As the fourth major version of TrueNAS SCALE, 24.04 brings forward major performance improvements, new features, and expanded hardware support. Dragonfish is expected to be the best-ever TrueNAS version with significant improvements in the following areas:

Quality has been improved and demonstrated with a tremendously successful RC.1 release. Verified users of prior versions (Bluefin & Cobia) rate their experiences 4.9 out of 5.0 stars. Based upon the record number of early adopters and simultaneously low number of reported issues, we expect it to be one of the most adopted and stable releases of TrueNAS ever.

Security continues to be  enhanced through the additions of logging authorization and configuration events. SMB client auditing improves share security. NIST 800-209 security and Immutable snapshots can be enabled using Restricted Admins in the Enterprise version.

Performance has been improved through ZFS ARC changes which allow full memory utilization, identical to CORE, and improvements in ZFS read-ahead caching. These improvements allow better parallelism in the primary NFS and SMB protocols, cutting your response time down and pushing your peak bandwidth up. Metadata handling has also improved, allowing for more than 10x speedups in directory listings.

Functionality and ease-of-use continue to grow with the inclusion of SMB/NFS share wizards, reintegration of Netdata monitoring, support for SMB share importing via Syncthing, and many other features. There’s even a new community-supported feature for Linux Sandboxes, a new jail-like capability.  Explore the TrueNAS Dragonfish Documentation or the software for the other features.

With the previous Cobia release, 40% of the TrueNAS Community has adopted SCALE. Dragonfish is expected to take this to well over 50%. We’re looking forward to the Community’s feedback as we continue through release and maintenance updates.

Added Features

The Dragonfish BETA announcement listed most of the additional features in Dragonfish. A later RC1 blog highlighted the many SMB file sharing improvements. This included the introduction of wizards to improve the Share Creation workflow. Users can now add shares during dataset creation or datasets during share creation – both methods are supported.

SMB Client Auditing has been added to the TrueNAS web UI. This audit trail provides TrueNAS administrators the ability to monitor client activity graphically through Web-Driven queries, as well as exporting of reports for offline auditing compliance. Live client sessions for both the SMB and NFS file-sharing protocols can also be viewed and managed from the TrueNAS web UI, allowing you to identify which files are open and in use by connected users. Use the new Sessions icon on the Sharing screen to explore this new functionality.

Finally, because we’d like to hear the community’s thoughts on these new features and changes, a new rating and feedback system has been introduced. Using the Send Feedback button available in the top navigation bar, you can rate any TrueNAS web UI page, report a bug, and suggest a new feature or improvement for inclusion into TrueNAS, all from the comfort of your TrueNAS web UI. Integrated screenshot functionality and collection of debug files are also available.

New Hardware Support

TrueNAS SCALE 24.04 includes support for the newest member of the TrueNAS Enterprise family, the versatile H-Series. With dual controllers for high-availability, the H-Series brings five-nines uptime to the Edge segment, letting small and medium enterprises benefit from the same time-tested OpenZFS filesystem and familiar TrueNAS management interface. TrueNAS SCALE 24.04 is available for all hardware offered by iXsystems, from compact and affordable Mini systems up to the all-NVMe TrueNAS F-Series.

Join the Growing SCALE Community

With the release of TrueNAS SCALE 24.04, there’s never been a better time to join the growing TrueNAS community. Download the SCALE 24.04 installer or upgrade from within the TrueNAS web UI today, and experience True Data Freedom for yourself.  Then, make sure you’ve signed up for the newly relaunched TrueNAS Community Forums to share your experience.

The post Enter the Dragonfish: TrueNAS Brings Performance Gains and Tightens Security appeared first on TrueNAS - Welcome to the Open Storage Era.

Achieving RELEASE Status

Our primary objective is to advance each version of TrueNAS to RELEASE status, optimized with the maximum number of useful features and the minimum number of bugs possible. RELEASE status means that the software has passed rigorous testing and is deemed stable for general use. To reach this milestone, we initiate a Release Candidate (RC) process for each version, during which the software is deemed functionally complete and subjected to intensive testing. We gauge the quality of our RC versions by two key metrics: the growing number of RC users and the declining number of bug reports.

TrueNAS 24.04: A Marked Increase in Early Adoption

The BETA phase for Dragonfish (SCALE 24.04) began in early February. Four weeks ago, we released Dragonfish-RC.1, which has already outperformed all previous CORE and SCALE versions. As seen in the chart below, it has attracted nearly ten times the number of early users compared to TrueNAS 13.0, our most popular version to date.

TrueNAS 24.04 had 10X Early Users of TrueNAS 13.0

Dragonfish (SCALE 24.04) started its BETA in early February. The latest Dragonfish-RC.1 version has been available for 4 weeks and has far surpassed all other CORE and SCALE versions, growing almost 10x in early users over TrueNAS 13.0, the most widely used version today.

Driven by Quality Assurance

While new features are always exciting, they can introduce bugs. Our significant quality improvements are a direct result of four strategic enhancements:

With record level usage, we have only seen a small fraction of the bug reports. The official RELEASE, SCALE 24.04.0, will be available next week. We are eager to receive and share the early adopter feedback.

