We’re going to walk you through the basic requirements to run the TrueNAS CORE storage operating system, creating the installation media, and installing it onto your system.

Minimum Requirements

Here are the basics of what you’ll need to run TrueNAS:

1. 64-bit system: Used solely for TrueNAS CORE. TrueNAS is NOT dual-boot friendly, so make sure you’re only using the system for TrueNAS.
2. Minimum 8 GB of RAM: Use more if you’re installing virtual machines or plugins.
3. Boot device (SSD or HDD): Also known as the boot drive. At least 16 GB of storage capacity is required to serve as the boot device for TrueNAS. An SSD is an ideal choice for longevity; keep in mind that the entire disk will be used for the TrueNAS operating system. USB sticks are no longer recommended, due to the high amount of write tasks on TrueNAS.
4. Storage drives (SSDs or HDDs): At least one hard drive for storage of files, but multiple drives of the same capacity can be easily bundled together to provide redundancy if a drive fails. Western Digital drives are a great choice for data storage, but as with any vendor, make sure to avoid drives using SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) technology in ZFS applications.
5. Ethernet cord: To connect your system to the network, through a router or modem. There is no wireless support in TrueNAS.
6. Blank DVD or USB stick: Required to create the TrueNAS installation media. The TrueNAS ISO image exceeds 700 MB so CDs will not work. Your USB stick should be at least 1 GB. Please note that the installation media is not the same as the boot device.
   To access the latest TrueNAS image: https://www.truenas.com/download-truenas-core/
7. Monitor & keyboard: After the setup is complete and you’ve written down your TrueNAS system’s IP address, the monitor can be disconnected.
8. Computer or laptop & internet browser: To access the GUI and administer your TrueNAS system.

Creating the Installation Media and Operating System Device for TrueNAS

It’s important to understand that TrueNAS needs two devices during the installation process, the install media and the operating system device (boot device). The install media is used to install TrueNAS to the operating system device on a computer.

A USB stick or DVD can be used as the install media. In this tutorial, we will be using an 8 GB USB stick as our install media. The minimum size required is 1 GB.

The TrueNAS CORE operating system device can be an SSD or hard drive. The operating system device must have at least 16 GB of space, but we recommend 32 GB or more for operating system device storage capacity to provide room for logging, operating system environments, and future upgrades. An SSD is recommended to improve overall responsiveness as well as the speed of installing further upgrades.

Note that the entire operating system device will be used for the TrueNAS operating system. The drive cannot be used for sharing data through TrueNAS.

TrueNAS reads and writes to the operating system device, so reliability counts. Using a small SSD or hard drive will provide the best longevity. Due to the high write tasks in TrueNAS CORE, USB sticks are not very reliable over the long term. With TrueNAS CORE scheduled to receive continued updates for stability and security, choosing a quality, reliable boot device is the first step towards a well-built TrueNAS system.

For this example, we will be using a tool called balenaEtcher also known as Etcher. Scroll down the web page and click on the Download button for Etcher. Download, install, and run Etcher.

Now insert your USB stick into your machine. Verify the drive letter by going to “This PC”.

For this example, we will be using a tool called balenaEtcher also known as Etcher. Scroll down the web page and click on the Download button for Etcher. Download, install, and run Etcher.

Now insert your USB stick into your machine. Verify the drive letter by going to “This PC”.

In the Etcher application, click “Flash from file” and browse to the TrueNAS .iso file that you downloaded earlier. If your USB stick is not already selected, click “Select Target” and choose the drive to use as the install media. Remember, this is the install media, not the operating system device. Now, click “Flash!” It takes a few minutes to write the image to the disk. A “Flash Complete!” message is shown when done.

After the installer file has been written to the install media, you’re ready to install TrueNAS.

Installing TrueNAS

Now that we’ve gone through the basics of what you need to get started, let’s begin the installation of TrueNAS.

Make sure that both the boot device and the TrueNAS installation media are inserted in the machine that you chose to run TrueNAS.

Boot into the BIOS of the system and double-check that your system is set to boot from the device that contains the TrueNAS installation media that you created earlier. After confirming, reboot the system.

The TrueNAS install menu will be displayed. Choose option 1 on the menu to begin the TrueNAS installation. This will load the Console Setup menu. Hit enter to choose the “Install/Upgrade” option.

The next menu asks which drive should be used for TrueNAS. Make sure to select the boot device and not the storage disk. This menu will show the size of the disks to make it easier to determine the boot device, which is generally a smaller size than the storage disks (which will be larger). The one you want will likely be the smallest on the list. Note that the names of your drives will be different.
Press the arrow keys to select a drive, and press the spacebar to designate it as the drive you wish to use.

The boot device cannot be used for anything other than the operating system itself. Press OK, then YES, to proceed.

Next, type in and confirm the password that will be used to login to TrueNAS.

TrueNAS can be booted in either BIOS or UEFI mode. For the purposes of this video, I’ll be choosing BIOS. BIOS works for almost all motherboards and is typically the option to choose for older hardware. Choosing UEFI will require that your motherboard is more modern and UEFI capable.

Once chosen, your installation will begin. Wait for a bit, all those commands popping up on the screen are perfectly normal. It should take a few minutes.

A message will appear saying to reboot and remove the installation media. Choose OK to reboot. Remove the installation media from your system. As the system reboots, double-check the BIOS to make sure the boot order now defaults to the boot device.

Fire up TrueNAS

When the system boots from the boot device, messages will appear as the TrueNAS operating system loads. When it is done loading you will see the “Console setup” menu. At the bottom of this screen, an IP address will be listed.

From a separate computer that is connected to the same network, open a web browser and type in that address. If it instead shows “0.0.0.0”, check if the network cable is plugged in, and that the network has a DHCP server.

