements bring TrueNAS 24.10 ahead of not only prior Linux-powered TrueNAS releases, but also the BSD-powered TrueNAS 13.0. The new Fast Dedup capability remains tagged as “Experimental” in 24.10.1 while we continue testing in our Performance lab. We expect full production availability in Q1 2025. In a well-engineered system, we expect deduplication to be performed while maintaining the majority of system performance. If you’re interested in learning more about Fast Dedup or want to be notified of availability as soon as possible, talk to a TrueNAS sales representative today and let us know you’re interested.

Ready When You Are

This updated version, TrueNAS 24.10.1, has been released and is ready to download or update from the Web UI. Monitor the Software Status page to see when your use case aligns with the updated version. When you’re ready, join the tens of thousands of users already powering up with Electric Eel. Don’t forget to stop by the TrueNAS Forums to share your knowledge and experience. Join today and help others unlock the power of True Data Freedom with TrueNAS.

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TrueNAS 24.10 “Electric Eel” Powers Up Your Storage

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 19:33:49 +0000

After a tremendously successful and widely deployed BETA and RC, we’re pleased to announce that TrueNAS 24.10 “Electric Eel” has reached its official RELEASE version today, and is downloadable now from truenas.com/download-truenas-scale/ or by selecting to upgrade from within your existing SCALE installation.

Electric Eel succeeds Dragonfish (24.04.2.3), which is widely adopted in both Community and Enterprise installations. Dragonfish has become the most deployed version of TrueNAS, surpassing 13.0. TrueNAS 24.04 is also recommended for Mission-Critical deployments with significantly improved security and faster failover capabilities.

With over 9000 testers in our pre-release period, it’s no secret that Electric Eel is our most-anticipated release yet, and with good reason – it’s packed with several long-anticipated features like Docker Compose, both on the surface and under the hood, so let’s dig right in.

RAIDZ Expansion Is Here

One of the sticking points that we’ve heard from our community for years was the limitation that OpenZFS wasn’t able to expand its parity-based RAIDZ layouts by a single drive at a time.

After several years of intense development, testing, and debugging, we’re proud to announce that you can now pair the legendary resilience of OpenZFS with the easy expansion of conventional RAID solutions – drive-at-a-time expand is here.

Systems can be expanded online, one drive at a time, with no interruption in service – regardless of whether you’re using single, double, or triple-parity protection.

Traditional expansion using full vdevs is still available as before, and is the preferred method, but the new single-drive expansion offers new flexibility for smaller systems that may not have as many available drive bays.

Docker Touches Down with Improved Apps Handling

Since the initial launch of TrueNAS SCALE, Apps have played a major role in its adoption and flexibility.

Being able to run applications directly on the same system as their storage allows for both small “micro-service” style apps to leverage available power on a server, and for I/O-intensive applications to cut out network latency entirely from their workflow.

TrueNAS 24.10 migrates the previous Kubernetes-based Application back-end to the simpler Docker Compose solution, while seamlessly migrating and preserving the data of existing App installations.

If we haven’t built your preferred application out in our easy-to-install App catalog yet, or you’d like to customize it for your own specific needs, TrueNAS 24.10 also has full support for custom YAML config files (with the exception of individual IP addresses per application – coming in a post-release update) allowing you to import any of the hundreds of thousands of public Docker applications.

Want still more customization? Install the Dockge or Portainer runtimes on top of TrueNAS, directly from our App catalog – and tweak to your heart’s content.

For those who still want to leverage Kubernetes applications, a Kubernetes runtime can still be installed into a containerized or virtualized solution directly on TrueNAS; however, the primary method of App development and delivery will be through Docker and Docker Compose.

Fast Dedup Breaks Cover

Over a year ago, the TrueNAS development team and Klara Systems, along with members of the OpenZFS community, embarked on a journey to improve the data-reduction capabilities of OpenZFS through the Fast Deduplication project.

Several use cases can benefit from deduplication, including virtualization and office file storage where files may be copied to multiple locations by end-users; however, with the legacy OpenZFS deduplication algorithms, the overhead of maintaining the deduplication metadata tables in-memory at all times led to performance challenges and usability issues at scale.

Fast Dedup addresses these issues with multiple adjustments, including a more efficient metadata structure, a log-based write queue, and pruning of non-duplicate entries – all of which combine to shrink the memory footprint of deduplication by up to 90% in many scenarios.

The Fast Dedup feature is now ready for testing in TrueNAS 24.10, but is not recommended for serious production use at this time. We expect to provide testing results and any necessary code improvements in early 2025.

Global Search and Customizable Dashboard Widgets

Our new global UI search option helps you get to the settings you want faster than ever before. With just a few keystrokes, find the page you want, go there with a single click, and helpful highlights will appear to guide your eyes to the correct form, button, or area to explore next.

Can’t find what you want or need to dig deeper? Use the same menu to search the TrueNAS Docs site for more information. You can also use the new TrueNAS AI Search tool to ask more conversational questions and generate solutions to specific TrueNAS problems.

