What is the future of TrueNAS CORE?

[Juan Manuel Palacios]

ReiserFS is focused on adding jails support.

Ouuuchhh!!!

 

[QuidNYC]

Linking today's related announcement for reference:

TrueNAS CORE 13.3 Plans

Where Open Storage Began TrueNAS has come a long way and has delivered incalculable value to millions of users around the world. After nearly 20 years of evolution since its inception in 2005 as FreeNAS, TrueNAS CORE has proven to be the most reliable and highest-quality platform for traditional...

www.truenas.com

 

[make-nz]

Wish this thread-topic was a easy to come to rescue to… maybe by a noble knight on a shark.

Long live the nobel knight on his shark, I pledged my allegiance ten years ago and stand by it till death do us part.

 

[l@e]

At the end it will be time and events deciding how things will go. But from business standpoint what @Kris Moore & others from iX is true, it will start costing even more as times goes by to have a solid system.
In my opinion if ZFS on BSD will keep up the pace like ZFS on Linux it will be nice to have a rock solid storage product as it has been so far Core. May be droping apps / plugins and focus just on storage features and optimizations. and who wants to play with jails, there they are.

 

[Arwen]

...
In my opinion if ZFS on BSD will keep up the pace like ZFS on Linux
...

With OpenZFS 2.x, the same ZFS code, (except OS specific), is available for both FreeBSD & Linux. That said, it is possible that FreeBSD kernels stick with a specific version of ZFS.

This merging was done because Illumos, (a Solaris work alike), was originally the head end. However, many of the new features were developed on Linux first. Those then had to be back ported to Illumos, which then had to be ported to FreeBSD. Convoluted process.

The new OpenZFS 2.x Git repository is attempting to make the OS specific items separate. But, the ZFS generic code is the same between the 2 OSes. The intent is to later merge Illumos in, and perhaps the MacOS port too.


Now the way iX is doing ZFS, for both Core & SCALE, is to use an external ZFS package that makes ZFS a common version between them. So I think we are up to OpenZFS 2.2.2. (If I understand the process correctly...)

 

[grahamperrin]

… I think we are up to OpenZFS 2.2.2. …

Yes, TrueNAS SCALE 23.10.1 has been released! | TrueNAS Community (2023-12-19). Postscript: sorry, I didn't check for CORE. See the comment from @garm.

FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE included 2.2.

More recent 13.3-RELEASE included 2.1.14.

STABLE and RELEASE branches are suitably patched.

<https://www.freebsd.org/releases/13.3R/>
<https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.0R/>
<https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.1R/>
<https://www.freebsd.org/security/notices/>

My daily driver (with Plasma 5) is 15.0-CURRENT.

Code:

% zfs version
zfs-2.2.99-365-FreeBSD_g8f2f6cd2a
zfs-kmod-2.2.99-365-FreeBSD_g8f2f6cd2a
% uname -aKU
FreeBSD mowa219-gjp4-zbook-freebsd 15.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 15.0-CURRENT main-n268907-6b3db5d7793f GENERIC-NODEBUG amd64 1500017 1500017
% bectl list -c creation | tail -n 4
1500016-03-base        -      -          1.98G 2024-03-20 17:19
1500016-04-base        -      -          1.96G 2024-03-21 09:21
1500017-01-base        N      /          1.92G 2024-03-21 21:26
1500017-02-base        R      -          316G  2024-03-22 07:03
% 

 

[garm]

Code:

Welcome to FreeNAS
nas% zfs version
zfs-2.1.14-1
zfs-kmod-v2023120100-zfs_f4871096b
nas% uname -aKU
FreeBSD nas.domain.foo 13.1-RELEASE-p9 FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p9 n245429-296d095698e TRUENAS amd64 1301000 1301000

 

[Mario Rossi]

I'm just another non-paying user.
A humble Microsoft systems engineer, sufficiently nerdy to use what is needed where needed, I don't have great skills in Linux or FreeBSD other than what I find in the forums.

I ask you to forgive me if I am about to say heresies.

I believe storage management is a mission critical topic.
From my point of view a NAS must be a NAS and that's it.
The stability of the system, the security of the data and its sharing must be the focus.

I've dealt with QNAP and Synology before and I've had enough.
I believe that, at this point, the CORE version with FreeBSD must be more "bad" (forgive me, I'm Italian and I don't know English-speaking ways of saying something "orthodox", "Taliban", "extremist").
I would prefer to have the most up-to-date version of FreeBSD with the TrueNAS "touch" so that it is easy to manage the NAS function alone.
I do the rest with Proxmox in other VMs/CTs.