The TrueNAS login menu will appear once the bootup is complete. Type in root for the username and the password you created during the installation.
Once you are logged in, you will have access to the TrueNAS web interface which is used to manage your storage disks, configure access to the stored data, and view the status of the system.

Congratulations! You have just installed TrueNAS. Be sure to check out our other tutorials and videos to learn more about configuring and using TrueNAS.
For comprehensive information on configuring TrueNAS, visit docs.truenas.com.

The post How to Set Up and Install TrueNAS CORE appeared first on TrueNAS - Welcome to the Open Storage Era.

TrueNAS has come a long way and has delivered incalculable value to millions of users around the world. After nearly 20 years of evolution since its inception in 2005 as FreeNAS, TrueNAS CORE has proven to be the most reliable and highest-quality platform for traditional primary storage use cases. Users and customers looking for incremental fixes and changes to their stable storage platform enjoy the sustained value and maturity of TrueNAS CORE. Today, we are announcing our plans to release TrueNAS CORE 13.3 in the next few months. (No, you didn’t miss a release; we simply re-numbered the 13.1 release to 13.3 to align with its updated FreeBSD 13.3 operating system!)

At iXsystems, we have worked hard for many years to be the best possible corporate sponsors for open-source projects. Unlike proprietary vendors, our processes and planning are done in the open, and both community members and customers alike play an important role in how TrueNAS continues to evolve.

Both FreeNAS and TrueNAS CORE were originally developed using FreeBSD as their underlying OS. Roughly five years ago, iXsystems began its Linux journey with the introduction of TrueNAS SCALE. This expanded its potential community, broadened and simplified support for the latest hardware, and opened the door to new possibilities for the software.

TrueNAS = CORE + SCALE

It’s only natural that some community members have expressed concerns about the future when there are two versions of their favorite storage platform. However, as TrueNAS continues to grow, we believe that its future is not a zero-sum game. Both TrueNAS CORE and TrueNAS SCALE will exist to address the needs of different users.

The focus of TrueNAS CORE continues to be ensuring storage reliability, stability, and security for existing users. Taking into account its macro lifecycle, TrueNAS CORE is now entering a sustaining engineering phase within the TrueNAS project. It is not anywhere near its end-of-lifecycle phase. We are just going through a new release cycle for CORE and users can expect to receive maintenance updates for many years still to come.

TrueNAS SCALE is the software edition where new features and updated components are actively developed and tested. This is natural because the bulk of the open source innovation we rely on is created and supported on Linux first. Therefore, developing a version of TrueNAS on Linux enables us to more rapidly deliver a more feature-rich, stable, and easier-to-use storage product for users and customers alike. This includes the ability for TrueNAS to run on a much wider variety of hardware and configurations. Of course, high-priority security and bug fixes are all good candidates to be backported to TrueNAS CORE, and  TrueNAS CORE users will always have the ability to “sidegrade” to SCALE if and when they’re ready.

For TrueNAS Enterprise customers, you will always be fully supported for the duration of your support contract regardless of the software version you’re using. TrueNAS 23.10 already ships by default on some Enterprise products, like the TrueNAS F-Series. If your organization is considering a sidegrade to the SCALE-based software now or in the future, as many customers already have, please contact iXsystems Support so that we can assist you in the decision-making and upgrade process.

TrueNAS CORE 13.3 is Coming Soon

The release candidate for the next version of TrueNAS CORE (13.3) is planned for May, followed by its formal release in June 2024. TrueNAS CORE 13.3 will include the following updates:

• FreeBSD 13.3
• OpenZFS 2.2.3
• Samba v4.19
• Updates to SMART, Network UPS Tools (NUT), and other services
• Various security and bug fixes

TrueNAS CORE 13.3 will continue to receive bug fixes related to stability and security. These updates will ensure that 13.3 is a reliable platform for both homelab and enterprise customers as well as a staging version for those users who wish to migrate to SCALE at a later date.

TrueNAS and FreeBSD Continue

With our 25+ year history in open-source software, we share an uncommon affinity for FreeBSD among all of those in the community who love TrueNAS. After all, FreeBSD is a major part of our company’s heritage, iXsystems having spawned from BSDi in the 90’s.

The TrueNAS development and engineering team continues to provide contributions upstream to FreeBSD and remains committed to the bootstrapped, open-source development philosophy on which it was founded.

Kris Moore, SVP of Engineering at iXsystems, shares his thoughts with other die-hard fans in this Community Forums post:

“TrueNAS CORE hasn’t been deprecated, and [13.3] is planned to start making a showing in Q2. It will be based upon FreeBSD 13.3 and will provide a way to keep running jails and upstream packages for some time to come. It is still a rock-solid NAS and we’re expecting to support it for a long while for that use-case.” 

Our love for FreeBSD is only eclipsed by our commitment to keep pace with the demands of our customers and users to continue innovating in ways that help them find success with TrueNAS. TrueNAS CORE will provide a rock-solid foundation for users that need fast, reliable, and scalable storage. TrueNAS SCALE provides the same rock-solid foundation, but also supports those users that want to extend their storage into a converged solution with Apps and VMs. CORE users that do not need Apps and VMs may find that SCALE offers better performance and stability, more flexible hardware support, and a more intuitive UI with a wider breadth of storage-focused features.

When Should I Migrate?

If you are installing a new TrueNAS system, iXsystems recommends that you begin with TrueNAS SCALE. There is more added functionality, vastly broader support for hardware, catalogs of Apps, better performance on most workloads, and an improved Web UI, all of which make managing TrueNAS easier than ever.