Usability and customization go hand-in-hand. While the TrueNAS team has designed a default dashboard with essential information, we know users have unique needs.

With our new customizable dashboard, you can place your most crucial information front and center, ready the moment you log in.

TrueNAS H-Series Gains NVMe Support

This spring, we launched the newest member of our TrueNAS Enterprise hardware family, the versatile TrueNAS H-Series, the perfect vehicle for delivering the power of TrueNAS in a compact, power-efficient package.

Now, the H-Series gets a jolt of extra horsepower from the release of TrueNAS 24.10 with the enabling of NVMe storage options on all twelve bays, bringing the maximum capacity of the H-Series to 360 TB using twelve 30 TB NVMe drives.

This new functionality is ready to be enabled in the field with an upgrade to Electric Eel; no controller replacement or component swaps needed. This tri-mode (SAS & NVMe) capability with High Availability is relatively unique in a 2U cost-effective platform.

New TrueNAS H-Series units configured with NVMe drives will ship with TrueNAS 24.10 already installed; existing TrueNAS Enterprise customers looking to take advantage of NVMe on H-Series platforms should reach out to our Support team to discuss an upgrade path that fits their needs.

Ready When You Are

The initial version, TrueNAS 24.10.0, is released and ready to download immediately.

Keep an eye on the Software Status page to see when your use case aligns with the new version, and when you’re ready, join the thousands of users already powering up with Electric Eel by downloading the installer or upgrading from within the TrueNAS UI; and don’t forget to stop by the TrueNAS Forums to share your knowledge and experience.

Join today and help others unlock the power of True Data Freedom with TrueNAS.

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TrueNAS Delivers the Industry’s First Integration of OpenZFS 2.3

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 20:44:01 +0000

TrueNAS uses OpenZFS as the foundation for its data management layer and is the deployment vehicle for the majority of OpenZFS storage systems used today. Here at TrueNAS, we love OpenZFS, and it continues to improve with the branching of OpenZFS 2.3 on October 4th, 2024.

The TrueNAS Engineering team has been significantly contributing to the codebase of OpenZFS 2.3, and Electric Eel (TrueNAS 24.10) includes several new and long-anticipated OpenZFS 2.3 features. The current development version of TrueNAS, “Fangtooth”, aligns with the full OpenZFS 2.3 release and will use this version of OpenZFS throughout its version lifecycle.

With every new version of both TrueNAS and OpenZFS, additional features, test cases, and bug fixes are included. The previous OpenZFS 2.2 brought dRAID and block cloning to TrueNAS Dragonfish (24.04) and CORE 13.3. TrueNAS 24.10 adds a number of new features, including two highly anticipated enhancements: Fast Dedup and RAIDZ expansion.

This blog highlights these new capabilities and their status within TrueNAS.

Fast Dedup Development is Complete

Deduplication is highly desirable for many workloads, including virtualization and several file storage use cases. Where there is naturally a high ratio of redundant data within a pool, deduplication effectively increases the usable capacity of the drives and the efficiency of the Adaptive Replacement Cache (ARC) and Level 2 ARC (L2ARC).

One of the primary challenges with traditional ZFS deduplication has been keeping the large deduplication metadata tables in memory at all times to avoid significant performance penalties. This existing functionality was not performant and led to usability issues during operation. As the size of the deduplication tables increased, the ZFS ARC would shrink, and performance would degrade as the pool filled, leading to a poor user experience and challenges when scaling to higher storage capacities.

With the inclusion of Fast Dedup, the metadata size can now be automatically constrained to fit in either primary RAM or dedicated flash devices to avoid hitting the performance penalty wall. In addition, the metadata structure for Fast Dedup has been completely re-engineered to enable efficient updates and the ability to prune non-duplicate blocks, effectively shrinking the memory footprint of the deduplication tables by 90% in many cases.

Combining these metadata improvements with properly configured storage will improve deduplication performance by an order of magnitude for larger systems. Performance is more stable as the pool is filled, leading to predictable behavior and enhanced space-efficiency.

This Fast Dedup project started in 2023 and was committed to the OpenZFS project as a “Valentine’s Day Gift” in 2024. Allan Jude and Klara Systems collaborated with Alexander Motin and the TrueNAS Engineering team along with members of the OpenZFS community, and development was completed in September of this year. We appreciate the hard work and dedication shown by all contributors and testers to help bring this project through to completion.

With development completed, Fast Dedup is now ready for testing but not yet suggested for serious production use. Within TrueNAS, it is marked as Experimental. We expect to provide test results along with any necessary code improvements in early 2025.

