FreeNAS is now known as TrueNAS CORE

TrueNAS CORE inherited the same free and Open Source attributes of FreeNAS and has continued to build on that foundation with new features.  Below is a high-level overview of the capabilities of TrueNAS CORE.

Looking beyond features, both the quality and functionality of TrueNAS CORE 12.0-U5 are also now substantially superior to FreeNAS 11.3-U5 (which was the last official FreeNAS release). FreeNAS has been transitioned to “legacy” status and is no longer recommended for any new deployments.

Given this progress, we will be officially consolidating the freenas.org website into truenas.com to give users and contributors a single hub of information for all things TrueNAS.  With this, we are also recommending that all users deploy TrueNAS for both security and support going forward.

Why Are FreeNAS and TrueNAS so Popular?

TrueNAS and FreeNAS share a common architecture and more than 90% of the same software. They provide the software for an extremely flexible unified storage system (i.e. – NAS, SAN, and/or object) on a proven and robust ZettaByte File System (ZFS) base. For more detail, please refer to the TrueNAS documentation. 

Key capabilities of both FreeNAS and TrueNAS include: 

File services: NFSv3/v4 and Windows SMB provide the foundation.  Windows compatibility (Active Directory, Shadow copies) is excellent, and ZFS enhances it with superior performance and features.

Block services: iSCSI can be used for virtualization and backup, or other applications that need block storage.  VMware compatibility (VAAI, snapshots, clones) simplifies deployments. Extreme reliability (RAID-Z1/Z2/Z3, scrubbing, and replication) ensures that block storage data is very safe. Fiber Channel is also available with TrueNAS Enterprise.

Object storage services: S3 API source and target are required for many modern applications.  Emulate a local S3 service using the compatible Minio API or sync data with AWS S3 and other cloud services for long-term archive. 

Application services: jails, plugins, and VMs simplify application deployments and reduce the physical footprints needed. Plex, NextCloud, Asigra, and many other applications can be integrated into the NAS and receive all the benefits of ZFS.

ZFS data management (snapshots, clones, scrubbing, RAID-Z protection, replication) underlies all of these services and allows data to be managed and protected simply and consistently. When hardware failures or operator errors happen, ZFS provides the tools to recover your data and continue operating.  

System management coordinates all of the above services with powerful middleware that presents the users with an easy-to-use WebUI and a fully functional REST API for automation.  TrueCommand was added to enhance management capabilities and enable the administration of many FreeNAS and TrueNAS systems from a single pane of glass.

Hardware flexibility gives the user the ability to install TrueNAS CORE on the consumer, professional, and enterprise-grade hardware of their choosing. Virtually any x86 storage server can be built with industry-standard NICs, HBAs, and drives of any type. The community helps with validating an enormous range of components, including retired enterprise gear.

What Are the Differences Between FreeNAS and TrueNAS?

With FreeNAS receiving its final release with 11.3-U5, all new feature development is happening on TrueNAS. Beyond that (and apart from the obvious rebranding), TrueNAS also adds many technical enhancements that improve the user experience, both now and going forward.  The current list of TrueNAS enhancements includes:

Unified TrueNAS CORE and Enterprise:  TrueNAS Enterprise 11.3 and FreeNAS 11.3 were separate software images, each with their own QA process and unique bugs.  With TrueNAS 12.0, the model is now a unified image with a license key to enable iXsystems Enterprise platform features like Fibre Channel, High Availability, KMIP, and Enclosure Management.  The result has been a more efficient development cycle with fewer bugs and faster problem resolution within TrueNAS. TrueNAS CORE users now benefit from the same QA and testing that TrueNAS Enterprise users get.

Enhanced Software Quality:  In addition to faster bug resolution, TrueNAS 12.0 has improved testing and quality. FreeBSD 12.1, SAMBA 4.12, OpenZFS 2.0, and Python 3.9 are all much better than their predecessors. The common software has allowed an increase in the QA test coverage, resulting in fewer critical issues and a generally more reliable experience. TrueNAS 12.0-U5.1 has been the best release so far, and we expect that to continue improving with each future TrueNAS release.

Improved OpenZFS Performance: TrueNAS moved from the FreeBSD version of OpenZFS to the multi-OS version of OpenZFS 2.0. This included feature parity with the Linux version and also included a wide range of performance enhancements and features.  Fusion Pools, using special VDEVs, persistent L2ARC, and other general performance improvements have been the result of this transition. With this update, we’ve often measured 30% performance improvements on larger TrueNAS systems like the TrueNAS M60. TrueNAS has also made further virtualization improvements with version 12.0.

Better Security: The removal of security threats is a never-ending challenge.  Many vulnerabilities have been removed by FreeBSD 12.1 and SAMBA 4.12. In addition, TrueNAS has been improved both in terms of its software quality, features, and documentation of issues. Security.truenas.com maintains the list of security vulnerabilities. TrueNAS 12.0 added ZFS dataset-level encryption, KMIP (Enterprise), and OpenVPN capabilities as well.  Any vulnerabilities found will be patched in TrueNAS.

Modern Hardware: The update to FreeBSD 12.1 and the subsequent fixes improve support for modern hardware such as AMD’s high core-count processors and NVMe SSDs.  Performance and system reliability have been improved with TrueNAS.

Cloud Management: The latest TrueCommand 2.0 uses a vastly improved TrueNAS stats collection system that offers per-second statistics and better CPU/network efficiency.  TrueCommand users should update to TrueNAS 12.0-U4 or later to gain access to these improvements. TrueCommand Cloud enables multi-site management via SaaS.