Existing TrueNAS 13.0 users who are comfortable with their TrueNAS system can update to TrueNAS 13.3 when they see a need based on the TrueNAS Software Status page. Upgrading from 13.0 to 13.3 will be a simple and direct process.

TrueNAS 13.0 users looking for the new capabilities outlined above can sidegrade to TrueNAS SCALE at any time, preserving data and essential NAS functionality such as SMB, NFS, iSCSI, and VMs – with the primary exception being Jails.

The upcoming SCALE 24.04 “Dragonfish” will, however, include early support for Sandboxes, which provide jail-like capabilities using systemd nspawn containers. Manual migration of workloads will still be required, but the Sandbox functionality effectively provides the same functionality that Jails provided for CORE users. We can’t wait for Jails users to test and provide feedback on this new feature.

Community Activity

All TrueNAS processes and planning are done in the open, and TrueNAS CORE 13.3 is no exception. In addition to your input, there are also many ways TrueNAS users can give back and enrich the experience of others in the Community. Check out how you can make a meaningful contribution and play a part in shaping the future of TrueNAS.

Every contribution, big or small, plays a part in moving TrueNAS forward. Whether you share your use case, refer a friend, create tutorials or “How-To” content, or even provide code directly to the TrueNAS GitHub repository, your contribution makes a difference. And, as always, thank you for being a part of the TrueNAS community!

The post TrueNAS CORE 13.3 Plans appeared first on TrueNAS - Welcome to the Open Storage Era.

Top Forums Post: How to Get Started with Jellyfin on TrueNAS SCALE

For the growing number of you in the TrueNAS Community who have migrated to or installed TrueNAS SCALE, our new Linux-based version of TrueNAS, there’s an easy way to set up a Jellyfin server with just a few clicks.

Top TrueNAS Video of 2023: Mark Rober! I Built You a Computer! By Linus TechTips

Linus Tech Tips gives Mark Rober’s data storage setup a massive upgrade in this video. Solving the problems of physical space, no backup, and less-than-optimized editing workflows, Mark gets an upgrade powered by TrueNAS SCALE.

TrueNAS Named Gartner Peer Insights Customer Choice

TrueNAS Enterprise now stands with a 4.9/5 star rating on Gartner Peer Insights. Based on verified customer reviews, this award recognizes TrueNAS Enterprise for its reliability and customer satisfaction with a 4.8 out of 5-star customer rating, outscoring Dell EMC, HP, and NetApp.

Latest Editions of TrueNAS 13.0

TrueNAS CORE 13.0-U6.1 was released at the end of 2023, serving as the anticipated final release in the 13.0 series before the major 13.1 update. This release provides fixes to bugs dealing with Apps and Pool building and is the recommended release for both CORE and Enterprise users.

TrueNAS SCALE 23.10 “Cobia” has Arrived!

TrueNAS SCALE 23.10 “Cobia” arrived on October 24th. This release marks a major milestone with significant improvements in SMB features, file copying, security, and more. Other highlights include infrastructure enhancements, Linux Kernel 6.1, improved hardware support, NVIDIA driver updates, and the ability to scale up to 1200 drives and 25 PB+ on a single system!

Honorable Mentions

• Meet the First Rack-Mountable TrueNAS Mini
• Viz Media gets “Anime-zing” Upgrade with TrueNAS Enterprise
• Adaptive Technical Delivers Managed IT with TrueNAS Enterprise

The post TrueNAS Year in Review: Top Stories of 2023 appeared first on TrueNAS - Welcome to the Open Storage Era.

From “A” for APFS to “Z” for ZFS, this is true for both open source and proprietary file systems. As ZFS surpasses its 18th year, iXsystems is proud to help contribute to the process of improvement of OpenZFS far beyond the “ten-year beta” period to ensure the continued integrity and performance.

With the latest updates to OpenZFS being among the many improvements available in TrueNAS 13.0-U6.1, this release is expected to be the last version of TrueNAS 13.0, which has been the highest-quality TrueNAS release ever. The next version of TrueNAS CORE will be TrueNAS 13.1 in Q1 2024.

Virtually Everything That Can Be Fixed in TrueNAS 13.0 is Now Fixed in 13.0-U6.1

We are very proud of the quality delivered and thankful to the community for all the bug reports to help us get here.

The previous version, TrueNAS 13.0-U5.3, proved to be the highest quality and most widely deployed release in TrueNAS history with over 65,000 active systems. Building on the Enterprise quality of prior versions, TrueNAS 13.0-U6.1 is available and is expected to be the final update of TrueNAS 13.0 for both the CORE and Enterprise appliances. This U6.1 update includes roughly 20 new bug fixes and security improvements, including OpenZFS 2.1.14 to correct a rarely-occurring upstream ZFS bug.

TrueNAS 13.0 included significant new components and delivered improved performance, scalability, and reliability when compared to the previous major version, TrueNAS 12.0. To date, over 85% of TrueNAS 12.0 users have updated to TrueNAS 13.0, including most of our larger enterprise customers. In particular, the increased speed and robustness of HA failover is extremely valuable for Enterprise use cases.

13.0 is Recommended for All 11.3 and 12.0 Users

We recommend that all TrueNAS 12.0 and TrueNAS 11.3 users update their systems to TrueNAS 13.0-U6.1 before attempting to resolve any software or performance issues. This update is also recommended to prepare for future updates to TrueNAS 13.1 in 2024.

Current TrueNAS 13.0 users can update to U6.1 directly from the TrueNAS web UI by navigating to the System -> Update page. New TrueNAS users can get started by downloading the TrueNAS CORE installation media from our site at https://www.truenas.com/download-truenas-core/.

Earlier this year, there was news on the process for maintaining and updating TrueNAS CORE Plugins. Users of plugins are recommended to review this new information.