Quality Assurance (QA) infrastructure: From tiny 1 TB VMs to Minis, R-Series, and F-Series, all the way to a large 1200-drive M60, our QA infrastructure has grown by tenfold with the build-out of the TrueNAS Innovation Center (TIC) in Tennessee.

Automated testing: The QA team has greatly increased the number of automated tests for each release. The automation includes functional testing, UI testing, performance testing, and failure testing for our HA systems. In each two-week sprint, we perform over 10,000+ tests.

Better user feedback: Built into the Dragonfish WebUI are bug-reporting capabilities that can capture debugs and screenshots for more straightforward diagnosis.

More early users: With 10x the number of early users, we get quality feedback almost 10x faster. This gives us more time to fix issues and more confidence in the quality at an earlier stage of development. We deeply appreciate our TrueNAS community for their invaluable contributions through testing and feedback.

In addition, we are delighted to report that the major components that make up TrueNAS, such as OpenZFS, SAMBA, and Linux, have all proven to be of the highest quality for this release. We are happy to continue contributing to the Open Source ecosystem with bug fixes and improvements alike!

The other evidence of the quality improvements has been the impressively positive verified customer reviews for TrueNAS in the distributed file system and object storage category, where Bluefin and Cobia users rate their experience 5 stars (out of 5). While those ratings also encompass their experiences with our  Sales and Support teams, they surely would not be possible without excellent software quality. Currently, we have no service-impacting software issues in our 5,000+ Enterprise accounts.

We at iX wish to thank our phenomenal Engineering / QA teams and TrueNAS community testers for all the significant efforts going into Dragonfish. And we are still just getting started.

We are immensely grateful to our TrueNAS community for their dedication to testing and providing feedback.

Continuous Improvement with TrueNAS 13.3

Following the release of Dragonfish (24.04), TrueNAS CORE 13.3 will undergo the same rigorous QA process, offering an easy update path for users of TrueNAS 13.0. This update benefits from proven components already used in Dragonfish, including the latest updates to OpenZFS and Samba. Despite the complexity of updating from FreeBSD 13.0 to 13.3, we are committed to ensuring a reliable process for our CORE users with a full BETA release scheduled to start in May. Nightly versions are already available for developers, and we are eager to see the engagement levels during the BETA and RC.1 phases.

Your Data, Your Way

With each new release, our focus remains unchanged: to empower you to access and manage your data exactly how you want. As TrueNAS evolves, it offers a cleaner user interface and new features such as apps and catalogs tailored to meet your needs. TrueNAS facilitates the seamless migration of storage services and VMs from CORE to SCALE, and allows for the replacement of plugins and jails with apps and sandboxes, enhancing your storage experience.

The post TrueNAS 24.04 to Achieve a New Level of Quality appeared first on TrueNAS - Welcome to the Open Storage Era.

TrueNAS SCALE Dragonfish (24.04), the fourth major version of SCALE, builds on the high availability, scale-up storage, and easy deployment of containerized applications included in Cobia (23.10). The new features of Dragonfish were previously described in the BETA announcement and demonstrated by prolific community member Tom Lawrence. These included over 1,000 improvements addressing security, auditing, cloud backup, reporting, and log management. We’re very excited that the Release version is on track for April 2024.

Major SMB Services Improvements

TrueNAS 23.10.2 has been well received by those using it, particularly those running SMB. It is our recommended version today, and provides Enterprise quality with fast failover (HA systems only), SMB file sync, and optional FIPS-grade encryption.

While Dragonfish can provide all of the standard file, block, object, and App services of Cobia, this section will focus on the improvements for SMB users of TrueNAS specifically. Whether you are running Windows, MacOS, or Linux clients, SMB has become the most commonly used file sharing protocol. Here are the primary changes coming with Dragonfish compared to Cobia and TrueNAS CORE:

Major SMB Performance Accelerations

• 10x faster server-side file copies with OpenZFS 2.2.2
• 2x increase of default ZFS ARC size to match TrueNAS CORE ZFS usage
• Better metadata management for up to 10x faster directory listings
• Improved speeds allow over 1 million files per Directory (10x increase)
• General Samba 4.19 speed improvements
• Over 3GB/s second single-client speed without SMB Multichannel

Significant SMB Server Security Improvements

• Auditing of TrueNAS UI/API events
• Audit logging of all TrueNAS system and SMB login attempts
• Vastly Improved Log management UI
• Restricted admins (system, storage, monitoring) using Directory Services (Enterprise only)
• Immutable ZFS snapshots (relies on restricted admins)
• Samba 4.19 security vulnerability fixes
• NIST 800-209 Storage Security Compliance for government/defense customers
• First-ever Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG) for TrueNAS

Advanced File Sharing Features

• Simpler SMB and NFS share creation with a wizard
• SMB auditing of client and file events (e.g., open, read, write, modify)
• FreeIPA support (open-source alternative to Active Directory)
• Syncthing importing of SMB shares from other systems with full ACLs/permissions
• Verified support for shares with mixed NFSv4 and SMB access

Automated Backup and Management

• Improved backup and setup of Cloud Sync Tasks
• Visibility into backup status on main dashboards
• Replication management via TrueCommand 3.0
• SMB session management
• Netdata reporting integrated within WebUI

The much-desired return of Netdata reporting is only possible because of its full support of Linux. Unfortunately, Netdata’s support of FreeBSD was tepid at best.