RAIDZ Expansion is Finally Available

A much-anticipated feature for smaller systems and home users of TrueNAS, RAIDZ expansion allows a small pool (e.g., a single RAIDZ vdev) to be gradually expanded with one drive at a time. Existing data is preserved with its original parity level and rewritten across all drives, while new data is written with the new parity configuration. This simplified administrative process gives smaller TrueNAS systems the flexibility to expand in single drive increments, rather than adding a full vdev of drives. The same expansion feature works regardless of the parity level used – RAIDZ1, Z2, or Z3 – but cannot migrate between protection levels.

The expansion process is done while the ZFS pool is online, similar to the resilvering process when a drive fails and is replaced. Once completed, the larger pool’s full performance is available. The new disk is used immediately, with additional capacity being reclaimed as existing data is rewritten.

This project took several years to complete and test, will be included in OpenZFS 2.3, and is available now in TrueNAS 24.10. TrueNAS sponsored this work to benefit smaller systems and is fully supported within TrueNAS Electric Eel.

OpenZFS Direct IO Improves NVMe Performance

Direct IO is one of the latest features included in OpenZFS 2.3 and was provided by Los Alamos Labs. It provides the option to bypass the ARC when storing data directly on NVMe drives. Removing memory copies can increase a system’s bandwidth by over 30%. The primary use case for Direct IO is storing checkpoint data in High-Performance Computing (HPC) clusters. This specific use case sees very little benefit from the read caching of the ZFS ARC (Adaptive Replacement Cache).

The Direct IO feature will only be available via Fangtooth. We are looking forward to testing for use cases that benefit our customers. Most workloads, however, will continue to benefit significantly from the default settings with ARC fully enabled.

What else is in TrueNAS 24.10?

In addition to the major features highlighted above, TrueNAS 24.10 includes an upgraded and improved webUI, enhancements to cloud backup integration, the replacement of Kubernetes with Docker for TrueNAS Apps, improved hardware support and drivers, and much more. For more details, see the Release Notes and join the discussion on the TrueNAS Forums, where some of the over 5,000 testers of 24.10 pre-release versions are sharing their feedback and tips.

TrueNAS 24.10 “Electric Eel” is planned for formal release near the end of October 2024. Want to learn more about TrueNAS solutions in your business? Contact us to speak to a product specialist, and find out how to harness the power of open source storage.

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Electric Eel is Now Feature-Complete

Wed, 02 Oct 2024 18:21:03 +0000

TrueNAS Electric Eel (SCALE 24.10) is now feature-complete with the availability of the first Release Candidate. TrueNAS SCALE 24.10-RC.1 is now available for download, or update directly from within your existing TrueNAS installation. As always, please carefully read the Release Notes before deploying or updating your system.

Electric Eel emerged into the BETA stage on August 29th. In the last four weeks, a record number of users have volunteered to test Electric Eel and explore the new Docker-powered App capabilities. The Electric Eel uptake rate is over 3X Dragonfish and over 10X the 13.3 BETA versions.

The BETA process has proven that in-place App migration from Kubernetes to Docker will work for the existing catalog applications, with user data preserved. As of RC1, we have reached 100% in the Porting and Migration progress, as tracked on our GitHub Apps page. All previous Apps have been ported for new installs under the Docker framework, and users with existing Kubernetes-based installations from Dragonfish can automatically migrate during the TrueNAS upgrade process. Shout-out to our amazing Apps engineering team, as well as the community members who helped us test the migration processes during BETA. With this important migration milestone reached, we can now turn our attention to adding new Apps and Features in the coming months.

In addition to achieving parity between the old and new App catalogs, Custom Apps deployed under Dragonfish and earlier as Docker images can now be migrated to the native Docker framework in Electric Eel. More advanced settings such as manually installed Docker provisioning in a systemd-nspawn container using the community Jailmaker will need to be manually migrated.

What’s new in Electric Eel RC.1

We’d like to extend our thanks to our community members who jumped into the BETA release with both feet, eagerly testing, reporting, and helping us correct bugs. Our first BETA version was a success, and today’s RC.1 has 200 additional fixes and improvements.

Building on our community feedback, the engineering team has made several major improvements and has now completed the Electric Eel feature set. New functionality and changes in 24.10-RC.1 include:

Login Alerts on root/admin user login or attempted login
App logs are better captured and displayed in the UI
Improved App Info cards (now with links)
App Utilization (CPU/Memory/Network/Disk IO) displayed on the Apps page
New Dashboard is completed with better mobile support. The legacy “Old Dashboard” has been removed.
Custom App YAML Editor allows for custom application configurations to be deployed. (If a GUI is desired, we suggest deploying the built-in Portainer App.)
Custom App Migration is enabled for users who deployed Docker images in Dragonfish and earlier using the “Custom App” UI option
NVIDIA drivers are now handled in a more modular manner, and can be installed dynamically post-installation

Install the new modular NVIDIA drivers from the Apps -> Settings Page in 24.10

One of the major anticipated features of the Docker framework in Electric Eel that users have expressed interest in is the YAML editor for advanced Apps configuration. In 24.10-RC.1, the Custom App YAML editor now allows more complex Apps to be created and deployed through editing of the configuration file. For RC1, the ability to allocate a unique IP address for an installed App is not yet present. This functionality is planned as an App infrastructure update after the RELEASE version of Electric Eel is completed.