Path to Scale-Out: TrueNAS 12.0 and OpenZFS 2.0 are the foundations for the Linux-based TrueNAS SCALE which provides Open Source Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) and scale-out storage. There is a path for migrating TrueNAS CORE and Enterprise systems to TrueNAS SCALE for users that want these features. FreeNAS users will first need to migrate to TrueNAS CORE before making the jump to SCALE.

FreeNAS to TrueNAS 12.0 Upgrades are Easy

The short-term and long-term benefits of TrueNAS are clear. We recommend FreeNAS users plan and execute their updates. The current version is TrueNAS 12.0-U5.1 which is a minor update to TrueNAS 12.0-U5 and includes all the same benefits.

TrueNAS 12.0-U5 is compatible with all of the iXsystems platforms – from the FreeNAS and  TrueNAS Minis, to the power-efficient X-Series, all the way up to the flagship High Availability (HA) M-Series. The “FreeNAS Certified” Server line was also replaced by the new R-Series product line that can run CORE, Enterprise, and SCALE editions of TrueNAS.  

For those with FreeNAS installed on your system, we recommend upgrading to FreeNAS 11.3-U5 first and then upgrading to TrueNAS 12.0-U5 with a single click to retain roll-back options.  While it is an easy web update, we do recommend updating your system’s zpool feature flags only after you are finished validating your performance and functionality.  

For those with TrueNAS 11.x HA systems and support contracts, we recommend contacting iXsystems support to schedule an upgrade. We will verify your systems’ health and configuration, and support the upgrade process as part of the “white glove” service that comes with any support contract.

TrueNAS CORE is the Best-Ever Free NAS

In short, if you’ve been waiting to upgrade from FreeNAS to TrueNAS, now is the time.  You lose nothing (heck, we even have a FreeNAS-themed UI skin for us nostalgists), and you’ll gain all the new improvements we’ve made and plan to release into the future, while also keeping your system security up to date. 

TrueNAS 12.0-U5 still is and will continue to be the best ever “free NAS” system available. If you have any questions or comments, we’d love to hear them on the community forums, on the TrueNAS subreddit, or in response to this blog. 

If you need additional information on how TrueNAS can streamline, accelerate, and unify data management for your business, please contact us. 

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TrueNAS has long supported disaster recovery (DR) scenarios. This blog attempts to address the various types of supported DR scenarios and their related workflows.
Point-in-Time Recovery – ZFS Replication
Of the native ways to replicate data, ZFS replication is the most efficient and reliable method for asynchronously replicating data from one TrueNAS system to another. Replication is based on snapshots of datasets or zvols and synchronizes the snapshots of the first system to the second system. There are numerous advantages to using ZFS replication. One of those is that a snapshot is a point-in-time, read-only copy of the data. This ensures that the contents of the snapshot cannot be altered.

Replicate in a single direction for DR

Replicate bi-directionally for dual-site DR

ZFS replication is commonly used for disaster recovery. Should the first system or site go down, the remote system can be brought back by cloning the snapshot to a new dataset and restoring the share. This recovery does require some work on the side of the admin, but it’s incredibly quick and ensures that whatever was transferred is retained. Snapshots and replications can be scheduled to run every few minutes.

Another benefit of ZFS replication is the capability for the snapshots and referenced data to be stored on systems and pools of different specs or pool configuration. All-flash, high-performance pools can be backed up to lower performance pools with traditional drives and different RAID configurations. Smaller systems can also be backed up to larger central repositories. Companies such as FirstLink and others use this to help clone edge devices like the TrueNAS Mini systems to a central core TrueNAS in their data center. ZFS replication on TrueNAS ensures data protection regardless of system complexity, size, or location.
File-based Recovery – Rsync
Rsync is a file-level migration that’s the same as rsync in the Linux/FreeBSD command line. It’s handy for semi-live sync of data if you need just the same files between sites each shared over a local share.

Rsync is useful for file transfer, but it’s not recommended if files are being modified. For example, if an rsync task starts while 100 GB is being written and the data is changed before the file is written, it will cause issues with versioning and data integrity. Rsync should never be used to copy active VM data stores, block-level data (iSCSI or fibre channel shares), or other data that could constantly be in use. Rsync is slower than ZFS replication, particularly for large datasets, so it’s recommended for convenience over data integrity. It can be used between TrueNAS and many other systems.
More information about setting rsync tasks in TrueNAS is located here.
File Recovery To or From the Cloud – Cloud Sync
TrueNAS can copy, pull, and sync data to a variety of cloud-based data storage systems, including Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google GCP, Google Drive, Backblaze B2, Dropbox, Box, and more. By integrating rclone sync for file transfers, this feature can copy files on TrueNAS into a cloud repository of a user’s choosing.

For larger datasets, TrueNAS systems are more cost-effective long-term than cloud offerings, including Amazon AWS. For this reason, using TrueNAS as a backup target for protecting cloud-based data, e.g., from AWS, Dropbox, or Google Drive, is ideal because data stored in TrueNAS will get scrubbed, checked, and retained with an unlimited number of snapshots available.

Automatic Site-to-Site failover – DNS, Load-Balancing, Proprietary Tools
Automatic failover between sites is beyond the scope of TrueNAS systems alone. TrueNAS is a storage system, and while it handles data replication well in a variety of ways, automatic failover to a remote site requires knowledge of the services themselves. For environments with web or video streaming services, DNS round-robin with failover might be feasible. Several web servers, like NGINX, also feature load-balancing services which could help mitigate service overload or downtime. TrueNAS systems provide a stable backend in this topology, with the option of also running ZFS replication for additional safety. Contact iXsystems if you need assistance with designing a storage system for your business.