The RC1 version includes over 200 fixes to the BETA. If you’re interested in seeing the full list of improvements and fixes, check out the SCALE 24.04-RC1 Release Notes on the TrueNAS Docs site.

As with any RC1 release, we recommend that only testers and early adopters use this version until there has been more feedback from the Community. The TrueNAS Software Status Page tracks the quality and user type and usage recommendation of the release. TrueNAS SCALE 23.10.2 is recommended for nearly anyone from early-adopters to conservative users.

TrueNAS CORE 13.3 is Planned for Q2

TrueNAS SCALE is the software edition where forward-looking development takes place. Once new features and components  are tested and validated there, some are eligible for backporting to TrueNAS CORE. The focus of TrueNAS CORE continues to be sustaining storage reliability and security for existing users.

The next version of TrueNAS CORE (renamed as 13.3 to align with its FreeBSD base version) is planned for Q2 of 2024. This will include updates to ZFS as well as an upgrade of Samba to version 4.19 to maintain parity with Dragonfish. It also smoothes transitions for users from CORE to SCALE, especially for HA systems.

TrueNAS 13.0 users can easily “sidegrade” to TrueNAS SCALE Dragonfish with the primary exception being Jail users. Dragonfish includes early support for Sandboxes, offering jail-like capabilities in Linux.

TrueNAS SCALE 23.10.2 is the Current Version

TrueNAS SCALE has inherited the storage functionality and automated testing from CORE. SCALE has matured rapidly and offers a more robust app environment based on Linux Containers & KVM. TrueNAS SCALE has become the recommended version for new TrueNAS users.

The latest Cobia release, TrueNAS SCALE 23.10.2, has reached Enterprise quality and is now used by many of our largest and most conservative customers. More than 105,000 users are currently using TrueNAS SCALE and it is available for download here.

TrueNAS provides these choices and the ability to automatically migrate storage services and VMs from CORE to SCALE. Plugins and jails can be manually replaced with apps and sandboxes. We encourage anyone looking for further advice or answers to questions to visit our Community Forums or Discord Channel.

Freedom to Store What’s Valuable to You

For each new release, our focus stays the same—to provide you with the freedom to access and manipulate your data your way. As TrueNAS has evolved, it has brought a cleaner user interface with added features like apps and catalogs to serve your requirements.

We look forward to working with the TrueNAS Community to rapidly progress Dragonfish through RC1 and Release. If you have a test system, please download the Dragonfish RC1 and report any bugs you find. Our engineering team would also like to hear positive experiences from any of the new features.

The post TrueNAS SCALE Dragonfish improves SMB Services and Performance appeared first on TrueNAS - Welcome to the Open Storage Era.

TrueNAS SCALE 23.10.2 is the second maintenance update to 23.10 with over 60 improvements and bug fixes. In less than two weeks, over 20,000 users have updated with very few issues reported. We are already recommending that users update their Cobia systems to this latest release. Visit the TrueNAS Software Status Page for our most up-to-date recommendations.

The software quality of TrueNAS SCALE is now approaching the high level of TrueNAS CORE 13.0. Some of our largest Enterprise users have already sidegraded to 23.10.2 with good experience and performance results. The most significant advantages of 23.10 are:

TrueSecure features: FIPS-grade encryption and rootless administration are required for many Federally compliant use-cases.

Mixed NFSv4/SMB workloads: Consistent ACLs and file locks simplify this use-case where Linux/Unix servers and Windows clients need to use both NFS and SMB to access files on the same dataset.

Faster HA Failover: The failover process has been streamlined with VRRP to reduce times by typically 50%. Under 30 second failovers are now normal and have little impact on VMs and applications.

File Sync:  The Syncthing App can be used to sync or migrate SMB or NFS files between TrueNAS systems in real-time.

F-Series:  The all-new, all-NVMe TrueNAS F-series appliances with HA are built on TrueNAS 23.10. This high bandwidth beast is built for video-editing, AI, extreme virtualization performance, and other demanding applications. It is the industry’s fastest HA ZFS machine.

Enterprise users looking to make this transition should discuss with their iX support representatives and create a plan.

Cobia Update Improves Reporting, Privacy, and Compatibility

The Cobia 23.10.2 update is primarily focused on bug fixes and updates. Some of the highlights include:

• Linux Kernel 6.1.74
• OpenZFS 2.2.3 early patch set (fully compatible with ZFS 2.2.2)
• More accurate disk temperature and network performance reports
• Improved privacy for debug files submitted with support tickets
• Allows for larger application catalogs
• Over 60 additional bug fixes

There are still some corner-case issues with third-party Apps, GPUs and Kubernetes. These are under active investigation, and support from the Community to debug these issues is greatly appreciated. There are a wide variety of hardware and App deployment scenarios.