TrueNAS CORE in 2024

TrueNAS 13.1 is planned for release in early 2024 and will maintain the same storage-focused features with updates to FreeBSD, OpenZFS, Samba, and other key components. The 13.0-U6.1 update also includes some warnings and guidance to help smooth any issues for a future transition to TrueNAS 13.1, such as handling the deprecation of the embedded S3 service, or simply migrating to TrueNAS SCALE.

When Should you Update your TrueNAS system?

Our recommendations are maintained and updated regularly on our Software Status page, which currently recommends TrueNAS 13.0-U5.3 for all users and customers for stability and security reasons. As TrueNAS 13.0-U6.1 receives further testing in more customer environments, it will become the recommended release for all TrueNAS CORE and Enterprise users within two months.

TrueNAS Enterprise appliances are used by organizations that prefer a turnkey experience, optimized hardware, professional support, and Enterprise-grade features such as High Availability (HA), Fibre Channel, Proactive Support, and Key Management (KMIP).

TrueNAS Enterprise users will have the option to sidegrade to TrueNAS (SCALE) Enterprise 23.10 and other SCALE-based releases. These sidegrades are encouraged for use cases that specifically require the unique functionality of TrueNAS SCALE. The sidegrade process will continue to be simplified and made more robust.

TrueNAS Enterprise customers are encouraged to contact iXsystems Technical Support for a complimentary technical review and assistance before updating from 12.0 or earlier versions. If you need additional information on how TrueNAS can streamline, accelerate, and unify data management for your business, please contact us and we’ll gladly assist you.

The post TrueNAS 13.0-U6.1 is the Final Update of our Highest-Quality Release appeared first on TrueNAS - Welcome to the Open Storage Era.

The 11th annual OpenZFS Developer Summit for 2023 started today Monday, October 16th in San Francisco. Among the very exciting projects being developed, two of these projects have significant contributions and investments from iXsystems.

Fast Dedup is on the Horizon

One of the primary issues with traditional dedup with ZFS has been the need to keep the dedup tables in memory at all times to avoid massive performance penalties. This existing functionality was not very performant and led to usability issues during operation. With the update for Fast Dedup, the size of metadata is now constrained to fit in either RAM or flash to avoid hitting the performance penalty wall. The metadata structure for Fast Dedup has been completely re-engineered to enable efficient updates as well as the ability to evict non-dedup blocks. Combining metadata improvements with properly configured storage will improve dedup performance by an order of magnitude for larger systems.

Allan Jude will be presenting on the new Fast Dedup project for which iX has been the major sponsor. Together with engineers from iX, we’ve designed a completely new model for dedup which focuses on performance.

This Fast Dedup project started earlier this year and has been making tremendously rapid progress. We are working to ensure it will have the quality needed to be included in OpenZFS 2.3.

RAIDZ Expansion is Entering its Final QA cycle

RAIDZ expansion allows a small pool with as few as two drives to be gradually expanded with one drive at a time. Existing data is preserved with its original parity and the administrative process for small systems has been simplified. New data is written with the new parity. The same technology works for Z1, Z2 or Z3.

Don Brady and Matt Ahrens will be presenting the latest on RAIDZ expansion. Matt developed the initial software and Don, representing iX, has been completing this herculean task. This project has taken a few years but is now entering the final stretch and will be included in OpenZFS 2.3.

OpenZFS 2.2 is in TrueNAS SCALE 23.10

OpenZFS 2.2 is the current release and has been integrated into TrueNAS SCALE 23.10 (“Cobia”). The Cobia RC.1 version (which includes dRAID) has been successfully provided to the community with over 3,000 testers and the formal release planned in the coming weeks.

In early 2024, TrueNAS CORE 13.1 will be released with  OpenZFS 2.2. TrueNAS Enterprise appliances will also use OpenZFS 2.2 in its respective software versions.

OpenZFS 2.3 (or potentially 3.0) will take most of the next 12 months to mature and reach release quality and status. These RAIDZ expansion and Fast Dedup features will be integrated with TrueNAS then. Early availability via Nightlies and BETA software is expected in mid-2024 for TrueNAS SCALE.

Want to learn more about TrueNAS solutions in your business? Contact us to speak to a product specialist.

The post OpenZFS Summit highlights Fast Dedup and RAIDZ Expansion appeared first on TrueNAS - Welcome to the Open Storage Era.

iX-Storj Giveaway!

iX is teaming up with Storj to deliver the biggest giveaway the TrueNAS community has ever seen. 25 GB of cloud storage comes with a free iX-Storj account, but that’s not all. You’ll also be entered for a chance to win the all-new TrueNAS Mini R, populated with 12 x 6 TB drives (that’s 72 TB of raw capacity!). Other prizes include the TrueNAS Mini X (2 available) and an iX-Storj Starter Package (4 available). There are many ways to score points for the giveaway so don’t forget to subscribe to the iX-Storj Starter package for additional entries.

Enter the Giveaway Now!

TrueNAS 13.0-U5 Maximizes Quality and your Storage Experience

The new TrueNAS 13.0-U5 release builds on the Enterprise maturity of prior versions. The previous version, TrueNAS 13.0-U4, proved to be the highest quality release in TrueNAS history and has become the most widely-deployed version of TrueNAS. This new release includes roughly 60 new bug fixes including improvements to NFS, SMB, and replication. For Enterprise users, a specific fix corrects an incorrect alert in earlier generation NVDIMMs.

Read the Blog

Always Easy and Now More Affordable – iX-Storj cloud storage for $2.50 per TB per Month

iX believes that your data belongs to you and you alone, whether on-premises or in the cloud. This is why iX has partnered with the Storj Network to bring you a secure, high-performance solution for your cloud storage at a competitively low price.