TrueNAS is a storage platform with powerful ways to ensure data integrity and consistency between local and remote sites. ZFS replication is the fastest and best way to ensure the data transferred is intact. Rsync is useful for file sync but cannot be used for live data or block-level data that could change during transfer. Cloud sync supports user workloads that archive to or from mainstream cloud providers. Beyond these tools, TrueNAS works with other systems, such as Asigra Backup and iconik smart media management, to provide an ultra-scalable backend with robust performance and a strong emphasis on data protection. The tools that TrueNAS provides combined with the flexibility to work with nearly any IT environment make it a robust system for cross-site and DR workloads.

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What’s Old is New Again

Remember Coke Classic?
The tried-and-true CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording) technology, that provides the solid performance and reliability on which the WD Red line was built, is back and here to stay in all capacities from 1 to 14TB! It just has a new name now to make it easy to identify as “not SMR”: WD Red Plus. No more checking model numbers and product codes when purchasing. When you buy a WD Red Plus drive, it will be guaranteed CMR technology in all capacities and function harmoniously with your ZFS NAS.

What’s New is Now Old

And, what of the 2, 3, 4, and 6TB SMR drives that were slipped into the WD Red product line and caused problems with NAS systems? Like “New Coke”, the market has spoken: most prefer the original flavor.
These SMR drives are now going to inherit the “WD Red” brand. We would have preferred “WD Red-SMR” just to be as crystal clear to customers as possible, but this works. iXsystems and some other major NAS vendors have taken these off their qualified hard drive lists, so these should be avoided or used only in NAS systems with very light workloads (and long periods of inactivity), or where data isn’t important, especially if using ZFS.

Confused yet?

You’re not alone. This is a complex judo marketing move that WD is making. While there will be confusion in the short term, the resulting product line is more clearly differentiated and better for it. The WD Red Plus will be a solid drive family for the FreeNAS Minis and will span all sizes from 1TB to 14TB each, and there are no expected cost increases from today’s WD Red prices. The new WD Red (SMR) line will come in at a lower price.

Western Digital has maintained the same model numbers for each of the drives and then sorted the drives into their “new” product families.

What about the FreeNAS Minis?

Our Mini systems will be delivered only with the CMR-based WD Red Plus drives. However, some of those drives are currently labeled “WD Red”, but they are not SMR drives. This labeling should be fixed in a few months, but we may have to add a sticker or use a sharpie to add a “plus” to those existing WD RED CMR drives! Or, who knows, maybe these drives will become collectors’ items some day?? Kidding about the sharpie, by the way.

And, the “Red SMR” Drives? Will those ever be compatible?

Can TrueNAS CORE or FreeNAS run on the SMR drives, the “new” WD Red drives? At this stage, both iXsystems and Western Digital cannot recommend running ZFS on these drives. The incompatibility that has been found still exists and under some conditions could result in low performance or even data loss. Western Digital and iXsystems are still investigating whether this risk can be reduced or alleviated. In the meantime, if you have WD Red drives with SMR (again, only 2 through 6TB with “EFAX” in the Product Code) in your NAS and are concerned about your data, contact iXsystems Support if you purchased from us, or WD Support if you bought them elsewhere.

Some upside!

The good news is that the WD Red Plus product line will re-enable the Minis with 2TB and 6TB CMR drives. During this SMR investigation, the Minis have continued to ship with CMR drives in all capacities except 2TB and 6TB, since we had exhausted CMR stock and placed a stop shipment on the SMR drives. We expect to enable the full range of sizes from 2TB to 14TB CMR drives during Q3 2020. This will enable the Mini lineup to support raw capacities from 4TB to over 100TB.
If you need one or more smaller NAS systems for a project, you can get a preconfigured Mini system from Amazon or custom spec your own using the online Mini configurator. Our sales team and partners can also provide a proposal for a fleet of Minis and other large systems like the X-Series and M-Series. All of these systems can run TrueNAS 12.0 and be managed via TrueCommand and its single-pane-of-glass interface.

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Thank you for removing ‘Free’ from the name

Specifically, there were a number of comments from community members thanking us for removing “Free” from the name, because it removed a stigma held by their peers, colleagues, or bosses that a product with “Free” in the name couldn’t also be of high quality or fit for business use. “I can finally look my boss in the eye when he asks what storage we are using in the lab” is a paraphrase of one such comment. Of course, comments like this were a little tough to hear about a name we held so dearly for so long, but it was awesome feedback to receive because it reinforced one of the major reasons we decided to unify the brands as TrueNAS in the first place.
If you’re reading this, you likely already know that FreeNAS is far more than just a free NAS. You likely already know that it is powerful, enterprise-class software defined storage. Since many of us use it in homelabs, you know that it automatically gets lumped in with low-end NAS systems and you might take offense when it gets compared to Synology or QNAP systems instead of Netapp or EMC. You know these things already, but it’s clear that not everybody does…yet. And, if you think back, it probably took you a while to get there, and the name “FreeNAS” likely didn’t help the cause. And, if we’re totally honest with ourselves, the shark didn’t make things any easier.
We want all users, old and new, to have full confidence in deploying TrueNAS CORE. It’s important to us that you can look your boss in the eye when he asks what storage you’re using in the lab. And, when you prove how successful that’s been, we want you to have that same confidence when you recommend TrueNAS Enterprise once it’s time to replace those overpriced Netapp or EMC arrays. And, we want to make sure everything we do down to our logo helps you make that case.