Most new features are now being added to Dragonfish which is well into its BETA phase. The 24.04 BETA version has over 1,000 users providing feedback and refinements that will be candidates for inclusion in the RC.1 version planned for March 2024.

More information can be found in the TrueNAS SCALE release notes. To join the over 100,000 users already using TrueNAS SCALE, download the installer here or use the System Update feature from within your existing TrueNAS install.

What TrueNAS SCALE Will Become

With the collaborative nature of open source software development as a cornerstone of iXsystems, TrueNAS SCALE will become the solution that the community wants it to be. All iXians (what we refer to ourselves at iX) are part of the community, and we rely on feature requests and feedback to provide valuable insight into the way that you, the user base, makes use of the functionality of TrueNAS to best serve your needs for True Data Freedom.

The post TrueNAS SCALE 23.10.2 delivers Enterprise Quality appeared first on TrueNAS - Welcome to the Open Storage Era.

Fast Dedup is a major overhaul of the original OpenZFS deduplication capability. One of the primary issues with traditional deduplication with ZFS has been the need to keep the deduplication hash tables in memory at all times to avoid massive performance penalties. This existing functionality led to performance challenges when scaling up capacity and usability issues during operation.

With the introduction of Fast Dedup, there have been several major innovations including:

• The size of metadata is now dynamically sized to fit in either RAM or dedicated flash devices to avoid hitting the performance penalty wall.
• The metadata structure has been completely re-engineered to enable efficient updates using a log append process, greatly improving performance for large updates such as deletions.
• The dedup table will favor dedup-able data and prune blocks that show no dedup potential.
• Combining metadata improvements with properly configured storage, including dedicated metadata flash devices, will improve the sustained dedup performance by over an order of magnitude for larger systems.

Kudos to the Development Team

Led by Allan Jude of Klara, the development team included engineers from Klara and iXsystems. The development was completed in less than a year thanks to the strong OpenZFS expertise of the team. The project was primarily sponsored by iXsystems for use in TrueNAS, the industry’s most used storage platform.

“Klara is very proud of the speed and functional quality of the Fast Dedup development.” said Allan Jude. “We look forward to completing the integration and testing work needed for this to be a standard OpenZFS capability, with no extra cost.”

By contributing the software now, Klara and iXsystems are working to ensure it will have the quality needed to be included in OpenZFS 2.3. The contributed software has gone through preliminary validation and we look forward to wider community testing. Making it available to the OpenZFS community will allow enhanced review and testing with a broader range of use cases and capacities.

“The OpenZFS Community is very excited to receive this major contribution of Fast Dedup software,” said Matt Ahrens. “Fast Dedup has been a major user desire for many years and we are pleased to see that Klara and iXsystems have developed the feature in-line with our general requirements. We look forward to testing and integrating the new software.”

OpenZFS 2.3 is expected to take most of the next nine months to mature and reach release quality and status. These Fast Dedup features will be integrated with TrueNAS SCALE “Electric Eel” along with other expected OpenZFS improvements.

TrueNAS with Fast Dedup

Test software, not to be used for production, is expected in Q2 for TrueNAS SCALE. This will allow validation of functionality and performance prior to a production release.

A formal TrueNAS release with Fast Dedup included is planned for the second half of 2024. This will be in both TrueNAS SCALE Community Edition and TrueNAS Enterprise appliances, including the TrueNAS F-Series, M-Series, and R-Series.

“Fast Dedup has been a longstanding desired feature of ZFS and TrueNAS, and can deliver 5X the usable capacity and 20X the performance.” said Kris Moore, SVP of Engineering. “These attributes will significantly improve the economics of OpenZFS storage relative to Cloud storage and proprietary storage, and our team could not be more ecstatic to see this come to fruition.”

Contact the Developers

For more information or to volunteer for the ongoing testing and validation processes, please contact one of the primary developers.

iXsystems is the company behind TrueNAS. You can make an impact in the community by getting to know TrueNAS SCALE now, developing on nightly builds in March, and testing closer to RELEASE later this year. If we can also help your company with TrueNAS Enterprise appliances, book a time to chat with a product specialist.

Klara is a leading developer of OpenZFS and FreeBSD software. Interested in Klara developing software for your OpenZFS project? Contact Klara to learn more about their offerings.

The post Fast Dedup is a Valentines Gift to the OpenZFS and TrueNAS Communities appeared first on TrueNAS - Welcome to the Open Storage Era.

Dragonfish is the alphabetical and chronological successor to SCALE 23.10, which has successfully grown the TrueNAS SCALE user base beyond 100,000 systems in less than 24 months. Dragonfish adds over 1,000 improvements with the most notable being related to security, auditing, cloud backup, reporting, and log management.