With the iX-Storj Starter Package, you get 5 TB of capacity to use, and 5 TB of pre-paid transfer bandwidth for outbound traffic from the Storj network, giving you a $275 value for only $150! Check out our new TrueNAS blog for a detailed walkthrough on getting started with the iX-Storj Starter Package.

Read the Blog

Level Up your Ransomware Protection with TrueNAS!

TrueNAS offers multiple levels of protection against ransomware, including snapshots, native encryption, authentication, and containerization, just to name a few. And, of course, thanks to our community of users, the TrueNAS Open Source code can be easily validated and supported. Read all about how you can level-up your ransomware protection on TrueNAS.

Read the Blog

New Sections on Replication for the TrueNAS SCALE Evaluation Guide!

Expand your TrueNAS SCALE knowledge with our newest how-to videos on the TrueNAS SCALE Evaluation Guide, covering replication scenarios for Local, PUSH, and PULL! You can also view our text version to read along. Whether it’s your first time using SCALE or you’re looking to continue your Open Storage journey, this guide offers bite-sized advice for everyone. Click the link below to get started today!

Click the thumbnail to watch!

What Can a $60,000 Media Server Do? (Snazzy Labs)

Snazzy Labs ditched their old server to supercharge their workflow with the power of the TrueNAS M-Series. Snazzy shares what it’s like to unbox the M-Series, navigate the admin dashboard, experience the speed of the server for the first time, and more. Click the thumbnail to see more!

Click for Offer

Latest Releases

Tech Tip #124

Did you know that you can see how well ZFS compression is working on a per-file basis? By using the TrueNAS Shell or connecting over SSH, you can use the du command with the –apparent-size (SCALE) or -A (CORE) option to list the sizes of files in a directory before compression is considered. Compare this to the same command without the extra parameter, and see how effective the inline compression in TrueNAS can be!

The post Newsletter: Huge iX-Storj giveaway TrueNAS Core-13.0-u5-release and more appeared first on TrueNAS - Welcome to the Open Storage Era.

Thanks to a collaboration between iX and the Storj network, a secure, high-performance solution now exists for cloud storage with the unbeatable economics TrueNAS users enjoy today.

iX-Storj is a globally distributed storage solution, with over 11 nines of durability, at a cost significantly lower than competing cloud-based archive solutions. Data is securely encrypted before being distributed to a world-wide network of over 16,000 storage nodes. With support for the Amazon S3 API, you can access your data on Storj using a number of compatible software solutions.

Getting started with iX-Storj from your TrueNAS system couldn’t be simpler. All versions of TrueNAS have iX-Storj built in, with native support for synchronization of your files through the Cloud Sync Tasks panel. You can use iX-Storj in your home or business to provide secure, off-site backup at a fraction of the cost of comparable cloud hyper-scaling services.

The World is Your Data Archive

Unlike other cloud services, you don’t have to worry about different costs for storage or network traffic based on where in the world you’re storing the data. Storj offers one single data region across the entire world, while still offering downloads from nodes close to you to ensure that you’ll get the fastest transfer speeds possible.

With the iX-Storj Starter Package, you get 5 TB of capacity to use, and 5 TB of pre-paid annual transfer bandwidth for outbound traffic from the Storj network, giving you a $275 value for only $150. When comparing this cost to major cloud storage providers for comparable “instant access” data tiers, Storj offers over a 10x cost reduction.

5 TB of Cloud Storage / 1 Year

Even when compared to value-based services, Storj’s globally distributed storage network offers a lower cost-per-TB, and when combined with the value in the iX-Storj Starter Package, you can protect your data for less than half the cost. Other providers like Wasabi only use a single data center for a bucket which limits reliability. The Web3 technology of iX-Storj is significantly lower in cost and more reliable.

5 TB of Cloud Storage / 1 Year

Because iX-Storj is built into TrueNAS, all that’s needed once you’re signed up is to add your credentials, enable the Storj functionality, and select the data to synchronize. With no expensive licensing fees, and no lock-in to the ecosystem, TrueNAS storage appliances provide twice the value at half the cost of other popular vendors as reported by ESG.

Get Started Today

To get started, simply navigate to the registration portal at ix.storj.io. You can also find this same link in the TrueNAS UI when adding cloud credentials. You’ll be directed to the Storj registration portal for your nearest region, and asked to enter your name, email address, and a password. After verifying your email address, you’ll be prompted to select from one of three accounts. You can start with a free account of 25 GB, and at any time, upgrade to the iX-Storj Starter Package or a Pro account.

With a Pro account, you “pay as you grow” only for what is used beyond 25 GB, at $4/TB/mo for storage. Downloading from the Storj network is priced at $7/TB, with uploads to the network free of charge. “Pay as you grow” with large-scale public clouds is five to ten times more expensive.

With the iX-Storj Starter Package, TrueNAS users get a special opportunity to save even more. Pay up front for one year of Storj, and store up to 5 TB of data with 5 TB of download bandwidth for only $150, a $125 discount over the Pro Account. Starter Package users that grow beyond 5 TB pay the same rates as Pro users for additional capacity or outbound network traffic.

Once you’ve got your iX-Storj account registered, this 7-minute video contains all of the steps needed to start using iX-Storj Globally Distributed Storage with TrueNAS. You can also view written instructions on the TrueNAS Community Forums. TrueNAS SCALE users can also monetize their spare capacity by joining as a Storj storage node within the global network.

If you’re already a Storj user, or are interested in learning more about Globally Distributed Storage, why not check out our iX-Storj Community Giveaway? Learn about the advantages of the Storj network and protect your data while entering for a chance to win fantastic prizes, including the latest member of the Mini family, the TrueNAS Mini R.

