Our move represents more than just a technological upgrade; it’s a commitment to building an even more inclusive, welcoming, and collaborative space for everyone who uses TrueNAS.

So Why the Change?

Our previous forum platform (XenForo) served us well but had limitations that became increasingly apparent. We needed a platform that would be able to scale with our growing community, one that encourages deeper engagement and fosters a more connected and organized experience.

Welcome to the New Home of the TrueNAS Community

Discourse offers a wealth of features and functionalities that will empower our community:

• Modern interface: Intuitive and user-friendly, making it easier for newcomers to navigate and find the information they need.
• Advanced search: Quickly find relevant discussions and topics, saving valuable time.
• Upvoting and flagging: Democratize content discovery and promote helpful and informative contributions.
• Badges and reputation system: Recognize and reward active community members, fostering a sense of belonging and contribution.
• Integrations: Seamlessly connect with other platforms and tools, enhancing the collaborative experience.
• New system sharing tool (coming soon): We’re preparing a tool that can help you automatically generate your system specifications and configuration, whether it’s to show off your completed TrueNAS build or help with troubleshooting!

But the power of Discourse lies not just in its technology, but in its philosophy. It’s designed to promote healthy interactions, discourage trolling and negativity, automatically filter out unwanted spam, and create a welcoming environment for all voices.

Be sure to join the new TrueNAS Community today and reserve your name! Once you’ve registered, don’t forget to update your signature at https://forums.truenas.com/u/YOURUSERNAMEHERE/preferences/profile with your specs so that you can show off that data storage!

Community Means Shared Responsibility

To ensure the success of our transition and shape the future of the community, we’re forming a Community Council. This council will be composed of both iXians and dedicated community members. Together, the committee will:

• Assist in QA and development of the TrueNAS Community.
• Help establish clear guidelines and best practices for the community.
• Organize events and initiatives to promote engagement and collaboration.
• Work with iX on future development plans for the forums and products, ensuring they align with community needs.

The TrueNAS Community: Everyone is Welcome.

We want to emphasize that the TrueNAS community is everyone who uses TrueNAS. This includes:

• Experienced TrueNAS users sharing their expertise.
• Beginners looking for help and guidance.
• Developers contributing to the project.
• Enthusiasts sharing their passion and creative use cases.
• Current or future professionals who want to evaluate TrueNAS for their business.

Regardless of your background, experience, or technical knowledge, you have a valuable contribution to make. We invite you to join us on this journey.

The Road Ahead: A Long Journey with a Shared Destination

Transitioning to our platform is not a simple overnight task. Throughout the process, we’re aiming to provide clear communication, updates, and opportunities for feedback.

The future of the TrueNAS community is not solely up to iX or the Community Council; it’s also up to you, the community. By coming together, embracing open communication, and sharing our perspectives, we can continue to build a truly  exceptional community. Together we can make TrueNAS even better, one post, collaboration, and innovation at a time.

Join us on this exciting journey as we work together to shape the future of the TrueNAS community. Let’s make it a space where everyone feels welcome, empowered, and inspired to contribute their unique voice.

Welcome to the future. Welcome to the TrueNAS community!

The post The Future of the TrueNAS Community: Shaping Our Destiny Together 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.

The results from 741 respondents, across the TrueNAS forums, subreddit, and various social media revealed that 58.8% of participants were considering KVM-based hypervisors as their top choice. Following behind were Microsoft’s Hyper-V with 11.9% and Xen-based hypervisors with 11.5%. Additionally, 17.8% of respondents were considering staying with VMware at its higher cost. Notably, these responses show a gravitation towards open-source alternatives driven by a desire to safeguard against potential future lock-outs.

Microsoft Hyper-V

Microsoft Hyper-V is a native commercial hypervisor most commonly used for creating virtual machines on x86-64 systems running Windows. As Microsoft’s hypervisor-based virtualization platform, Hyper-V offers a solution tailored to the unique demands of Windows environments. This integration facilitates management and interoperability with various Microsoft technologies, including native support for Windows Server features such as Active Directory, PowerShell, and System Center.

In addition to its strong ties with Windows Server, Hyper-V also extends its support to Linux virtual machines, making it a choice for heterogeneous environments.
Learn more about using Hyper-V with TrueNAS

KVM-Based

KVM, or “Kernel-based Virtual Machine”, is a free and open-source module for the Linux kernel that allows the Linux kernel to act as a hypervisor. Initially released in 2007, KVM has been leveraged by multiple virtualization products, including as the integrated hypervisor within TrueNAS SCALE. Open hypervisor choices include OpenShift, oVirt, and Proxmox. KVM is also used as the basis for some commercial hypervisors, such as the Nutanix Acropolis HyperVisor (AHV). In the community survey, Proxmox was the most common KVM-based choice.

KVM can be deployed as part of an integrated hypervisor such as Proxmox, or used as an underlying component of a more customized solution. While KVM itself is free and open source, some solutions that integrate it may offer professional paid support plans, and different suites of tools for creating, configuring, and managing virtual machines.
Learn more about using KVM-based hypervisors with TrueNAS

Xen-Based

Like KVM, Xen is a free and open-source hypervisor, originally developed by the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory. Xen is used as the basis for both fully open source products such as XCP-ng, as well as in commercial products like Oracle’s VM Server and Citrix’s XenServer. In the survey, XCP-ng was the most common Xen-based choice.