We’ve Gone Full Corporate

We say that in jest, of course. iXsystems was founded on the principles of “being different”. We embraced open source long before it was ever cool or mainstream. We develop in the open. We try to be as transparent as we can in all we do. We built an enterprise-grade storage product and made it free when everyone else thought we were crazy, and now FreeNAS is the world’s most popular storage software. We have fought hard to keep this identity of being different from the rest of the industry.
Of course, behind that philosophy also exists a very serious company focused on building innovating, high-quality products, world class customer support, and outstanding customer experience. We understand that our desire to be different can’t ever get in the way of you getting your job done, and this extends to the impression our brand makes.

The Abstract Shark Fin?

So, we solicited the help of an outside design agency and started looking at other logomark designs entirely but ultimately came back to playing around with the shark fin: refining it, tweaking it, making it abstract. After all, we couldn’t lose that soul of the product entirely, right? So, during that part of the process, we ended up creating two sharks that were vertical mirror images of one another that once put together sort of formed a cool looking box (some said “shark tank” or “aquarium”). After initially chuckling at the similarity to the box references in the show “Silicon Valley”, we thought, “Ok, this does look pretty cool….box….storage, container…what if the box was open to represent the concept of “open storage”? That looks cool! What if we stacked the boxes for the TrueNAS Enterprise logo to represent the extra protection that comes with high-availability? And, what if we put four boxes side by side to represent TrueNAS SCALE? Wait…..what’s TrueNAS SCALE you ask? Oh, just a little thing we’re working on in the background 🙂 More to come on that soon!
Ok, ok, enough blabbing. Without further ado, we’re proud to unveil the monochrome version of the new TrueNAS CORE, TrueNAS Enterprise, and TrueNAS SCALE logos, we’ve lovingly dubbed “the shark tanks” or “shark boxes”.

Color is in the works, but we couldn’t wait any longer to show you since it’s going to start appearing in TrueNAS 12 nightlies as soon as this week!
We’re excited with what’s coming in TrueNAS 12, not least of which is this sharp new logo, that will hopefully send you marching into your boss’s office first thing tomorrow morning, look her dead in the eye and say, “we’re replacing all of our storage with TrueNAS.”
If you ever need our assistance in doing that, simply fill out a brief questionnaire or email us at info@iXsystems.com. We are standing by to help.

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In this tutorial, we’ll cover the basics of iSCSI, configuring iSCSI on FreeNAS (soon to be TrueNAS CORE), and setting up access from a Windows machine. A ZVOL, which is another type of dataset, is required to connect with iSCSI for block storage. One benefit of using iSCSI on TrueNAS is that Windows systems backed up with iSCSI get the ZFS rollback feature to quickly recover from CryptoLocker, ransomware, and data loss. This tutorial assumes that you have configured a ZFS Pool.

What is iSCSI?

iSCSI is a protocol standard that allows the consolidation of storage data. iSCSI is implemented in TrueNAS to act like a Storage Area Network (SAN) over an existing Ethernet network.

• Specifically, iSCSI exports disk devices or “targets” over an Ethernet network that iSCSI clients or “initiators” can attach to and mount.
• iSCSI can be used over an existing Ethernet network, although dedicated networks can be built for iSCSI traffic for higher performance.
• Interestingly, SAN environments built on Fibre Channel can be expanded using iSCSI. iSCSI was designed with Ethernet in mind, but it works just as well with fiber. So it can be a cost-effective alternative add-on for existing fiber setups.
• iSCSI also provides an advantage in an environment that uses Windows shell programs; these programs tend to filter “Network Location” but iSCSI mounts are not filtered.

Basic Information

Before configuring iSCSI on your TrueNAS system, you should be familiar with the following iSCSI terminology:

• Initiator is a client that has authorized access to the storage data on the TrueNAS system. The client requires initiator software in order to initiate the connection to the iSCSI share–TARGET. ** Note that not all connections are authorized.
• Target is a storage resource on the TrueNAS system that is shared with an initiator. Every target has a unique name known as an iSCSI Qualified Name (IQN).
• Extent is the storage unit to be shared. It can be in the form of a file or a device EXTENT, that is provided as an iSCSI target.
• CHAP, or Challenge-Handshake Authentication Protocol, is an authentication method that uses a shared secret and three-way authentication to determine if a system is authorized to access the storage device and to periodically confirm that the session has not been hijacked by another system. In iSCSI, the initiator (client) performs the CHAP authentication.
• Mutual CHAP is a superset of CHAP in that both ends of the communication authenticate to each other.

Creating a ZVOL

The first step to configure iSCSI is to create a ZVOL for our device extent. A ZVOL is a type of dataset available in our ZFS pool. The iSCSI Wizard also allows you to create a ZVOL or dataset, which we will talk about later.
Go to “Storage” → “Pools”, open the Pool options by clicking the three dots on the right of your pool, then “Add Zvol”.

• Enter a name and size for the ZVOL then click “SAVE“.

Configuring iSCSI

Now we will go ahead and configure iSCSI on a TrueNAS system.
On your TrueNAS machine, from the left side menu, select “Sharing” → Block Shares (iSCSI) → “Target Global Configuration”.