With BETA completed and now RC.1 released, the total feature set of Electric Eel can be summarized. We’re looking forward to more feedback (and bug reports!) from our community.

You can look forward to more blog posts and emails highlighting these new features and upgrades in 24.10 – while many of them are already present in RC.1, some of these features won’t be ready until RELEASE, while others such as Fast Deduplication are labeled as Experimental and should be handled with care by early adopters and testers only.

With Electric Eel now feature-complete, the TrueNAS engineering team is focused on the development of the next release, “Fangtooth” in mid 2025. More information will be available at the end of 2024. Many thanks to those who submitted, and voted for, the Feature Requests that have already been adopted. If you have a specific feature or functionality that you feel would benefit TrueNAS, please feel free to submit it on our Community Forums, and vote for other suggested features to help us enhance 24.10 and beyond.

When Should I Migrate?

If you are deploying a new TrueNAS system, we recommend TrueNAS SCALE Dragonfish 24.04.2.2 for:

Added functionality over CORE
Vastly broader hardware support
Expanded App catalog (which will migrate to Electric Eel)
Sandboxes provide jail-like capabilities using systemd containers
Better performance on most workloads
Improved web UI makes managing TrueNAS easier than ever

Dragonfish users can easily update to Electric Eel RC.1 when desired, but at this point we only recommend it for early adopters. We recommend users review the TrueNAS Software Status page for advice.

If you’re ready to explore the Electric Eel Release Candidate, grab it from our downloads page now – and stay tuned for the upcoming full release!

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Enhanced Data Migration in Electric Eel

Thu, 26 Sep 2024 17:05:03 +0000

One of the cornerstones of TrueNAS is how your data can be managed and manipulated. We believe that your data belongs to you, free from proprietary systems and vendor lock-in – part of our promise to what we call True Data Freedom.

While vendor lock-in can be deliberate and calculated on the part of the vendor, feeling locked-in to a storage ecosystem can often have more to do with simply fearing the time, effort, and pain of migrating the data to another vendor’s product, only to risk being stranded again in yet another different vendor’s ecosystem. While most vendors often provide tools to migrate to another one of their own products, they never make it simple to move to another vendor’s product.

To combat this, TrueNAS 23.10 introduced the Enterprise File Sync feature with Syncthing to enhance data mobility and simplify data migrations both onto – and off of – TrueNAS systems. TrueNAS 24.04 refined that feature set, and now TrueNAS 24.10 is poised to enhance it even further with the inclusion of SMB Alternate Data Stream (ADS) import. With the inclusion of SMB ADS migration, it will be easier than ever to migrate from a third-party NAS solution onto TrueNAS, or if you so please, off of TrueNAS onto something else.

With TrueNAS, the only way we want to lock you in is by providing an experience so good you don’t want to leave. And, if we can’t provide that, we provide the tools to help you do so.

What are Alternate Data Streams?

Have you ever downloaded a program or document from the internet, and received a warning message from your operating system that the file or some component was blocked because it was “untrusted” or “unsafe”?

This so-called “Mark of the Web” comes from the presence of an SMB Alternate Data Stream, in this case a flag attached to the file called “Zone.Identifier” that indicates the original URL of the file.

The Mark of the Web is just one of many Alternate Data Streams; with other applications choosing to store application data or metadata – ranging from simple timestamps to answer “when was this file last opened?” or more complex organization features such as MacOS file colors and tagging.

While TrueNAS has supported Alternate Data Streams when serving SMB shares for some time, Electric Eel now allows for the migration of these crucial pieces of metadata when importing data from third-party NAS solutions.

Migrate Data Easily From Any Compatible Third-Party NAS Solution

Using the Syncthing Enterprise application, TrueNAS 24.10 will have the ability to connect to a remote SMBv3 server directly from your TrueNAS installation. No plugin or service installation will be required on the source NAS server. A common identity service (such as Active Directory) must be used in order to synchronize security information and descriptors. If the two systems cannot use the same identity service, permissions will need to be updated after the migration. More information can be found on the TrueNAS Docs site under Third-Party Data Migration, and TrueNAS Enterprise customers with a valid support agreement can contact iXsystems for direct assistance.

Using two copies of Syncthing Enterprise, TrueNAS can ensure that file consistency is maintained during the migration process, while keeping the source data available for use. Any changes made on the third-party system are automatically reflected on TrueNAS. No more manually running scripts or batch jobs, no more “pivot” systems in the middle of the data flow – simply enjoy the power and simplicity of TrueNAS and Syncthing working together.

Learn More

As we draw closer to the full release of TrueNAS 24.10, stay tuned for additional updates on new features and functionality that will arrive later this year. If you’re just starting out with your journey, you can download the current version of TrueNAS SCALE 24.04, and upgrade to 24.10 later this year.

