TrueCommand has been the multi-system manager for TrueNAS for nearly three years. As planned, it is evolving to also manage TrueNAS SCALE clusters, and now makes use of additional TrueNAS SCALE 22.02.2 APIs for Gluster and Clustered SMB with the availability of TrueCommand 2.2.
With over 8,000 deployments, TrueCommand simplifies the operation and management of numerous TrueNAS CORE, Enterprise, or SCALE systems. It collects usage and performance data, as well as alerts. It uses predictive analytics and understands ZFS concepts, including VDEVs and horizontal scaling. Even in single system scenarios, TrueCommand provides monitoring and fault diagnosis capabilities that can be quite useful.
TrueCommand 2.2 is another major step in improvements for TrueCommand. There are over 180 bug fixes, improvements, and features. The most notable changes are:
- Reworked Stats engine: Moving from influx to rrd files makes TrueCommand more robust and able to run with a much smaller memory footprint. The reliability of TrueCommand Cloud for larger deployments has also increased. TrueCommand 2.2 will auto-migrate the configuration and stats database when it first boots up.
- Improved Middleware: Better error handling and testing frameworks can ensure increased quality in the future.
- Improved Certificate handling: Several certificate issues have been identified and resolved. These fixes should simplify deployments.
Clustered Improvements and SMB support: The TrueCommand UI now allows the creation of multiple clustered volumes, as well as exposing a clustered volume via SMB sharing protocol. These can be used with TrueNAS SCALE 22.02.2 (or later). A screenshot/video of a TrueNAS SCALE SMB cluster is provided below.
Click image for video Demo of TrueCommand 2.2
TrueCommand has been thoroughly tested with TrueNAS 13.0. TrueNAS 13.0-U1 has scalability improvements that ensure larger systems can be safely deployed with TrueCommand, as demonstrated on a 20 PB test system with 1,200 18TB drives in the iX lab.
IPv6 support on TrueCommand 2.2 is now being tested. Consider this a BETA feature and please provide any feedback.
The Docker version of TrueCommand 2.2 is available for free download. TrueCommand remains free for systems with less than 50 drives. Software and support licenses are available for larger deployments via the iX portal or by contacting iXsystems.
TrueCommand Cloud, a SaaS version, is also available. Existing TrueCommand Cloud accounts will be gradually updated as we ensure quality. Let us know if you want to be updated early in the process. TrueCommand Cloud itself will be running on a TrueNAS SCALE cluster in our data center.
The team is now beginning to work on TrueCommand 2.3. Anticipated Key features will be more advanced cluster controls, including node replacement and repair, improved performance monitoring, and support for the upcoming TrueNAS SCALE Bluefin release.
Thanks to all those that tested and provided feedback to get to this stage. As always, we appreciate feedback and bug reports for this TrueCommand 2.2 release.