• Review the target global configuration parameters.
• You do not have to modify this, but remember that this is the base name that your targets will be associated with.

The iSCSI Wizard will help you easily create the block share with its step by step configuration. Let’s go ahead and click “Wizard”.
Give your iSCSI share a name.

• For “Type”, select this based on your dataset type. If you have configured a normal dataset from your pool, choose “File”.
• Otherwise, choose “Device” and you will be able to choose the ZVOL you created earlier, or create a ZVOL if you didn’t already. Click “Create New”, then browse to the path of your Pool.
• Set the device size limit. We recommend not using more than 80% of available capacity. * More information can be found in the documentation.
• Under “What are you using this for”, choose the entry that matches your use case. Since we’ll be connecting with Windows Server, we’ll choose “Modern OS”.

• Click “NEXT” to move into the Portal section. Since you don’t have a Portal created yet, the default option is “Create New”.
• If you want to enable security authentication, choose “CHAP” for “Discovery Auth Method” and fill out the Group ID, User, and Secret fields. The Secret must be between 12 and 16 characters.
• You can leave the IP as “0.0.0.0” which is the wildcard address of the interface.

• Click “NEXT” to move on to the Initiator section. You can leave the Initiators and Authorized Networks field blank, unless you want to limit access to specific initiator clients or IPs on your network.

• Click “NEXT” and review your Wizard settings, then “SUBMIT”. The wizard should automatically associate your Extent with your Target.

Enable iSCSI Service

Click “Services” from the left menu and make sure iSCSI service is “Running”. Check the “Start Automatically” box to start iSCSI after every reboot.

Access Data on iSCSI share from Windows

In order to access the data on the iSCSI share, clients will need to use iSCSI Initiator software. An iSCSI Initiator client is pre-installed in Windows 7 to 10 Pro, and Windows Server 2008, 2012, and 2019. Please note that Windows Professional Edition is typically required.

• Click the Start Menu and search for the “iSCSI Initiator”.
• Go to the “Configuration” tab and click “Change” to change the iSCSI initiator to the same name you created earlier, which was “iscsishare”.

• Go to the “Discovery Tab”, proceed to “Discover Portal”, and type in your FreeNAS or TrueNAS IP address. Leave the port at 3260.

• If you set up CHAP earlier, click “Advanced Settings”, and then check “Enable CHAP log on”, then enter your initiator name and the same target/secret you set earlier on TrueNAS; otherwise, move to the next step.
• Go back to “Targets” and click “Connect” on your iSCSI target, then click “OK”.

• Search for and open the “Disk Management” app in your Control Panel.
• A new window will ask you to format the drive. Your drive should currently be ”unallocated”. Complete the Wizard to format it and assign it a drive letter and name.

• Go to This PC or My Computer and your new iSCSI volume should show up under the list of drives. You should now be able to add, delete, and modify files and folders on your iSCSI drive.

Thank you for reading through this tutorial! Be sure to check out our other tutorial videos on our YouTube channel, and don’t forget to comment, like, and subscribe. Don’t forget to click the “notification bell” to receive alerts on new videos.

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The Shelter-in-Place restrictions are hugely impactful on many businesses and employees. Many of our clients are facing severe downturns and will have to fight through it. Retaining employees, customer relationships, and supply chains is not a simple process. As with many recessions, budgets will be cut, and there will be huge pressure to do more with less. Thankfully, one of the major benefits of Open Source infrastructure is that it provides these impacted organizations with an avenue to keep budgets under control.

Some of our clients are facing a different problem, instead seeing a sudden increase in demand as their products or services are critical to the response to COVID-19 or the basic functioning of our cities and countries. These businesses need to be able to scale cost-effectively knowing that the demand will drop when COVID-19 is defeated. Open Source also enables faster and more economic scaling as a lifeline for these organizations.

In both cases, Open Source enables businesses to be agile and control costs, whether they are growing or shrinking through an economic downturn. It is our mission at iXsystems to empower our customers to face either challenge through Open Source infrastructure and economics.

Open Source Economics

Open Source software has been part of our history for decades and has progressively been embedded within the industry over time. Proprietary Unix has given way to Linux and FreeBSD. Amazon, the company notorious for stretching a dime into a dollar, could never have built its cloud empire without Open Source tools and software. Apple helped turn its business around a decade and a half ago by leveraging Open Source. Even industry pioneers in proprietary and closed software such as Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM have had to come to terms with the fact that they too must embrace Open Source or eventually go the way of the dinosaur. The advantage that Open Source users have is that they get to choose how much software and support they wish to pay for. We call this “Open Source Economics.” If the industry giants mentioned above can use it to their advantage, so can you. And, iXsystems is here to help you access it.

When building infrastructure and applications, Open Source solutions shift negotiating power and let users decide whether the “free” version is acceptable (e.g., FreeNAS) or whether it’s worth having professional support (e.g., TrueNAS) to reduce the number and duration of issues.
If a supplier or partner underperforms, Open Source makes it easier to shift business to another partner that can use similar software. It avoids vendor lockup with exorbitant software and support contracts. Have you seen the standard licensing prices for the largest storage, virtualization, and database vendors?
Open Source puts the power back into the hands of the user/buyer/customer, where it belongs.

Choose your own Destiny

Many businesses may not be as immersed in Open Source software as iXsystems, but every business can benefit from an Open Source strategy. Open Source strategies let you choose your destiny and where you should invest your limited budgets.

