As of April 15, 2025, we were thrilled to announce the official release of TrueNAS 25.04 “Fangtooth”, and with it, a new era begins for the open storage community.

With this launch, we’ve made a small but important change:
TrueNAS SCALE is now officially known as TrueNAS Community Edition.

Why It Matters

This name change is relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, but also a major symbolic milestone that represents how far we’ve come and where we’re going next.

Over the past several years, we’ve maintained two open source branches:

• TrueNAS CORE, based on FreeBSD
• TrueNAS SCALE, built on Linux 

CORE was the original, but as SCALE began to surpass CORE in capability, performance, and quality, there was no reason to continue to maintain two software that served essentially the same purposes and user needs. Maintaining them in parallel also meant dividing our engineering resources and slowing the overall progress of the software. It also required duplicate documentation and support, forums discussions, and often confused new and existing users with questions like:

“What’s the difference between CORE and SCALE?”
“Which one is free?”
“Which version powers Enterprise?”
“Which one should I choose for my use case?”

With CORE being transitioned to its maintenance phase, and the maturation of SCALE, the 25.04 release presented an opportunity to also eliminate the confusion and redundancy by unifying, clarifying, and simplifying. One software. One name. No guesswork.

TrueNAS Community Edition (CE) represents the culmination of a long process of effort consolidation that will only benefit users going forward as we continue to evolve TrueNAS together.

But What Else Has Changed?

Nothing. Just the name. TrueNAS Community Edition is now the singular, free, open source storage platform for non-enterprise users. The unification of CORE and SCALE is complete. The ambiguity is eliminated. And, the TrueNAS Community now has one clear version to rally behind: a version named after them.

For those who have been paying close attention, we’d already been referring to it as “Community Edition” for over 6 months – the 25.04 release just makes it official. And, if you haven’t checked it out yet, the 25.04 release delivers more than ever .

What About TrueNAS Enterprise?

TrueNAS Enterprise continues to be our supported, licensed solution for critical data environments. It’s built on the same codebase as Community Edition, with additional feature enhancements (High Availability, Security, Performance, Enterprise integrations) and full enterprise level support services necessary for production deployments. It is typically provided as turnkey appliances that simplify deployment and are engineered specifically for TrueNAS performance and ongoing support.

Already Using SCALE or CORE?

Good news: You’re already on the path. Fangtooth (25.04) is the first official release with the new Community Edition naming. If you were using SCALE, you’re essentially already using it. If you’re still on CORE, you’ll find a clear evolutionary path forward, and release notes are available to help guide your transition, especially with VM migrations.

One Name. One Path. One Community.

This new name isn’t just easier to say, it’s easier to understand:

• TrueNAS Community Edition = Open source, free, community-supported
• TrueNAS Enterprise = Licensed, supported, and built for production 

Whether you call it TrueNAS Community Edition or TrueNAS CE, it’s clearer, cleaner, and a whole lot easier to explain to the world.

“TrueNAS Community Edition isn’t a reduction, it’s an evolution. Everything users valued in CORE or SCALE is here, and we’re bringing forward even more functionality, security, and innovation in each release cycle.”

— Kris Moore, SVP of Engineering

Join the Movement

The future of open storage is already here. It’s unified. It’s powerful. It’s TrueNAS Community Edition-built for the TrueNAS Community, by the TrueNAS Community, and supported through the TrueNAS Community. And, it grows stronger with every new user and software release.

A resounding “thank you” and “congratulations” to our global community of contributors, testers, users, and champions for making TrueNAS 25.04 a reality. This new name is meant to honor you all, and we can’t wait to see what we build together next.

Ready to jump in? Download TrueNAS Community Edition today!

TrueNAS “Fangtooth” is progressing toward its release with the launch of TrueNAS 25.04-RC.1, the first Release Candidate. This release brings features for both Community and Enterprise users, and offers an upgrade path for users currently on SCALE 24.10 and CORE 13.x.

With over 2,500 users providing feedback and a few bug reports, Fangtooth BETA was a success thanks to the efforts of early adopters. The new RC.1 version is ready for Community testers to further explore the new feature set and improved performance of its unified code base. As a Release Candidate, 25.04-RC.1 is considered fully stable and almost feature-complete.

Electric Eel keeps setting records

The incredibly popular TrueNAS 24.10 “Electric Eel” was the foundation for Fangtooth development. The latest version, TrueNAS 24.10.2, brings both integrated Docker support and significantly improved performance over TrueNAS 13.0. It is recommended for Enterprise users and is also in use by the majority of the TrueNAS Community. With over 125,000 systems in operation today, Electric Eel is by far the most popular TrueNAS version in history.