Dragonfish has been through multiple internal QA testing stages with nightly access by the development community. With this BETA release, Dragonfish has reached the point where community testers can begin to explore the new features and functionality. We expect to release Dragonfish for production in Q2 2024, as the SCALE 24.04 name (yy.mm of target release date) indicates.

TrueNAS Enterprise and associated appliances are currently based on TrueNAS 13.0 or SCALE 23.10. Dragonfish will be added as an option after its formal release in Q2 this year.

What’s New In Dragonfish?

Just another thousand improvements and fixes, of course! Rather than go through every enhancement in detail, we’ll provide a quick overview and share the specifics of key Dragonfish features in future blogs. Some of the highlights include:

Infrastructure

• Latest OpenZFS 2.2.2
• Increase of default ZFS ARC size, to match TrueNAS CORE ZFS usage
• Linux Kernel 6.6 and improved Hardware Support
• Update to NVIDIA Driver 545.23.08
• Improved Log management UI
• Apps can be restricted to read-only or write-only permissions
• Preliminary Power-User capabilities for TrueNAS Sandboxes (systemd-nspawn “jails”)

File Sharing

• Samba 4.19.3 update and speed improvements
• Simpler SMB and NFS share creation with a wizard
• SMB auditing of client and file events
• FreeIPA support (alternative to Active Directory)
• Syncthing Importing of SMB shares from other systems with full ACLs/Permissions

Cloud Backup

• Improved backup and setup of Cloud Sync Tasks
• Visibility into Backup Status on main dashboards
• iX-Storj Backup of datasets (Web UI) and zvols (CLI-only)
  • Snapshots and Deduplication of all backup data

Security

• Auditing of all UI/API events
• Audit logging of all login attempts
• Tech-Preview of Restricted admins (System, Storage) using Directory Services (Enterprise-only)
• Immutable ZFS snapshots (relies on restricted admins)

If you’re interested in seeing the full list of improvements and fixes, check out the SCALE 24.04-BETA Release Notes on the TrueNAS Docs site.

As with any BETA release, we recommend that only testers and developers use this version until there has been more feedback from the Community. The TrueNAS Software Status Page tracks the quality and user-type and usage recommendation of the release.

Dragonfish Increases SCALE ARC Sizing

After extensive testing, TrueNAS SCALE Dragonfish resolves the previous limitations around the ZFS Adaptive Replacement Cache (ARC) bringing SCALE in line with the TrueNAS CORE platform, offering significant improvements in performance and memory management. While this adjustment can be manually made in TrueNAS SCALE 23.10, Dragonfish makes it the default, allowing for greater performance of your most frequently and recently used data.

Dragonfish Uses Linux Kernel 6.6 with LTS

Each new version of TrueNAS uses the latest stable and well-supported version of the underlying OS. The decision on which version is finalized well before the 1st ALPHA software version. Linux Kernel 6.6 has its own set of improvements, plus support for new hardware.

In addition, we added the later NVIDIA 545.23.08 driver, which includes improved support for a wider range of GPUs. There will be descriptions of other features in future blogs over the next few months.

TrueNAS CORE 13.1 is Planned for Q2

TrueNAS SCALE is the software edition where new features and updated components are developed and tested. Once those are tested and validated, some are eligible for backporting to TrueNAS CORE. The focus of TrueNAS CORE continues to be ensuring storage reliability and security for existing users.

The next version of TrueNAS CORE (13.1) is planned for Q2 of 2024. This will include updates to ZFS as well as an upgrade of Samba to version 4.19, to maintain parity with Dragonfish. It also smoothes transitions for users from CORE to SCALE, especially for HA systems.

TrueNAS 13.0 users can sidegrade to TrueNAS SCALE 23.10 with the primary exception being Jail users. Dragonfish will include early support for “sandboxes”, which are jail-like capabilities using systemd nspawn containers. Thanks to the community user jip-hop for creating the jailmaker scripts.

TrueNAS SCALE 23.10.1.3 is the Current Version

TrueNAS SCALE has inherited the storage functionality and automated testing from CORE. SCALE has matured rapidly and offers a more robust apps environment based on Linux Containers & KVM. TrueNAS SCALE is generally recommended for new users that need embedded apps, and will gradually become the recommended version for all new TrueNAS users.

The latest stable release, TrueNAS SCALE 23.10.1.3, has significantly improved quality and reliability and is now used by many of our largest customers. More than 100,000 users are currently using TrueNAS SCALE and it is available for download here. There will be a TrueNAS SCALE 23.10.2 version released later in February.

TrueNAS provides these choices and the ability to automatically migrate storage services and VMs from CORE to SCALE. Plugins and jails can be manually replaced with apps. We encourage anyone looking for further advice or answers to questions to visit our Community Forums or Discord Channel.

Freedom to Store What’s Valuable to You

For each new release, our focus stays the same—to provide you with the freedom to access and manipulate your data your way. As TrueNAS has evolved, it has brought a cleaner user interface with added features like apps and catalogs to serve your requirements.

We look forward to working with the TrueNAS Community to rapidly progress Dragonfish through BETA to RC1 and Release. If you have a test system, please and report any bugs you find. Our engineering team would also like to hear positive experiences from any of the new features.