In a recession, there are huge savings to be made from shifting projects toward an Open Source model. Typically, you can get all the features you need and at a fraction of the total price of proprietary software from enterprise vendors. In the future, you’ll be able to scale more cost-effectively and control your own destiny.

iXsystems is an Open Source partner for tough times

We have built our business model on providing Open Source software with professionally supported solutions using industry-standard hardware. We also use and contribute to Open Source software from the FreeBSD, OpenZFS, and SAMBA communities. This business model has successfully allowed us to not only survive but grow through the last recession and will help carry us through this next recession while still making great technical progress with our products. We are already seeing increases in FreeNAS downloads and inquiries since the pandemic began, which we take as a sign that many organizations are already leveraging the power of Open Source economics as a means to help them through this difficult period. At iXsystems, we couldn’t be more proud to be able to offer a lifeline to these organizations.
If your budgets are limited and you need to invest more in your own applications or staff, we can surely identify with that challenge. Our goal is to give you a set of choices from “free” to Enterprise-Grade with Gold Support. Start with “free” today, and if budgets improve, we can help you upgrade your infrastructure and support as required.

Whether it’s server or storage infrastructure, iXsystems will give you the benefits of Open Source economics. You get to choose whether to use FreeNAS or TrueNAS. Soon, we’ll make it even easier with TrueNAS CORE or TrueNAS Enterprise.
To address the immediate needs of our customers during this global crisis, we hand-selected and pre-configured two high-availability TrueNAS systems at special discounts for this quarter: 11TB of All-Flash TrueNAS for under $10K, and 1PB of powerful hybrid storage for under $70K. If you’d like access to special deals like this in the future, simply sign up for our newsletter.
Wishing you all the best during this time. If we can help you keep your business ticking through this recession, please contact us.

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For his testing, Jim Salter used OpenZFS 2.0 software that is in TrueNAS 12.0. One of the more interesting data points in the article was the major performance advantage of ZFS replication over standard rsync (which can also be used between ZFS and other file systems). ZFS replication (which is labeled “syncoid” – Open Source software that sets up ZFS replications) is more than 1,000 times faster at finding and sending the deltas between files. 

TrueNAS systems are built on the legendary stability of FreeNAS and the OpenZFS (ZFS) file system, leveraging the underlying ZFS technology to easily recover from ransomware and other active data threats. For more information, reach out to an iXsystems Solution Architect and get your completely free and no-pressure quote on the complete line of TrueNAS storage systems.

For more information on ZFS (or if you just need some pointers for your next FreeNAS or TrueNAS CORE build), check out these additional resources and let us know what articles or how-to videos you’d like to see next in the comments below.

ZFS 101—Understanding ZFS storage and performance >> Read the Article (Credit Jim Salter for Ars Technica)
Introduction to ZFS >> Read the Article
ZFS Drive Size and Cost Comparison Spreadsheet >> Read the Article
iXsystems, FreeNAS, TrueNAS, and OpenZFS Videos >> Visit the Channel

The post Understanding How OpenZFS Keeps Your Data Safe appeared first on TrueNAS - Welcome to the Open Storage Era.

We are making some changes to the FreeNAS and TrueNAS bug tracker that’ll give you yet another way to help contribute and democratize enterprise storage!

As many of you know, we’ve historically had three ticket types available in our tracker: Bugs, Features, and Improvements, which are all fairly self-explanatory. After some discussion internally, we’ve decided to implement a new type of ticket, a “Suggestion”. These will be replacing Feature and Improvement requests for the TrueNAS Community, simplifying things down to two options: Bugs and Suggestions. This change also introduces a slightly different workflow than before.

One issue we’ve had in the past with Features and Improvements is that just about all the ideas submitted have been “good” ideas. The challenge was determining which ideas were “best” or most desired by the community, which at times made it difficult for engineers to determine which ought to be integrated into our development roadmap.

Just because we think something is a “good” idea, or a community member submits a well-laid out feature request, we didn’t have a great way of determining how many people are interested. This made the process of picking and choosing too arbitrary. To address this, the Suggestion ticket has been created to help us better gauge interest in particular requests by implementing the concept of “voting” into the workflow:

As demonstrated above, we’re going to be looking to the community to help “Vote” on issues to provide an indication to our team what kind of interest there is for any particular idea. Once a Suggestion has reached the vote threshold (10 votes for the time being), we will then put it into a Review state, and then make a determination of if/when it should land on our TrueNAS roadmap.

So, how do you vote for a Suggestion? Easy! Simply login to our ticket system, find your issue, and click the “Vote for this issue” link on the top right of each ticket. If you can’t find a Suggestion that addresses your issue, create a Suggestion and let us know why it’s important to you.

The rest is up to you! To help create interest or garner more support for your own suggestions, you can solicit your Suggestion requests here on the community forums, social media, Reddit, email campaigns to friends and colleagues, etc.

Democratizing storage requires collaboration, and we’re expecting that this new process will allow us to be more responsive to the needs and wants of our community and prioritize changes to the product accordingly.
Thanks for reading, and as always, feedback is welcome!