Electric Eel also enabled the very popular TrueNAS H-series to leverage both NVMe drives and SAS HDDs on the same backplane. It supports our newest hardware platform, the TrueNAS H30, which delivers 100 GbE performance as a compact, energy-efficient edge storage system. Fangtooth takes the power of these NVMe-powered systems a step further with support for Fast Deduplication, further increasing space efficiency with reduced performance overhead.

Fangtooth Unification is on Track

The transition to TrueNAS Community Edition allows the TrueNAS engineering team to develop new features faster, provide a common codebase, and unite the community under a single release that provides a superset of the functional capabilities of CORE and SCALE.

Fangtooth unifies CORE and SCALE and introduces a number of new features to TrueNAS to improve performance, security, and scalability for users, including:

• Upgraded Linux Kernel 6.12 with improved and extended hardware support
• OpenZFS 2.3 with Fast Deduplication for data footprint reduction on flash systems
• Massive RAID-Z expansion acceleration (by 5X)
• Experimental LXC containers (like Jails) & QEMU/KVM Virtualization via Incus “instances”
• Support for Secure Boot for Windows 11 VMs
• Ongoing delivery of TrueNAS Versioned API for third-party application integration
• Configurable IP address for newly added Apps in the catalog

NOTE: Existing Apps users on TrueNAS 24.04 or earlier should migrate to TrueNAS 24.10 in order to take advantage of the automated Apps migration process from the legacy Kubernetes system. Once these legacy Apps receive feature updates to allow for per-App IP addressing, they will no longer be compatible with the automatic migration process, and will require manual intervention.

TrueNAS Fangtooth RC.1 includes approximately 250 bug fixes and enhancements. For further details, see the Fangtooth introduction blog, the OpenZFS 2.3 feature highlights, and TrueNAS release notes on our Docs website.

NOTE: TrueCommand 3.0 users should refrain from upgrading to Fangtooth RC.1 at this time, as these versions are not yet compatible. An upcoming release of TrueCommand 3.1, arriving next week, will add the ability to manage Fangtooth systems while retaining backward compatibility with previous TrueNAS versions.

Enterprise-Specific Extensions

TrueNAS 25.04 also receives major new functionality for TrueNAS Enterprise appliances. This includes improved security and performance features designed for more business focused Enterprise workloads:

• Improved Security (GPOS STIG) with additional logging and auditing
• iSCSI Extensions for RDMA (iSER) and NFS over RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) improves latency and IOPS
• iSCSI Block Cloning for faster VMware clusters and virtualization workloads
• Veeam Fast Clone for SMB backup acceleration
• Fibre Channel support for SAN transitions and extended compatibility
• Optional NFS access to hidden snapshot directories

These enhancements and more will become available as an update for current Enterprise customers in late Q2. For more information about these features and other Enterprise benefits, including up to 24×7 support, connect with a TrueNAS product specialist to discuss available options.

When Should I Update?

If you are deploying a new TrueNAS system, we recommend TrueNAS 24.10.2 for added functionality, broad hardware support, an expanded App catalog, better performance, and an improved Web UI, all of which make managing TrueNAS easier.

TrueNAS 25.04-RC.1 is recommended for mainstream Community testing. Experienced users are welcome to try it out and provide feedback on the new features, improved performance, and user experience, to help us shape the final Release version.

Current TrueNAS 13.x users looking for the new capabilities outlined above can upgrade to TrueNAS 24.10.2 anytime, preserving data and essential NAS functionality such as SMB, NFS, iSCSI, and VMs. TrueNAS 25.04 adds LXC, the Linux equivalent of jails.

Following today’s release of TrueNAS 25.04-RC.1, a Release version will follow in April 2025. By July 2025, Fangtooth is expected to be recommended to Enterprise users and available by default on our TrueNAS Enterprise hardware.

For current software recommendations, always review the Software Status page for recommendations based on your profile.

Join the TrueNAS Community

Whether you’re looking to deploy TrueNAS 24.10 or help shape the future of TrueNAS, now is the perfect time to engage with our growing community. Download your copy of TrueNAS Community Edition today and join thousands of users already benefiting from True Data Freedom. Visit the TrueNAS Community Forums or connect with us on social media to share your experiences and insights.

