Electric Eel emerged into the BETA stage on August 29th. In the last four weeks, a record number of users have volunteered to test Electric Eel and explore the new Docker-powered App capabilities. The Electric Eel uptake rate is over 3X Dragonfish and over 10X the 13.3 BETA versions.
The BETA process has proven that in-place App migration from Kubernetes to Docker will work for the existing catalog applications, with user data preserved. As of RC1, we have reached 100% in the Porting and Migration progress, as tracked on our GitHub Apps page. All previous Apps have been ported for new installs under the Docker framework, and users with existing Kubernetes-based installations from Dragonfish can automatically migrate during the TrueNAS upgrade process. Shout-out to our amazing Apps engineering team, as well as the community members who helped us test the migration processes during BETA. With this important migration milestone reached, we can now turn our attention to adding new Apps and Features in the coming months.
In addition to achieving parity between the old and new App catalogs, Custom Apps deployed under Dragonfish and earlier as Docker images can now be migrated to the native Docker framework in Electric Eel. More advanced settings such as manually installed Docker provisioning in a systemd-nspawn container using the community Jailmaker will need to be manually migrated.
What’s new in Electric Eel RC.1
We’d like to extend our thanks to our community members who jumped into the BETA release with both feet, eagerly testing, reporting, and helping us correct bugs. Our first BETA version was a success, and today’s RC.1 has 200 additional fixes and improvements.
Building on our community feedback, the engineering team has made several major improvements and has now completed the Electric Eel feature set. New functionality and changes in 24.10-RC.1 include:
- Login Alerts on root/admin user login or attempted login
- App logs are better captured and displayed in the UI
- Improved App Info cards (now with links)
- App Utilization (CPU/Memory/Network/Disk IO) displayed on the Apps page
- New Dashboard is completed with better mobile support. The legacy “Old Dashboard” has been removed.
- Custom App YAML Editor allows for custom application configurations to be deployed. (If a GUI is desired, we suggest deploying the built-in Portainer App.)
- Custom App Migration is enabled for users who deployed Docker images in Dragonfish and earlier using the “Custom App” UI option
- NVIDIA drivers are now handled in a more modular manner, and can be installed dynamically post-installation
Install the new modular NVIDIA drivers from the Apps -> Settings Page in 24.10
One of the major anticipated features of the Docker framework in Electric Eel that users have expressed interest in is the YAML editor for advanced Apps configuration. In 24.10-RC.1, the Custom App YAML editor now allows more complex Apps to be created and deployed through editing of the configuration file. For RC1, the ability to allocate a unique IP address for an installed App is not yet present. This functionality is planned as an App infrastructure update after the RELEASE version of Electric Eel is completed.
With BETA completed and now RC.1 released, the total feature set of Electric Eel can be summarized. We’re looking forward to more feedback (and bug reports!) from our community.
You can look forward to more blog posts and emails highlighting these new features and upgrades in 24.10 – while many of them are already present in RC.1, some of these features won’t be ready until RELEASE, while others such as Fast Deduplication are labeled as Experimental and should be handled with care by early adopters and testers only.
With Electric Eel now feature-complete, the TrueNAS engineering team is focused on the development of the next release, “Fangtooth” in mid 2025. More information will be available at the end of 2024. Many thanks to those who submitted, and voted for, the Feature Requests that have already been adopted. If you have a specific feature or functionality that you feel would benefit TrueNAS, please feel free to submit it on our Community Forums, and vote for other suggested features to help us enhance 24.10 and beyond.
When Should I Migrate?
If you are deploying a new TrueNAS system, we recommend TrueNAS SCALE Dragonfish 24.04.2.2 for:
- Added functionality over CORE
- Vastly broader hardware support
- Expanded App catalog (which will migrate to Electric Eel)
- Sandboxes provide jail-like capabilities using systemd containers
- Better performance on most workloads
- Improved web UI makes managing TrueNAS easier than ever
Dragonfish users can easily update to Electric Eel RC.1 when desired, but at this point we only recommend it for early adopters. We recommend users review the TrueNAS Software Status page for advice.
If you’re ready to explore the Electric Eel Release Candidate, grab it from our downloads page now – and stay tuned for the upcoming full release!