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We have previously announced the merger of FreeNAS and TrueNAS into a unified software image and new naming convention. FreeNAS is becoming TrueNAS CORE. TrueNAS is becoming TrueNAS Enterprise. We’ve appreciated all of the positive feedback tremendously but noticed there were a few common questions from some of our more skeptical community members or ones that haven’t yet worked closely with iXsystems:
Will TrueNAS CORE still be open source and free?  
The answer is 100% yes.
Will TrueNAS CORE have fewer features than FreeNAS?  
The answer is 100% no. In fact, TrueNAS CORE will have MORE features than FreeNAS does today.
Will any “free” features now only be made available in TrueNAS Enterprise?
Nope. We have no intention of removing features from TrueNAS CORE. Hopefully, we’ve eased your minds. 🙂

Before we dive in and illustrate further the points above by comparing the features of FreeNAS, TrueNAS CORE, and TrueNAS Enterprise, let’s first do a quick recap of the benefits the FreeNAS/TrueNAS Unification plan delivers for all users and contributors:

• Rapid Development: Unified images accelerate software development and releases (for example, 12.0 is a major release that would normally have taken 9-12 months to release, and with these new efficiencies, we are bringing that closer to six months)
• Improved Quality: Reduced development redundancy and unified QA increases software quality and allows us to streamline testing
• Earlier Hardware Enablement: Staying in-sync with upstream OS versions will be easier, allowing earlier access to newer hardware drivers. For instance, 12.0 brings improved support for AMD EPYC / Ryzen platforms and enhanced NUMA support for more efficient CPU core handling.
• Simplified Documentation: Unified documentation eliminates redundancy such as separate user guides
• Reduced Redundancy: Unified web content and videos refer to one software family without the need for duplication
• Flexibility: Unified images enable simpler transitions or upgrades between editions
• Resource efficiency: Frees up developers to work on new features and related products
• OpenZFS 2.0: The planning for the “unified” 12.0 release began over a year ago and included the major investment in the development and integration of what will soon be released as “OpenZFS 2.0”. This effort is fast-forwarding delivery of advances like dataset encryption, major performance improvements, and compatibility with Linux ZFS pools. 

In a nutshell: huge efficiency gains equal higher quality software, released faster.

TrueNAS CORE Features

FreeNAS 11.3 has a very rich set of features, and TrueNAS CORE adds incrementally and significantly to that list. Again, no features are being harmed in the transition to TrueNAS CORE :-). In fact, “CORE” is an acronym that makes a commitment to our community that all the core functionality that FreeNAS users love will always be included in TrueNAS CORE, the best free NAS software (see what we did there?). 

The comprehensive feature list for TrueNAS 12.0 is actually quite enormous. To make it manageable, we’ve created a master feature list below. The features in black were existent in FreeNAS 11.3 and are shared by both TrueNAS CORE and TrueNAS Enterprise. The features in blue are new features being added with TrueNAS 12.0. The column to the right displays features that are available in TrueNAS Enterprise only. As you can see, no existing FreeNAS features have been moved over to the Enterprise column.

TrueNAS Enterprise has additional features that are needed for deployment in production applications. Many of these features are tied to the ability to support High Availability (HA) systems. 
By default, all new TrueNAS 12.0 features are included in both TrueNAS CORE and Enterprise. The feature additions for TrueNAS 12.0 can be summarized as:

Metadata on Flash: Special SSD vdevs can be used for Metadata acceleration. This can include both file systems metadata and dedupe tables. This is one of the core features of OpenZFS 2.0.
Fusion Pools: The special SSD vdevs can also be used for data based on I/O write size. This is configurable on a per dataset basis.  Users can accelerate database datasets or special VMs.
SSD Wear Monitoring: Any SSD (Boot, L2ARC, slog or vdev) can be monitored for wear and alerts created.
Dataset Encryption: Specific datasets can be selected or deselected for encryption with a user-provided key. When replicating the dataset to another TrueNAS, the key does not have to be provided and so the data can be transmitted and stored in the original encrypted state.
Asynchronous ZFS Trim: Trim commands free up space, particularly within SSDs. By making these Trim commands asynchronous, they scale and perform better. This is particularly useful for deduplication of flash storage and can significantly reduce costs.
Faster ZFS Boot: OpenZFS 2.0 includes a more parallel process for importing a ZFS pool with many drives. This reduces boot and failover times.
ZFS Linux Compatibility: Linux and FreeBSD are peer operating systems for OpenZFS 2.0. Compressed, deduplicated, and encrypted data can be efficiently replicated from a Linux host to a TrueNAS system for backup and archive. It is also possible to import a pool (drive set) from Linux to TrueNAS.
Accelerated ZFS: Several performance improvements have been made to reduce both drive IOPS and the CPU cycles required. More features and higher performance together is a big win for ZFS users :-).
OpenVPN Client and Server: VPNs provide security for remotely accessing storage services, such as SMB or NFS, across the Internet. This feature enables the OpenVPN Client or Server to be included in the NAS for simpler administration and lower costs. The other end of the VPN connection can be any OpenVPN client, such as another NAS, Firewall Device, or Personal Desktop/Laptop.  
Two Factor Authentication: For increased security, two factor authentication is highly desirable. TrueNAS ensures that a compromised root password cannot be used by itself to gain access to the administrator interface.
API Keys: Access to the REST / WebSockets API can now be done by API key. Keys can be created and revoked directly via the WebUI for additional security.
KMIP Support: Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) is an enterprise-grade approach to securing systems and data through a centralized key management system. This feature will be available in TrueNAS Enterprise to secure drives or datasets. 
TrueCommand Dataset Management: TrueCommand is joined at the hip with TrueNAS and will provide some exciting features, including snapshotting, replicating, and migrating datasets between systems.
There should be something for everybody in this list. We hope you’re as excited by the increase in productivity as our devs are!

Onward to TrueNAS CORE!