TrueNAS “Fangtooth” takes its first big step into the limelight with today’s release of TrueNAS 25.04-BETA. With new features for both Community and Enterprise users, TrueNAS 25.04 will offer an upgrade to SCALE 24.10 and CORE 13.x users alike – and the BETA release is ready for eager testers to explore the new feature set and improved performance of this unified code base.

The incredibly popular TrueNAS 24.10 release was used as the foundation for Fangtooth development. The latest release, TrueNAS 24.10.2, brings the integrated Docker support and significantly improved performance over TrueNAS 13.0 to a level where it is recommended for (and used by) the majority of the TrueNAS Community, with over 100,000 systems in operation today.

Performance, Security, and Scalability

Fangtooth unifies CORE and SCALE and introduces a number of new features to TrueNAS to improve performance, security, and scalability for users, including:

• Upgraded Linux Kernel 6.12 with improved and extended hardware support
• OpenZFS 2.3 with Fast Dedup for data reduction on flash systems
• Massive RAID-Z expansion acceleration (by 5X)
• iSCSI Block Cloning for faster VMware clusters and virtualization workloads
• New! Instances Support – LXC containers (similar to Jails) & Virtualization via Incus
• Experimental TrueNAS Versioned API for third-party application integration

For further details, see the Fangtooth introduction blog, the OpenZFS 2.3 feature highlights, and TrueNAS release notes on our Docs website.

Existing TrueCommand users should refrain from upgrading to the Fangtooth BETA at this time, as the current release of TrueCommand 3.0.2 does not yet support this. The upcoming TrueCommand 3.1 will add the ability to manage 25.04 systems, in addition to retaining backwards compatibility with other versions.

Enterprise-Specific Extensions

TrueNAS Enterprise appliances running 25.04 will also receive improved security and performance features designed for more intense Enterprise workloads:

• Improved Security (GPOS STIG) with additional logging and auditing
• iSCSI Extensions for RDMA (iSER) and NFS over RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) improves latency and IOPS for many applications
• Veeam Fast Clone for SMB backup acceleration
• Fibre Channel support for SAN transitions and extended compatibility

For more information about these features and other Enterprise benefits, including up to 24×7 support, connect with a TrueNAS product specialist to discuss available options.

More Flexible Virtualization Options

In addition to the robust Apps catalog powered by Docker Compose, the BETA release of Fangtooth leverages the Incus manager to offer both lightweight Linux containers and powerful KVM virtualization in the same management interface.

Containers, like the Jails functionality offered in TrueNAS CORE, offer lightweight, efficient virtualization by sharing the host OS kernel, providing faster startup times and reduced resource usage compared to full virtual machines. When stronger isolation, kernel independence, or a different guest operating system entirely is desired, a VM can be deployed and configured. This functionality is still under significant development in 25.04-BETA, and is suggested for early adopters who are comfortable with this emerging feature.

Fangtooth Unification Goals

The transition to TrueNAS Community Edition will allow the TrueNAS engineering team to undertake faster development of new features, provide a common codebase, and unite the community under a single release that provides a superset of the functional capabilities of CORE and SCALE.

Over 100,000 TrueNAS users have already taken the first step of migrating to the unified environment, with the transition of the Apps ecosystem from Kubernetes in 24.04 to the more stable and user-friendly Docker Compose in 24.10 laying the foundation and making TrueNAS 24.10 the most popular version of TrueNAS today. Today’s launch of TrueNAS 25.04-BETA marks the next step in the process.

When Should I Update?

If you are deploying a new TrueNAS system, we recommend TrueNAS 24.10.2 for added functionality, broad hardware support, an expanded App catalog, better performance, and an improved Web UI, all of which make managing TrueNAS easier.

Current TrueNAS 13.x users looking for the new capabilities outlined above can upgrade to TrueNAS 24.10.2 anytime, preserving data and essential NAS functionality such as SMB, NFS, iSCSI, and VMs.

Following today’s release of TrueNAS 25.04-BETA, a Release Candidate will follow in March, with the official release of 25.04 in April 2025. By July 2025, Fangtooth will be recommended to Enterprise users and available by default on our TrueNAS Enterprise hardware.

For current software recommendations, always review the Software Status page for recommendations based on your profile.

Join the TrueNAS Community

Whether you’re looking to deploy TrueNAS 24.10 or help shape the future of TrueNAS 25.04, now is the perfect time to engage with our growing community. Download your copy of TrueNAS Community Edition today and join thousands of users already benefiting from True Data Freedom. Visit the TrueNAS Community Forums or connect with us on social media to share your experiences and insights.

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.

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

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!