The post TrueNAS SCALE Dragonfish Reaches BETA appeared first on TrueNAS - Welcome to the Open Storage Era.

By keeping it closed, vendors can ensnare customers into a more resource-intensive and expensive model while promising that solutions will be forthcoming. Their goal is to grow fast, improve margins, and extract the maximum customer revenues by preventing alternatives from getting a foothold.

This has been the storage model for decades. Where there had only been proprietary solutions before, Open Infrastructure has become the dominant model for operating systems (Linux), containers (Kubernetes), databases (NoSQL) and many more layers of the stack. So, why has the model for storage remained unchanged when the rest of IT infrastructure has evolved beyond it?

The Open Source Choice

By contrast, Open Storage is built around a mindset of abundance, where the best products and user experience win in the marketplace. The combination of an open-source community, customers, and vendor support yields a confluence of innovation that no lone source could provide.

At iXsystems, we seek to give our customers more choice in how they can store, access, and manipulate their data. We call this Data Freedom, which we define as: what all organizations ultimately want and expect from storage: flexibility and choice. In other words, the freedom to go faster, lower infrastructure costs, and reduce operational effort. In our model, the only “lock-in” we strive for is a user and customer experience so gratifying that customers don’t ever need or want to leave.

Rising Costs

Odds are you’ve seen articles and discussions of increasing hardware prices. Here are two recent examples highlighting expectations that storage will be more expensive in 2024 than it was in 2023:

• Market Anticipates a 50% Price Surge for NAND Flash in Short-Term
• Prices Rise as IT Spending Trends Upward for Servers, Storage

There is no more serious business than protecting data thus storage is naturally the last place where anyone would want to skimp. Vendors prey on this emotion, persuading customers that the value they claim is worth paying more for, and the only way you can be successful. But, the reality is, the “big” brands charge more because they must. Their business model relies on meeting Wall Street and investor expectations, where growth and profit are the only measures.

Alternatives are bad for the status quo, especially when an alternative is rated equally or more highly. One way for an alternative to rate more highly is to be focused on delivering what the customer wants/needs as opposed to the vendors’ business model.

What Can I Control?

If you are part of the selection process for infrastructure vendors, what’s most under your control is your “short list”. Alternative brands often cost less as they are in a “challenger” position against the leading brand. Any organization has the option to consider “challenger” brands and non-commercial tools. What might have been the best or only choice in the past, might not be the best one today.

While broadening the list of choices, new requirements can also be added in the spirit of “skating to where the puck is going”. Don’t plan based upon the past, rather envision what your future will bring. You have the power to ensure your investments today will align with the future of both the market and your data center infrastructure.

Where Is The Puck Going?

The best choice today is storage that is compatible with, and optimized, for where the market is going. The good news is that the marketplace trajectory is becoming more flexible in its deployment options, more capable by including functionality , more open in its development model, all while delivering better value overall to those deploying it.

According to research, analysts recommend that organizations explore the emergence of the “edge storage platform” (ESP). The ESP is where data manipulation and transformation at the edge will create value most quickly. As part of the larger “universal storage platform” (USP) architecture that unites edge, cloud, and core data centers, ESPs are best optimized for certain workloads, use cases, and data service management methods.

These requirements are different from traditional and legacy data center models and must include:

• Flexibility to scale up and down cost-effectively
• Software-defined storage with self-healing technology
• Support for Block, File, Object, and App storage with Kubernetes
• Centralized data management
• Data transfer/transformation optimization

It will be interesting to see how the definition of “storage” evolves over time. One thing is for sure, traditional storage vendors face a significant challenge in meeting these new requirements.

The Elephant in the Room

If I am not paying for it, how can I trust it will not fail? This is a very human reaction. No one has ever lost their job for choosing a top-branded, premium-positioned solution when it inevitably suffers a fault. After all, your data is priceless and the best solutions are always costly, so your storage should be expensive, right?

Mathematically, how can you calculate the currency-equivalent value for reliable storage solution operations if its software is open source and freely distributed at no cost? Your high school math teacher stated that anything divided by zero is undefined; that sounds risky. Perhaps it might be best to take a different perspective when considering value creation for storage.

Same Outcome, Lower Cost

Generic medicines are considered by most (including regulators) to be “as effective” as Big Pharma offerings with the same active ingredients. Packaging, marketing, sales, etc. are very different for a leading brand as they have market position to protect and stakeholders to appease. None of this impacts the efficacy of the medication, but it does affect the sales price.

Just as being free is not a disqualifier for having value, lower-cost open products should not be presumed to be of lower quality by design. Challengers streamline or reduce much of the cost structure to deliver an equivalent product at a lower price point. We are champions of open infrastructure. Read more about how iXsystems passes these savings on to our customers.

Experience it for Yourself

The Open Source model has many advantages in reducing software development costs. It can even bring features to fruition more rapidly as community members assist in the development effort. This is a fundamentally different approach that delivers greater value at lower expense while providing what customers want in their storage solution.