Cloud storage doesn’t have to be expensive, complicated, or closed. Thanks to the partnership between iX and Storj, you can keep enjoying the same True Data Freedom that TrueNAS provides, while adding in the resilience, durability, and availability of Storj’s Globally Distributed Storage.

The post iX-Storj Cloud Storage Now Starts at Industry-leading $2.50 per TB/month appeared first on TrueNAS - Welcome to the Open Storage Era.

TrueNAS 13.0 includes significant new components and delivers improved performance, scalability, and reliability when compared to the previous major version, TrueNAS 12.0. To date, over 75% of TrueNAS 12.0 users have updated to TrueNAS 13.0, including many of our larger enterprise customers. In particular, the increased speed and robustness of HA failover is extremely valuable for most Enterprise use-cases.  Version 12.0 is no longer available for TrueNAS Enterprise, and is no longer recommended for deployment.

One strong quality indicator of TrueNAS 13.0 is that there are fewer than 10 bug fixes and improvements currently planned for 13.0-U6. We recommend that all TrueNAS 12.0 and TrueNAS 11.3 users update their systems to TrueNAS 13.0 before attempting to resolve any software or performance issues.

In the last month, there has been news on the process for maintaining and updating TrueNAS CORE Plugins. Users of Plugins are recommended to review this new information.

When Should you update your TrueNAS system?

Our recommendations are maintained and updated regularly on our Software Status page, which currently recommends TrueNAS 13.0-U4 for all users and customers for stability and security reasons. As TrueNAS 13.0-U5 receives further testing in more customer environments, it will become the recommended release for all TrueNAS CORE and Enterprise users within two months.

TrueNAS Enterprise is delivered as TrueNAS appliances to organizations who prefer a turnkey experience, optimized hardware, professional support, and Enterprise-grade features such as High Availability (HA), Fibre Channel, Proactive Support, and Key Management (KMIP).

TrueNAS Enterprise users will have the option to sidegrade to TrueNAS (SCALE) Enterprise 22.12 and other SCALE-based releases. Currently, these sidegrades are only recommended for new use-cases that specifically require the unique functionality of TrueNAS SCALE. The sidegrade process will continue to be simplified and made more robust.

TrueNAS Enterprise customers are encouraged to contact iXsystems Technical Support for a complimentary technical review and assistance before updating from 12.0.

If you ever need additional information on how TrueNAS can streamline, accelerate, and unify data management for your business, please contact us and we’ll be glad to assist you.

The post TrueNAS 13.0-U5 Maximizes Quality and your Storage Experience appeared first on TrueNAS - Welcome to the Open Storage Era.

For nearly a decade, TrueNAS has provided rapid, reliable storage for customers using virtualization technology. From small startups to the majority of Fortune 500 companies, organizations everywhere have experienced the benefits of True Data Freedom, and each TrueNAS release continues to refine, polish, and deliver high-quality user experiences. With over 15 million downloads across the CORE and SCALE products, TrueNAS offers storage for virtualization solutions that will keep your machines running smoothly.

TrueNAS as a Storage Server for VMware/Hyper-V

As a unified storage provider, TrueNAS offers file, block, and object protocols, making it an ideal component of your VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, XenServer, or KVM-based virtualization solution. TrueNAS CORE and SCALE offer hypervisor storage over the NFS and iSCSI protocols, and TrueNAS Enterprise extends this feature set by adding support for up to 32 Gbps Fibre Channel and dual-controller High-Availability, bringing your storage uptime into the 99.999% of availability. With TrueNAS, you can experience the benefits of virtualization in its most efficient state.

TrueNAS offers advanced read caching using the OpenZFS Adaptive Replacement Cache to serve up your most important and in-demand data at the fastest speed possible from system memory. Data writes are accelerated by the use of high-performance, solid-state devices or non-volatile memory, providing sub-millisecond latency even under heavy workloads.

High-performance storage is critical to a successful virtualization infrastructure, and TrueNAS delivers just that with the OpenZFS file system. With TrueNAS, your virtualization benefits from best-in-class data integrity guaranteed, with self-healing behavior to automatically detect and repair silent data corruption. OpenZFS was specifically designed to ensure the integrity of data. It uses features like end-to-end checksumming and copy-on-write to protect data against the silent data corruption caused by everything from bit rot to current spikes, driver and disk errors, accidental overwrites, and more.

TrueNAS also helps to protect your data against the new generation of hypervisor-based ransomware through immutable OpenZFS snapshots, creating stable local or remote restore points. With its dynamic caching and storage optimization technology, TrueNAS eliminates the need to rely on multiple hard drives to get the IOPS needed for a VM deployment. No other file system, volume manager, or hardware RAID solution provides sufficient protection against such problems.

The Open Source economics of TrueNAS lets you choose the solution that best fits your company. TrueNAS Enterprise hardware scales from 10TB up to 20PB of capacity and is offered with economical hybrid performance or powerful all-flash NVMe.

TrueNAS can be downloaded and deployed for free in your environment. TrueNAS is VMware Ready certified and offers unified and scalable storage solutions to protect data, simplify its management, reduce operational costs, and optimize the performance of a virtualized environment. There is no need for proprietary hardware or software to see how your virtual environment can benefit from True Data Freedom.

For more information on TrueNAS for VMware, check out the TrueNAS for VMware Whitepaper.

Keep your virtualization solutions running smoothly. Download TrueNAS SCALE

The post TrueNAS as a Storage Server for VMware/Hyper-V appeared first on TrueNAS - Welcome to the Open Storage Era.