For supported, Enterprise-ready solutions, check out our full line of TrueNAS systems, from the energy-efficient, highly-available H-series edge system to the performance flagship all-NVMe F-series. For help selecting and right-sizing the systems for your particular need, contact us directly to arrange a chat with one of our experts to learn more about how TrueNAS can help your organization.

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TrueNAS Security in 2024

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 20:38:45 +0000

Network security is the first line of defense against data breaches. TrueNAS, when configured within a secure network, offers enhanced protection against security risks.

This blog explores the security features in TrueNAS SCALE, including the new features in Electric Eel (24.10), as well as the TrueSecure™ package, designed to meet stringent commercial and government security standards.

TrueSecure^TM is an optional feature package for TrueNAS Enterprise that offers a robust set of enterprise-level software and hardware capabilities to meet high security and compliance standards.

The key features of TrueSecure^TM include:

- FIPS 140-validated cryptographic modules for SSL-based encryption of data in transit
- FIPS 140-validated HDD and SSD media for encryption of data at rest
- KMIP for centralized management of encryption keys
- Optional restricted administration roles for limited access
- Immutable ZFS Snapshots to further enhance ransomware protection
- General Purpose OS STIG support and NIST 800-209 compliance to meet US federal requirements

With the optional TrueSecure^TM feature package, TrueNAS complies with the requirements of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework to make Federal-level storage security as cost-effective as possible. With this foundation, TrueNAS can be used for federal government use cases from military bases to law enforcement and secure research organizations.

By default, TrueNAS includes a wide range of capabilities intended to simplify the delivery of secure storage infrastructure, including network encryption, access control, auditing, and logging functions.

Security notices (CVEs) and the Software Bill of Materials (SBoM) are available via the updated TrueNAS security site. For developers or those with an intimate knowledge of programming, the TrueNAS source code is available for review via GitHub. We believe that sunlight is one of the best disinfectants.

Secure for Enterprises

While some consumer storage vendors prioritize ease of use over security, exposing themselves to exploits that lead to virus or ransomware attacks, TrueNAS places security at the forefront. With built-in features that reduce attack vectors and restrict admin access, TrueNAS is designed to seamlessly integrate into secure network environments, providing enterprise-grade protection against evolving threats.

New threats come online with such frequency that new features and tools are always needed to stay ahead of the curve. In the last year, TrueNAS Enterprise has added a FIPS 140-2 validated crypto module and the option to enable Restricted Admins on Enterprise appliances. Let’s dive into Restricted Admins and then review the other key security features available in Electric Eel.

Restricted Admins

TrueNAS Enterprise 24.04 and later versions introduce three admin roles—System Admins, Storage Admins, and Monitor-Only Admins—to enhance security and limit access. This multi-level admin structure ensures that sensitive actions are restricted to authorized personnel, significantly reducing the risk of unauthorized data access or manipulation.

System Admins have the authority to set up the system, much like the original root user. They set up the system and its security posture, including connections to AD, LDAP, and KMIP and configuring any passwords required. However, once the system is set up, they then create storage admins to operate the system. They are needed to retire systems and delete pools or immutable snapshots. For security reasons, only a select few users should be made System Admins.

Storage Admins have the authority to create, configure, and delete shares and snapshots, and can also set immutability; however, they do not have the authority to destroy pools or immutable snapshots. There can be as many Storage Admins as needed.

Monitor-Only Admins have the authority to review configurations, performance, and check alerts, but can’t make changes to the system. They are often the storage users in the organization who can check that systems are supporting their applications. Where needed, they can request that a Storage Admin sign in to make approved changes.

Administrator roles are restricted regardless of the method of access, whether that be the WebUI, CLI, or API, with optional Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) used to secure interactive access.

TrueNAS Security Features

TrueNAS offers a comprehensive suite of security features, including encryption, access control, and logging, all designed to protect data integrity and compliance. These features ensure that TrueNAS remains a secure and reliable choice for organizations of any size.

While TrueNAS provides robust security, it’s essential to also follow general network security best practices, such as using firewalls, Intrusion Detection/Prevention Systems, and integrating with a directory service such as Active Directory or LDAP, to maximize your defense-in-depth..

With recent releases of TrueNAS SCALE, there have been many security advancements:

Rootless administration allows changing away from using the commonly known “root” username, and instead setting up your own unique administrator usernames and passwords. This is the precursor to Restricted Admins.

Snapshot retention tags can prevent snapshots from being deleted, remaining on the system permanently as a restore point. This provides additional protection against ransomware by allowing the administrator to make a decision on when it is safe and appropriate to remove the ZFS snapshot outside of normal retention policies. Immutability is managed via this mechanism and ensured through Restricted Admins.