TrueNAS 12.0 will go through the same NIGHTLY, ALPHA (Internal), BETA, RC1, RELEASE, UPDATE states that FreeNAS has gone through. There will be no changes to the software update process or the information available. There is a TrueNAS 12.0 sub-forum on the community forums for this unification process and community feedback. 
The TrueNAS CORE 12.0 nightly builds have reached a stage where they are largely “feature complete”. Some UI polish and a lot of testing is needed to get to RELEASE deployment quality. We appreciate developers and testers who work with these early images. Bugs that are caught and reported early are going to have less impact on the final schedule.

Still the Best Free NAS

Still open, still free, just with more features and a new brand. Nothing much will change in the UI dashboard. However, TrueNAS CORE will have the option to use a FreeNAS theme for those as attached to the FreeNAS name as we are!

TrueNAS CORE pictured with the “FreeNAS theme” for diehards and nostalgists alike!
We hope you are sharing in the excitement for TrueNAS CORE & Enterprise as we move closer to our release date. If you have any questions or comments, we’d love to hear them on the forums or in response to this blog. If you need additional information on how TrueNAS can streamline, accelerate, and unify data management for your business, email us. In the meantime, download FreeNAS 11.3 today in preparation, and you can later upgrade to TrueNAS CORE 12.0 with a single click!

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In this tutorial, we’re going to talk about setting up Users, Permissions, and ACLs in FreeNAS. ACL stands for Access Control List, which designates access control entries for users and administrators on FreeNAS systems, specifically for Windows SMB shares. This tutorial assumes you already have your pool configured. If you need help getting started with configuring a pool, we recommend you watch our ZFS Pools Overview video first.

Setting up a FreeNAS group and user account

First, you’ll want to set up a FreeNAS user account and configure specific permissions.

To do this, click “Groups” under the left side menu under “Accounts”.

• Click “ADD”
• You can leave the Group ID as is, it will be unique to this group.
• Give it a name, In this how-to, we’ll call it “officegroup”
• Sudo is a root command, leave this unchecked to avoid giving root access to the group on this system.
• Click “SAVE” when you’ve finished typing in your settings.

Next, go to “Accounts”, “Users”, then “ADD” a User

• Fill in the required fields of Full Name, I’ll name it “Office User”
  • Give the user a name. For this tutorial, we’ll name this “officeuser”.
  • Give it a unique password
• For Primary Group, choose the group you created earlier (officegroup) from the drop-down list. You can also check New Primary Group and it will create a group along with the user with the same name
• Then click “SAVE” when you’re finished choosing your settings.

Setting up Permissions (for non-SMB datasets)

Permissions are generally used for non-SMB or Generic datasets, so that means any dataset using AFP or NFS shares. SMB datasets for Windows clients will utilize ACLs which we’ll talk about in the next section.
If you haven’t already, go ahead and create a Generic share-type dataset by clicking the three dots on your pool and then choosing “Add Dataset”. Name your dataset and click “SAVE”.


From the Pools window, open the Permissions options by clicking the three dots on the right of your target dataset, and “Edit Permissions”.

You can set the Owner to the user you created earlier, which was “officeuser” and the group to “officegroup”. On the right side under Access, this is where you can set the Read and Write permissions. Go ahead and check “Write” to give editing permissions when you assign this Group to the dataset.

Check “Apply Permissions Recursively” if you want to set these permissions to all directories and files that are currently in the dataset. Check “Traverse” to apply permissions to any child datasets, or datasets within the dataset. Click “SAVE” when done.

Setting up ACLs (for SMB datasets)

Next, we’ll talk about ACLs, or “Access Control List”. ACL is a security feature used in Microsoft Windows, which designates access control entries for users and administrators on a system. FreeNAS interacts with it through the SMB protocol. Note that the “Edit ACL” feature was recently introduced in FreeNAS 11.3.
If you haven’t already, go ahead and create an SMB dataset by clicking the three dots on your pool and “Add Dataset”. Name your dataset, and choose “SMB” under the Share Type. Lastly, click “SAVE” to proceed.

You can create a share for this SMB dataset as well, by going to “Sharing“, choosing “Windows Shares”, and then selecting “ADD”. Browse to the path of your SMB dataset. You’ll notice it says ACL next to the folder because you set the Share type as SMB earlier. In this tutorial, let’s call this “smbshare” and click “SAVE” to continue.


From the SMB window, open the share options by clicking the three dots on the right, and “Edit ACL”. On the left side, leave “root” and “wheel” as the original owners of the dataset.



To give another user ownership permissions, click “Add ACL Item”, then choose “User” for the Who field, and “officeuser” for the User field. You may copy the same settings as the ACL items above on the right side. Do the same for the group, and choose “officegroup” for the Group field. Note: to set open permissions or guest access, you can choose “OPEN” from the “Default ACL Options” dropdown list.

The settings on the right side under “Group” allow you to configure the dataset’s ACL settings according to your network and security needs. Note that when you set the Share Type to “SMB”, the ACL options will default to that specific configuration, which is shown here. Lastly, click “SAVE” when you’re finished choosing your settings.
If you want to read more about configuration and recommendations for ACLs, make sure to check out the FreeNAS Documentation.
Now you have properly set up Permissions and ACLs for your datasets. Repeat the process above each time you need to give a User specific permissions to access a shared dataset on your network or simply use the same group with a new user. To learn how to access a share on Windows with the specific user, make sure to check out our Windows SMB Shares tutorial.
Thank you for reading this tutorial! Be sure to watch our other tutorial videos on our YouTube channel.

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