Fig. 1 – Non-Production and Production TrueNAS VMs

Virtual machines (VMs) provide opportunities to easily stand up instances of TrueNAS for a number of different purposes. End-users might use these to evaluate the functionality of TrueNAS in their environment, check out the differences between CORE and SCALE, or walk through the process of upgrading a legacy FreeNAS system to a recent release of TrueNAS. Developers at iXsystems make extensive use of virtualization when troubleshooting, documenting, and building new versions of TrueNAS; and yes – some TrueNAS users even deploy a fully-virtualized TrueNAS solution for their production environments.

Of course, TrueNAS SCALE also includes its own KVM hypervisor and can run its own VMs; however, that’s not the subject of this particular blog.

Before we continue, let’s open with a little disclaimer banner:

Warning

If the best practices and recommendations for running TrueNAS as a virtual machine are followed, a TrueNAS VM can be a safe and reliable way to store data. Failure to adhere to these same recommendations can result in permanent corruption and/or loss of your data without warning, even if the system appears initially functional. Please read through them all carefully!

Apologies for the Scary Red Text, but this needed to be made abundantly clear. Let’s get started!

1. Consider Your Use Case

While “test-drive” and “development” use cases can play a little bit more fast and loose with the recommendations for virtual hardware, a production use-case is where certain caveats and precautions need to be taken into account.

Testing, Exploring, or Development (“Non-Production Use”)

If you’re looking to gain familiarity with the TrueNAS UI, do some development work on the TrueNAS code, perform a dry-run of upgrading between versions, or set up any other situation where data that you care about isn’t at stake, you can likely go ahead with very few guardrails on your virtualization solution. Use your hypervisor of choice to create a VM with at least 8GB of RAM, two or more vCPUs, a 16GB install disk, and data disks of whatever size are appropriate for your testing (see later in the document for some important notes if using multiple virtual disks!) – mount a TrueNAS ISO of your choice, and enjoy.

This process can be completed in less than five minutes – or if you’d prefer, you can download and deploy a pre-built TrueNAS SCALE VM image in Open Virtualization Format.

Storing Important Data (“Production Use”)

As soon as you’re storing data that you care about keeping safe, or readily available, then you should consider your TrueNAS use as a “production environment”.  – this includes if it’s at home protecting your personal photos, or in an office safeguarding important documents.

For TrueNAS and OpenZFS to offer absolute protection for your data, they should have direct access to a storage controller and the drives attached. Without direct access, there is a possibility of the hypervisor interfering with settings, reordering or reconfiguring drives, and introducing avenues for data corruption. Virtual data disks are not as reliable, and are particularly prone to operator mistakes such as accidental deletion or inadvertent use of hypervisor-based snapshot technology.

The key piece of the puzzle is a technology broadly referred to as PCI passthrough – this might be given a different name such as “VMDirectPath I/O” “Discrete Device Assignment” by the vendor, but the core functionality must remain the same – the virtual machine must be able to address the PCI hardware device directly, without going through an abstraction layer.

When creating a TrueNAS VM for production use, the storage controller must be assigned to the VM via PCI passthrough. This will prevent the hypervisor from claiming the controller with its driver, and allow TrueNAS to use its own.

Most desktop virtualization applications (eg: Oracle Virtualbox, VMware Workstation) do not support PCI passthrough. Instructions for enabling PCI passthrough on various bare-metal hypervisors are listed below.

• VMware ESXi: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1010789
• KVM: https://www.linux-kvm.org/page/How_to_assign_devices_with_VT-d_in_KVM
• Xen: https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_PCI_Passthrough
• Hyper-V: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/virtualization/hyper-v/plan/plan-for-deploying-devices-using-discrete-device-assignment

When using PCI passthrough, TrueNAS will treat the storage controller just like it’s been installed on physical hardware. This direct access to the PCI device does prevent several advanced features of virtualization from functioning, including (but not limited to) the following:

• Hot adding and removing of virtual devices
• Suspend and resume of the VM
• “Record and replay” functionality
• Fault tolerance and high availability, including “live migration” features
• VM snapshots (note – ZFS snapshots inside of TrueNAS do work)

In order to use PCI passthrough, you need to have an additional storage controller that is not being used by your hypervisor to boot or run other data. It is suggested to use a host bus adapter (HBA) supported by TrueNAS, such as an LSI/Broadcom/Avago controller from the SAS2308 or newer chipset family.

While the older SAS2008 chipset was historically recommended, recent updates to both the VMware ESXi vmkernel and the FreeBSD 13.x kernel have exposed edge-cases that may cause system instability and failure of the VM to properly claim the PCI device at boot time. TrueNAS SCALE may be less picky.

2. Choose Your Hypervisor Platform

The iXsystems development team runs TrueNAS as a VM on a daily basis. Our virtualization platform of choice remains VMware, and it’s the platform in which the TrueNAS developers have the most experience. Both TrueNAS CORE and SCALE include the VMware Guest tools as well, in order to respond gracefully to shutdown requests from the host OS, as well as pass some information back to the hypervisor. If deploying TrueNAS for a “non-production” use case, the desktop VMware Workstation application can be used – but for a “production” VM, the requirement for PCI passthrough means the standalone ESXi hypervisor should be used instead.

Our second choice for a virtualization platform is KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) – which is also the hypervisor layer implemented into TrueNAS SCALE, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, and Proxmox VE. While TrueNAS has no built-in guest tools installed for this hypervisor, you can still have a solid virtualization experience regardless.

Other hypervisors such as FreeBSD’s bhyve, Citrix’s Xen, and Microsoft’s Hyper-V may also work, but the development team does not test with or use them on a daily basis.

Regardless of the hypervisor solution you choose, ensure that you follow the vendor’s guidance regarding hardware selection and configuration. Running the hypervisor on a physical hardware solution that is supported by the vendor’s Hardware Compatibility List or similar reference document is strongly encouraged, especially if running a “Production” TrueNAS VM is desired.