2-Factor Authentication (2FA) verifies the identities of administrators using Google Authenticator or any Time-based One-Time Password (TOTP) compliant authentication application.

iX-Storj Globally Distributed Storage inherently protects data by encrypting it on the TrueNAS system before distributing the data via erasure coding over a global network. Thanks to the combination of zero-trust and zero-knowledge encryption in use, no storage provider or government entity has access to your private data stored on iX-Storj. Electric Eel adds a cloud backup capability that provides robust backup and restore capabilities with immutable cloud snapshots for both shares and LUNs.

Auditing and logging capabilities have been added to increase security of system administration and SMB file sharing. Electric Eel adds logging of all configuration changes, any sudo commands, and attempts to login via ssh or Web UI.

Authentication and Authorization capabilities are required in any organization. Active Directory and LDAP are used to provide identity authentication and user authorization services for a whole organization. TrueNAS integrates well into these services. With Electric Eel, FreeIPA is also supported for those looking for an Open Source identity management.

TrueSecure Features

Some security capabilities are specific to the TrueSecure feature package available with TrueNAS Enterprise. As a reminder, TrueSecure provides the following additional security capabilities:

Restricted Admins provide separate roles for system/security admins, storage admins and monitors. As described earlier, these role separations are critical for larger organizations.

FIPS 140-2 validated storage media provide highly secure Data-at-Rest capabilities. Both HDD and SSD (SAS or NVMe) drives can be provided on standard TrueNAS Enterprise systems. These drives are similar to self-encrypting drives (SED) but include tamper-proof mechanisms for additional security.

FIPS 140-2 validated software encryption module provides highly secure Data-in-Transit capabilities. The validated encryption algorithms are more secure than the current open source algorithms and validated for use in critical Federal use-cases. For example, these algorithms will protect administration and data replication tasks.

Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) provides the capability to centralize the management of SED and ZFS encryption passwords for larger organizations. This capability is also in TrueNAS Enterprise 13.0.

Security Technical Information Guides (STIGs) for use with TrueSecure to help lockdown TrueNAS Enterprise systems and ensure secure operation. A General Purpose OS STIG is available for guidance.

TrueNAS Enterprise is secure storage that can be configured for government-grade security. Together, all of these features can be used with Active Directory to comply with the requirements identified in NIST 800-209, the USA cyber security standard for storage systems. Similarly, these features address the security requirements identified for storage systems in ISO/IEC 27040.

With the upcoming Electric Eel release in fall 2024, new features and tools will continue to enhance security. If you’d like to learn about any TrueNAS Enterprise system or security needs, please feel free to contact us.

Discuss this article in the TrueNAS Forums!

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TrueNAS Electric Eel Emerges

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 00:46:37 +0000

TrueNAS Electric Eel (aka SCALE 24.10) delivers its own shocks by introducing Docker Compose capabilities within Apps. Industry-standard Docker Compose applications can now be easily deployed on TrueNAS to benefit from the stability, flexibility, and performance of ZFS. The Electric Eel Nightly images are now available for testing, and the BETA1 version is expected to be ready in the week of August 27th. Bug fixes, feature updates, and ongoing polishing will continue until the targeted release date in October 2024.

Electric Eel Automatically converts Existing Apps to Docker

We’ve previously revealed that the transition of the TrueNAS Apps system from Kubernetes to Docker will take place in Electric Eel. We’re working hard to ensure that the migration from Helm Charts & Kubernetes to Docker Compose will be as seamless as possible for our user base.

The straightforward configuration of Docker Compose has led it to become the industry-standard tool for application distribution. Combined with optional Docker management layers like Dockge and Portainer, it’s now even easier to configure complex applications and networks.

Early testing has shown that Docker Apps not only deploy up to three times faster but also have lower CPU overhead when idle, reducing overall system power consumption. With this change, your TrueNAS Apps experience will be both faster and more efficient.

Electric eels are a neotropical freshwater fish known for their ability to stun their prey by delivering shocks at up to 860 volts. Their electrical capabilities contributed to the invention in 1800 of the electric battery. Electric Eels are now helping us save the planet!

The update to Electric Eel automates the entire Docker Compose transition process for official TrueNAS charts and standard Docker Apps deployed through the “Custom App” button. Apps like NextCloud, Plex, Syncthing, and hundreds of others will reboot with the TrueNAS Electric Eel update using Docker, but their software, data, and networking configuration will be preserved.

Because these Apps features and migration process need significant testing and validation, users with production workloads should refrain from deploying Electric Eel until after BETA and community feedback.

In addition to expanding the available Apps list and improving performance, leveraging Docker Compose capability also provides the ability to create more complex App environments, such as multiple Apps, dependencies, and associated ingress, load-balancing, VPN, and gateway policies. Multiple Apps can be bundled into their own private network. Please review the documentation and give us feedback on what works or is missing.

Sandboxes will persist during the upgrade to Electric Eel, and the existing Jailmaker script can still be utilized. Custom sandboxes are a common approach for advanced users wishing to run a Kubernetes, Podman, or other stack for those who need specific capabilities beyond Docker, such as Kubernetes APIs and Helm charts.