Sounds too good to be true? We encourage you to experience TrueNAS for yourself today (download TrueNAS here), listen to what our customers are saying on Gartner’s Website, or if you’re storing critical data, feel free to schedule a call with one of our helpful Solution Advisors.

Still curious about why we do what we do? Check out this video with some of the faces behind TrueNAS, sharing their perspectives on what it is like for iXians to come to work every day and deliver TrueNAS to the world.

The post Why Traditional Enterprise Storage is So Expensive appeared first on TrueNAS - Welcome to the Open Storage Era.

At iXsystems, we do not answer to the same Wall Street or Venture Capital stakeholders that other vendors do. This allows us to focus exclusively on making our customers successful, powered by our core value to always “think people before profit”.

The benefits of our Open Source business model are no secret. They are simply unique to iXsystems in the Enterprise Storage market. We leverage open source development, non-traditional tactics, and the energy and engagement of the massive TrueNAS Community to help deliver products rated higher on Gartner than our competition. Collectively, this gives iXsystems an unfair and sustainable advantage in delighting customers while charging less to deliver positive outcomes.

Simply put—our model requires far fewer resources, and we pass those savings on to our customers. We charge less.

How It Works

Compared to iXsystems, traditional data storage vendors are forced to maintain outsized corporate overheads — both in terms of expense and effort — just to keep their technology closed, patented, and to capture 100% of the value they create.

We carry none of that burden, which enables us to be more nimble and efficient. Here’s how that works and how it benefits our customers:

Community – Community is the special ingredient. We are grateful to be stewards of the TrueNAS Open Source project. Consider the unique combination of TrueNAS community and users; iXsystems and partners; customers; and non-paying users. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and contributions from the Community bring enormous value. With iXsystems’ contributions and the incredible Community, this enables agility, investment, and innovation to TrueNAS that no proprietary company could emulate.

Software Development – Plain and simple, making software that is proprietary and closed-source requires more effort, resources, and money than open-source development. Most storage vendors also have multiple code bases, further compounding this disadvantage, while iXsystems has one open-source code base to maintain and grow. This common code base includes many other open-source elements (e.g., OpenZFS), which expands the community of talented Engineers directly contributing to TrueNAS, further reducing costs.

Product Management – Unlike other enterprise storage vendors, iXsystems does not invest in efforts to lock in customers; we do the very opposite by making TrueNAS as open, compatible, interoperable, and easy to leave as possible. However, we believe that once you experience TrueNAS, you won’t want to leave. We don’t have complex software licensing, and our appliances can run the latest software for years, long after the hardware is depreciated — a sustainability practice we fully encourage! At iXsystems, there are zero development cycles spent on planned obsolescence.

Security – TrueNAS is Open Source and therefore transparent by default, with broader user coverage and more eyeballs on the code, thereby leveraging massive user communities to help uncover, alert, and respond to security vulnerabilities. This enables code fixes much faster than proprietary vendors who can only rely on internal resources or respond only after the vulnerability has impacted their customers. Additional security enhancements (e.g. FIPS 140) are available with TrueNAS Enterprise appliances.

Quality – This is another area where the Community makes a huge difference. At a fraction of the investment, Quality Assurance for TrueNAS software takes less time, money, and resources, all while providing more complete test coverage. When a version is declared ready for general use, it has benefitted from extensive community testing. TrueNAS sees faster bug reporting/testing and a more rapid access to new features and fixes than other vendors (who often use their first customer shipments as QA) because of the feedback from the community.

Interoperability – Being open also makes iX a very easy company for other software vendors to partner with, as they need no demo units or non-disclosure agreements to test that their technology works well with TrueNAS.

Documentation – Like Quality, many hands make for light work. By the time a release is recommended for general use, documentation has been reviewed by thousands, accelerating the process of ensuring accuracy.

Intellectual Property – Effort is required to protect technology for maximum profit. iXsystems spends no energy on patents, choosing instead to focus resources on value creation rather than blocking innovation.

Sales – TrueNAS Community Edition software is free to try and use, and has been shown to run on almost any x86 hardware, or can be spun up easily in a VM. As such, we encourage audiences to try it for themselves without any involvement from a sales team. Our experts at iX then help customers identify the optimal configuration of TrueNAS Enterprise appliance(s) for important storage applications.

Marketing – Where our competition spends money on marketing, we instead spend on developing free software that delights our users. Word of mouth is the original marketing tactic and the goodwill we invest in the TrueNAS community results in outsized awareness. With more than 15 million downloads and more than a half million active community members, appreciative users write blogs and how-to content, influencers create videos, and hundreds of thousands of community members tell others about their positive experiences with TrueNAS.

Sustainability – Most storage vendors rely on forced obsolescence to maintain growth. At the end of its supported life, most IT infrastructure is scrapped and not recycled, let alone reused. With TrueNAS software, organizations can repurpose infrastructure beyond its normal life and extract more value from it. After 3-7 years of mission-critical duty, appliances from iXsystems can remain updated with the latest software and transition to a less critical storage role for many years while positively impacting sustainability and financial efficiency.