Similarly to KVM, some Xen-based hypervisors are available as purely free open source software, with the option of paid support plans such as XCP-ng. Xen also has additional management planes beyond the built-in web UI, including Xen Orchestra, to aid in the administration of clustered systems.
Learn more about using Xen-based hypervisors with TrueNAS

TrueNAS: Compatible with Any Hypervisor

With features such as ZFS, replication, and snapshotting, TrueNAS ensures data integrity, availability, and protection for virtualized environments. Supporting block and file, TrueNAS is flexible enough to fit seamlessly into your existing virtualization infrastructure and can be tuned to meet even your most demanding performance needs.

This means whether you’re using VMware, Hyper-V, KVM, or any other hypervisor, TrueNAS offers compatibility and freedom of choice, so you can have the flexibility you need without the barriers commonly associated with proprietary locked-in solutions.

To find a virtualization solution that is perfect for your environment, start by checking out the Community’s recommendations on our newly-created community section “TrueNAS as VM Storage”, complete with use case and licensing information for each solution.

New to TrueNAS? The TrueNAS SCALE Evaluation Guide offers a step-by-step breakdown, from the initial boot to replication, enabling you to navigate TrueNAS with confidence. Once up and running, you can explore deeper with virtualization tutorials available in TrueNAS documentation. With TrueNAS Community insights and practical guidance at your fingertips, you’ll be better equipped to make informed decisions for virtualization and your data.

Join the Conversation

Let us know what you think! Hypervisor discussions are currently unfolding on the TrueNAS forums. Participate in the general discussion or jump into the thread to discuss the hypervisor you are considering. There is a thriving community rallying around Open-Source platforms powered by TrueNAS, sharing invaluable support and insights. Join the conversation today to offer your perspectives, experiences, or questions about VMware alternatives.

The post Beyond VMware: Exploring Virtualization Alternatives 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.

Like other TrueNAS Enterprise appliances, the TrueNAS F-Series supports file, block, and object protocols and provides all the rich OpenZFS data management capabilities. All appliances can be provided with iXsystems’ award-winning enterprise support.

The TrueNAS F-Series has two models to choose from:

• F100 – Up to 24 NVMe Gen4 SSDs per 2U system for 720TB, up to 30GB/s bandwidth per node with 6x 40/100 GbE optical NICs, 800W typical power draw
• F60 – Up to 24 NVMe Gen4 SSDs per 2U system for 720TB, up to 20GB/s bandwidth per node with 4x 40/100 GbE optical NICs, 800W typical power draw

The new F-Series models are ideal for data-intensive use cases, including AI/ML, containerization, content creation, database servers, gaming, virtualization, and more. The new series has been eagerly awaited by TrueNAS Enterprise customers in government, healthcare, service providers, media creation, higher education, and other organizations in need of high-performance storage for their critical data.

TrueNAS F-Series appliances ship with the latest version of TrueNAS software, TrueNAS Enterprise 23.10. These all-NVMe models were designed for maximum performance, reliability, and density to serve the most demanding workloads. Compared to prior models from iX, the F-Series offers significant reductions in all-flash power, space, and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

The next-generation hardware design supports up to 24 dual-ported Gen 4 NVMe SSDs.  With 30TB NVMe drives, a single 2U system can support up to 720TB of highly available storage.  A companion NVMe expansion shelf support arrives later in 2024 which will enable the F-Series to scale beyond 3.5PB.

TrueNAS F-Series Storage Highlights:

• High-Performance: NVMe-powered storage for low latency and bandwidths up to 30GB/s reads.
• High Availability: Dual-controller architecture provides continuous accessibility, preventing data downtime.
• Superior Scalability: The F-Series easily scales from tens of terabytes to 720TB in 2U, meeting a wide range of user requirements.
• Maximum Data Mobility: The TrueNAS F-Series provides a vast array of replication and data mobility options to maximize flexibility in data workflows.
• Future-Ready Design: Built for modern business applications and related performance challenges.

The New TrueNAS Enterprise Portfolio

TrueNAS appliances deliver unified storage and apps in a pre-configured system with technical support services from iX that have earned among the highest net-promoter scores in the industry, as scored by iX customers. These appliances offer additional software capabilities such as High Availability (HA), enclosure management, advanced security, and proactive support. TrueNAS Enterprise appliances have earned 4.9 / 5.0 stars and recognition as a 2023 Customer Choice for Primary Storage in North America from businesses of all sizes on Gartner Peer Insights.

The TrueNAS M-Series remains the versatile and high-capacity system for hybrid flash and HDD requirements in the portfolio. The M-Series and F-Series systems both run the same TrueNAS Enterprise 23.10 software with compatible features and a common WebUI. All TrueNAS systems can be monitored and managed as a fleet using TrueCommand. TrueNAS Enterprise F-Series appliances start at $60,000 with dual controllers and 1 year Bronze Support. All models are available immediately. For more information, please contact iX.

The post The New Performance Flagship: TrueNAS F-Series 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.

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