Electric Eel delivers more features on top of Dragonfish

TrueNAS Dragonfish (aka SCALE 24.04) has delivered on its promises with both a rich set of new features and the achievement of Enterprise-grade quality with 24.04.2.

In addition to the Docker Compose transition, TrueNAS Electric Eel includes 400+ enhancements and bug fixes. The most obvious of the new features include the following.

Major Web UI Overhaul

The web UI has its largest overhaul since SCALE was first introduced in 2022. While the SCALE WebUI was significantly more dynamic and easier to use, the overhaul adds modern features for even greater ease-of-use.

Global Search capability significantly reduces the time to complete a task. Search for an item, and you’ll be taken to the right screen, highlighting the element to examine.

Table searching and filtering improves manageability for systems with hundreds of datasets, shares, LUNs or drives. Find problems or perform tasks in much less time.

Dashboard widgets have been extended and become size configurable. Create your own dashboards and share your recommendations.

Cloud Backup

Cloud backup to iX-Storj has been enabled. Cloud Backup extends TrueNAS functionality to backup your data to the Cloud by providing integrated snapshots (LUNs and shares), deduplication, and simple restore capabilities.

OpenZFS 2.3

OpenZFS 2.3 is still in development, and TrueNAS is tracking the latest approved updates, with several highly anticipated additions.

RAIDZ Expansion allows RAIDZ (Parity) vdevs to be expanded by one drive at a time, ideal for small footprint systems looking to expand incrementally. This feature also permits 2-drive RAIDZ1 systems, ideal for home users who want to start small on a budget.

The re-engineered Fast Dedup feature allows for deduplication to have much less performance overhead than the current dedup algorithm. Please note that Fast Dedup is not fully complete or tested and is still considered “experimental” at this time, and should not be used on production systems.

System Integration Improvements

TrueNAS is designed to simplify integration with other systems with its fully capable API. Electric Eel adds even more system integration capabilities.

Improved Data Migration: When using Syncthing to migrate from another SMB storage system, the Alternative Data Streams (ADS) are now also migrated. This can be used to migrate data from any SMB server, such as Windows, Synology, QNAP, Netapp, Pure, or Dell systems.

Cloud Management: A general initiative enables TrueNAS to be more easily installed and operated by cloud management services. This doesn’t reduce the ability to use the WebUI but makes it easier to install and operate tens and thousands of systems. Electric Eel has hooks for API-driven installation and a globally unique system ID.

FreeIPA support: While Microsoft Active Directory dominates the market, TrueNAS now enables FreeIPA, an open-source alternative to traditional AD environments.

Modular NVIDIA Drivers: The binary drivers for NVIDIA GPUs are now decoupled from the TrueNAS installation, allowing for these drivers to be updated on separate cycles from the main product.

Improved Logging: The TrueNAS built-in auditing capabilities will now log a wider variety of important changes made to the system. This includes audit logs of all changes made to any share settings or permissions and all commands run via sudo or with elevated administrative permissions. These are important for NIST 800-209 compliance.

TrueNAS Enterprise Improvements

Every TrueNAS version includes improvements that enable us to build faster and better-managed TrueNAS Enterprise appliances. Electric Eel includes a few of those features. Enterprise users should wait until Electric Eel is battle-tested before using the new software.

Tri-Mode Support: Some TrueNAS platforms are being enabled with tri-mode storage capabilities, allowing for combinations of HDDs, SAS SSDs, or NVMe SSDs in the same slots. This improves the cost, performance, and power of edge systems.

NVMe-oF Support: TrueNAS F-Series is stacked with ES24N (all-NVMe) expansion shelves for very large flash systems. This NVMe-oF architecture enables high-performing 5PB all-NVMe systems with similar management capabilities to SAS expansion shelves (JBODs).

Improved Enclosure Management: We’ve improved this popular tool for remotely managing the TrueNAS appliances. It allows the admin to visualize systems remotely and provide clear instructions for repair. The improvements include more accurate pictures of the enclosures and much faster rendering of the visual depiction, especially for very large systems.

When Should I Migrate?

If you are deploying a new TrueNAS system, we recommend TrueNAS SCALE 24.04.2 for added functionality, vastly broader hardware support, an expanded App catalog, better performance on most workloads, and an improved Web UI, all of which make managing TrueNAS easier than ever. TrueNAS 24.04 “Dragonfish” includes support for Sandboxes, which provide jail-like capabilities using systemd nspawn containers.

TrueNAS 13.0 users looking for the new capabilities outlined above can sidegrade to TrueNAS SCALE anytime, preserving data and essential NAS functionality such as SMB, NFS, iSCSI, and VMs – with the primary exception being Jails. TrueNAS 13.3 allows updates to FreeBSD jails.