How This Benefits YOU

“Value” means receiving the most for your dollar. However, most traditional vendors use the word “value” in the context of justifying why it’s worthwhile to pay more for their product. At iX, we don’t have to contort the definition of the word into something it’s not. Our goal in creating TrueNAS was to allow our customers to receive more from our products while also paying less — the true meaning of value as far as we’re concerned.

Experience it for Yourself

We encourage you to experience True Data Freedom for yourself today (download TrueNAS here), see what our customers are saying on Gartner’s Website, or if you’re storing critical data, feel free to schedule a call with one of our helpful Product Experts.

Still curious about why we do what we do? Check out this video with some of the faces behind TrueNAS, sharing their perspectives on what it is like for iXians to come to work every day and deliver TrueNAS to the world.

The post How TrueNAS Delivers Unbeatable Value 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.

TrueNAS SCALE 23.10.1 includes almost 200 bug fixes and improvements, including a fix for the 15-year-old ZFS bug that was recently discovered. There are several improvements to GPU isolation handling, and the ‘statistics export’ API to Graphite has been reactivated. SCALE users can now make use of Apps such as Grafana and Prometheus for additional real-time monitoring and reporting of their TrueNAS statistics.

Please read the release notes before updating. This update is recommended for early adopters until there has been more testing and feedback from the Community. Visit the TrueNAS Software Status Page for our most up-to-date recommendations.

TrueNAS Enterprise appliances with 23.10.1 begin shipping in early 2024. These include the following TrueNAS appliances:

• F-Series: New high-performance, all-NVMe HA systems
• M-Series: Scalable systems with HA supporting up to 25PB
• X-Series: 2U energy-efficient HA systems
• R-Series: Single controller systems with the lowest price per TB
• Mini Series: Ultra-quiet systems for home and SMB / SME

Major Features in TrueNAS SCALE 23.10 Release

Highlights of the all-new features in SCALE 23.10 include:

SMB

• SMB and NFSv4 Compatibility
• SMB Share import
• SMB File Sync
• Fast File Copy
• SMB Performance and Scalability
• Samba security updates

Infrastructure

• Linux Kernel 6.1 and improved hardware support
• NVIDIA 535.54.03 driver updates
• Netdata backend stats collection
• Scale up to 1200 drives and 25 PB+ on a single system

Web Interface

• Improved Apps UI
• Improved Storage Pool UI
• Simplified feedback and bug reporting

ZFS & Performance Improvements

• OpenZFS 2.2.2 with many iXsystems contributions
• ZFS Block Cloning (type of deduplication) for faster SMB & NFS file copies
• ZFS dRAID Pool Layouts
• Pause / Unpause ZFS Scrub Controls
• Reduction of HA failover times by up to 70%

NVMe Platforms

• All-new F-Series NVMe HA platforms
• iSCSI improvements including ALUA support
• Sub 20 Second HA failover times
• General improvements in NVMe performance and management

TrueNAS SCALE “Cobia” 23.10 completed a very successful BETA, RC.1 cycle, and Release cycle. We wish to recognize and thank the more than 30,000 community members who have provided invaluable feedback. Many users have found the new bug reporting and webUI feedback built into Cobia to be very user friendly.

In addition, TrueCommand 3.0 has been released and includes full support for TrueNAS SCALE 23.10. It is available as a self-hosted container or hosted subscription service. To learn more about TrueCommand’s ability to manage your TrueNAS system fleet, visit https://www.truenas.com/truecommand/ and get started with your first 50 drives for free.

TrueNAS 13.1 Will Inherit Some Cobia Improvements

In addition, TrueNAS 13.1 is planned to follow with a release in early 2024. This update will include the many SMB and ZFS improvements that have been implemented and tested in TrueNAS SCALE Cobia. Nightly versions are available for testers and those who wish to help contribute to TrueNAS development. The link to the nightly versions can be found on the TrueNAS Software Status Page.

TrueNAS 13.1 includes additional features to simplify “sidegrading” from TrueNAS 13.1 to TrueNAS SCALE 23.10, especially for Enterprise HA systems. Additional information will be available for TrueNAS 13.1 when it reaches BETA status.

TrueNAS SCALE 23.10 is now the Default for SCALE

TrueNAS SCALE inherited storage functionality and automated testing from CORE. Based on Linux, KVM, and Kubernetes, SCALE offers a more robust environment for apps. To join the >100,000 users already using TrueNAS SCALE, download the installer here or use the System Update feature from within your existing TrueNAS install.

Work has already begun on the next TrueNAS SCALE release, codenamed “Dragonfish”. There will be updates on this plan in February 2024.

TrueNAS provides these choices and the ability to automatically migrate storage services and VMs from CORE to SCALE. Plugins and jails in CORE can be manually replaced with Apps in SCALE. We encourage anyone looking for further advice or answers to questions to visit our Community Forums or Discord Channel.

The post TrueNAS SCALE 23.10 has the Fastest Growth Ever appeared first on TrueNAS - Welcome to the Open Storage Era.