3. Virtualizing ZFS

The ZFS file system used by TrueNAS combines the roles of RAID controller, volume manager, and file system all into a single software component. ZFS expects direct access to your disks in order to work properly, in order to issue direct SCSI or SATA commands and receive an expected and predictable response. The closer you can get TrueNAS to your storage hardware, the happier it is, and the better it can do its job of keeping your data safe.

Hypervisor-backed virtual disks or hardware RAID controllers provide a “translation layer” to the disks, and therefore should be avoided for the data disks. TrueNAS boot devices are an exception, and can be stored on a hypervisor virtual disk safely – but it is suggested to create two identical volumes and use the TrueNAS installer to mirror these within the guest OS as well. Ensure that the underlying physical storage backing these hypervisor virtual disks is sufficiently redundant as well.

4. Configuring your Virtual Hardware

For a non-production TrueNAS VM, the minimum hardware requirements for TrueNAS will suffice, but when assigning resources to a production instance, some suggestions apply.

4.1 Select the proper Guest OS in the hypervisor

The virtual hardware presented to a VM is often dependent on the “Guest OS” selected. If possible, choose the matching OS based on the TrueNAS version:

TrueNAS CORE: FreeBSD 13.x (64-bit)
TrueNAS SCALE: Debian Linux 11 “Bullseye” (64-bit)

Do not select a “Linux” guest OS for TrueNAS CORE and do not select a “Windows” guest OS for either CORE or SCALE. “Other OS” can be selected for CORE if FreeBSD is not present, and “Other Linux” can be selected for SCALE.

TrueNAS contains the VMware Tools add-on, with support for the vmxnet3 drivers. These are suggested over the emulated E1000 Intel card.

4.2 Don’t over-assign CPU cores

For a light I/O workload, start with 2 vCPUs and provide CPU reservations or “guaranteed execution time” if you expect periods of high overall host usage in order to prevent your TrueNAS VM from becoming CPU-starved. If you expect to use iSCSI, have heavy random I/O workloads, or run compression stronger than the default LZ4 algorithm, assign 4 vCPUs. Monitor the statistics provided by your hypervisor for signs of virtual CPU exhaustion (add more cores) and co-scheduling stalls (remove CPU cores) and adjust gradually.

4.3 Assign sufficient RAM

The TrueNAS recommendations regarding sufficient RAM still apply to a VM. As a hypervisor host often contains a large amount of physical RAM, consider assigning a minimum of 16GB to the TrueNAS VM, with more added if you plan to deploy Apps or use a performance-intensive workload. Guest memory should be reserved and locked, preventing it from being shared or swapped at the hypervisor level – this is often a requirement for PCI passthrough enablement.

4.4 Enable unique ID for Virtual Disks

If deploying for non-production with multiple virtual disks, or production with virtual boot devices, TrueNAS may raise an alert that the serial numbers of the disk are not unique, often because they are missing. While an override exists in the UI to permit the use of non-unique S/N’s in a pool, this may result in unexpected behavior when attempting to import pools. It’s better to correct this at the VM level if possible. With VMware ESXi, you can set the advanced VM option disk.EnableUUID=true as described in the following knowledge base article:
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/52815

Other hypervisors such as Xen, KVM, and Hyper-V may have different capabilities and methods of setting the serial number of virtual disks.

4.5 Avoid nested virtualization

TrueNAS SCALE and CORE both offer the ability to run VMs of their own, using the KVM or bhyve hypervisor respectively. While this functionality may work with TrueNAS itself as a VM, it can be challenging to enable, support, and troubleshoot – and is outside the scope of this guide.

Using TrueNAS SCALE with Apps or containers is expected to work on a TrueNAS VM for both testing and production cases.

4.6 In a multi-socket system, be mindful of NUMA limitations

Multi-socket systems arrange CPU sockets, memory slots, and PCIe lanes into groups known as Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) nodes – communication within a node is significantly faster than communication between nodes. The benefits of spanning multiple NUMA nodes are often limited by this link.

Take the example of a system with 2x 8-core CPUs and 128GB of RAM, divided into two nodes of 8 cores + 64GB each. Assigning more than 8 cores or 64GB of RAM will cause the VM to span NUMA nodes, causing unpredictable performance if a thread is scheduled to run on a remote core or accesses a remotely-stored part of the RAM.

For similar reasons, configure your hypervisor to “pin” the VM to the NUMA node where the HBA is connected. Remote access across the node interlink for all HBA traffic can cause significant impact across the system, as periods of high I/O such as ZFS scrubs can cause congestion. Consult your vendor’s maintenance or service guide for an illustrated block diagram or PCIe slot-to-socket mapping table to identify the correct NUMA node.

Summary

If using a TrueNAS VM for “Production Data” – data that you want to keep safe and/or guarantee availability of – the only recommended approach is PCI passthrough of a TrueNAS-supported HBA. Various alternative configurations for RAID controllers (with or without “HBA Mode” or “JBOD-Like” behavior), paravirtualized disks, and local drive mapping have been proposed and often tested by community members, but the only configuration that has proven consistently reliable over the years has been full PCI passthrough.

For non-production use, research and development, or experimentation, use your hypervisor of choice, follow the simple guidance around the guest OS, and enjoy!

Feel welcome to join the TrueNAS Community Forums and share your feedback with running TrueNAS, both the technical process of running it as a virtual instance, as well as your overall impressions of the software. As an open source product, iXsystems believes in working with the community to help make TrueNAS the best it can be.

The post Yes, You Can (Still) Virtualize TrueNAS appeared first on TrueNAS - Welcome to the Open Storage Era.