As discussed here, TrueNAS 24.10 “Electric Eel” also provides a native Docker Compose environment that vastly improves running applications with lower overheads and opens the door to more complex network setups (similar to Jails). However, we do not recommend updating to Electric Eel until it is more tested and mature. For current software recommendations, always review the Software Status page for recommendations based on your profile.

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TrueNAS Launches “Powered by TrueNAS” Initiative with First Partner HexOS

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 18:12:39 +0000

TrueNAS, the world’s leading open-source storage software, today announced the launch of its “Powered by TrueNAS” initiative. This new initiative will see TrueNAS partner with industry leaders and visionaries to deliver tailored storage solutions for specific use cases and industries.

The first partner in this exciting venture is Eshtek, the pioneering company behind the upcoming HexOS home server, dedicated to making network-attached storage accessible and easy for the less IT-savvy. By leveraging the robust and reliable TrueNAS platform, HexOS will offer users a streamlined and automated experience for managing and protecting their personal data.

HexOS provides a beautifully simple UI, making it easy for users to set up and manage their own home servers. Jonathan Panozzo, the co-founder of Eshtek, commented, “Our mission is to empower individuals with complete control over their data and privacy without requiring IT admin skills. Partnering with TrueNAS enables us to provide an enterprise-grade foundation for our home server solution, ensuring top-notch performance, reliability and security.”

“We are thrilled to support HexOS in their mission,” said Brett Davis, EVP at TrueNAS. “Our collaboration combines TrueNAS’s enterprise-grade reliability with HexOS’s user-friendly interface, creating a powerful solution for both content creators and everyday users.”

The HexOS beta is planned for Q3 2024, and interested users can sign up on the HexOS website to enroll in their newsletter and stay updated on the latest developments.

For more information about HexOS, please visit www.hexos.com.
To learn more about the Powered by TrueNAS initiative, click here to contact us.

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TrueNAS SCALE Dragonfish Matures with Second Major Quality Update

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 20:21:02 +0000

TrueNAS SCALE 24.04 “Dragonfish” continues to mature with today’s release of the second major update. TrueNAS SCALE 24.04.2 is focused on security and stability, in preparation for widespread enterprise adoption.

In the last month, TrueNAS SCALE has reached over 130,000 users, slightly more than TrueNAS 13.0. Over 50,000 members of the TrueNAS Community have already upgraded to TrueNAS SCALE 24.04 and benefited from the new functionality introduced in the release version, and the performance tuning of the first major update. Thanks to their helpful and detailed feedback, we’re releasing 24.04.2 for our more mission-critical customers.

TrueNAS Enterprise users looking to upgrade their systems to 24.04.2 from an earlier version should contact iXsystems support to schedule a planned upgrade. TrueNAS 13.0 users will also have a choice of 13.3 later this year.

Added Features

TrueNAS SCALE 24.04.2 brings over 80 fixes and improvements, including:

Linux kernel 6.6.32
OpenZFS 2.2.4
Reduction of writes to boot devices (we still recommend high-quality boot SSDs)
Fix for CVE-2024-6387 (aka “regreSSHion”)
Faster iSCSI failover times and fixes to ALUA bug
Fixes for Intel ARC GPU transcoding support
Fixes for Apple Time Machine users
Improved dynamic ARC resizing under increased memory pressure

For a full list of the improvements in TrueNAS SCALE 24.04.2, please see the release notes on the TrueNAS Documentation Hub.

Enterprise Ready

With the release of 24.04.2, TrueNAS SCALE will be rolling out to our users with Mission Critical use cases after a few weeks of validation. Check the TrueNAS Software Status page for further details on the best time to upgrade your TrueNAS installation.

Intel ARC GPU Support

Included with TrueNAS SCALE 24.04.2 is hardware support for the line of Intel ARC graphics cards, bringing powerful video encoding and decoding capabilities with minimal additional power consumption.

Refinements and Quality-of-Life Improvements

In addition to improvements and updates to the pivotal services that make TrueNAS the safest place for your data, SCALE 24.04.2 improves the user interface by adding clearer tooltips, improves the readability and user-friendliness of informational and alert dialogs, and adds improved defaults for some popular command-line tools used by the more technical members of the community to fine-tune their TrueNAS installations.

“Electric Eel” is in Development

TrueNAS SCALE 24.04 “Dragonfish” is the predecessor to 24.10 “Electric Eel,” which is in active development for a Q4 release. As previously outlined in the TrueNAS Community Forums, Electric Eel will change the Apps engine from Kubernetes to Docker and Docker Compose. All of the official TrueNAS Catalog Apps, including Community apps, will be switched seamlessly. Look forward to the first 24.10-BETA release and additional details about Apps migration in August.

Get TrueNAS SCALE 24.04.2 Today

TrueNAS SCALE 24.04.2 is available today from the TrueNAS SCALE download page, and will be rolling out shortly as an optional update for users to download through the System Update menu in the TrueNAS web UI. Come join the over 50,000 Community members running the latest version of SCALE, and take your storage to the next level.

Download now

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