Those who have the right skills with FreeBSD will have no difficulty adding the jail part to manage other features. Others can use the Scale version.

I believe that, in this way, those who only need a powerful but rock solid NAS will find their ideal product in CORE, while those who need an all-round system will be happy with Scale.
The iXsystems team should also be facilitated in carrying out the development of a "simpler" product without having to test all the "non-NAS core" features.

 

[jammin2night]

I have read 90% of this thread. What I have not head anyone talk about is the patching regiment of CORE vs SCALE.

I am responsible for maintaining Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian and FreeBSD instances. If you talk about the core OS, in my opinion there are far fewer patches to FreeBSD than in any Linux distrobution. Applications are a different story as they effect what ever OS you are running consider applications that not only run on *nix but Windows also.

@Kris Moore can you speak to the patch frequency of CORE vs SCALE?

We are a 24x7 shop and we never take a guest offline. So if a SAN needs patching regardless of vendor and we have EMC/DELL, Equallogic, TrueNAS SANs (150TB+) guests are migrated to update any particular SAN if it is not in a HA configuration.

My concern with SCALE is that the Linux Kernel is like a rolling distribution. Where can I find numbers about CORE vs SCALE updates by month, quarter or otherwise?

Kind Regards,

 

[Kris Moore]

I have read 90% of this thread. What I have not head anyone talk about is the patching regiment of CORE vs SCALE.

I am responsible for maintaining Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian and FreeBSD instances. If you talk about the core OS, in my opinion there are far fewer patches to FreeBSD than in any Linux distrobution. Applications are a different story as they effect what ever OS you are running consider applications that not only run on *nix but Windows also.

@Kris Moore can you speak to the patch frequency of CORE vs SCALE?

We are a 24x7 shop and we never take a guest offline. So if a SAN needs patching regardless of vendor and we have EMC/DELL, Equallogic, TrueNAS SANs (150TB+) guests are migrated to update any particular SAN if it is not in a HA configuration.

My concern with SCALE is that the Linux Kernel is like a rolling distribution. Where can I find numbers about CORE vs SCALE updates by month, quarter or otherwise?

Kind Regards,

Good question! I'll try and provide as much detail as I can.

SCALE is built on top of the latest Linux LTS Kernel releases. The new 24.04 Dragonfish release is going out with Linux Kernel 6.6 LTS for example. We are not on a "rolling" release type schedule in that sense, and our building components are all versioned and updated as necessary for bug or security fixes. We tend to push dot fix releases every 2~ months, but we also push fixes more often when needed. You can see some history here.

The CVE / Security patching is pretty much identical to CORE. We monitor for all CVEs, not just in the kernel / OS, but also services and components that make up TrueNAS. For serious enough CVEs, we issue hot-fix releases immediately, sometimes on the same day as public disclosure.

On the security side though, I will need to mention. SCALE has already received a lot of love with regard to how secure it is. Auditing, FIPS support, STIGs are being implemented, etc. We've also greatly reduced the attack surface area by decreasing the amount of packages / dependencies brought in. Not to say CORE is bad, but if you are somebody with heightened security requirements, SCALE will want to be on your road-map for sure.

Let me know if I can clarify anything further!

 

[q/pa]

Fresh info from the BSD Now Telegram channel:

"zVault - An Open Source ZFS NAS for the community

The TrueNAS CORE story continues..."

zVault

 

[winnielinnie]

Note to the zVault people: Do not make a gigantic 7360x4912 image your website's background. Goodness does it slow down the loading time...

 

[victort]

Fresh info from the BSD Now Telegram channel:

"zVault - An Open Source ZFS NAS for the community

The TrueNAS CORE story continues..."

zVault

Legit?

 

[q/pa]

Think so

 

[Juan Manuel Palacios]

Legit?

Website repo created just 5 days ago, maybe someone who did some forking, and/or some FreeBSD tooling, and is just getting started at trying to put a product together.

If the latter, the wait might be a bit long ;)

 

[Davvo]

Core 13.2 will ship in a few months, I don't think there is a particular rush.
Let them cook.

 

[Juan Manuel Palacios]

Core 13.2 will ship in a few months, I don't think there is a particular rush.
Let them cook.

13.3. And then comes the timeframe during which it'll be supported by iX, which, if I'm not mistaken, is currently advertised as "several years".

So yeah, no rush… not, unless, you want to jump onto FreeBSD 14.x, which some understandably might want to do.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

So yeah, no rush… not, unless, you want to jump onto FreeBSD 14.x, which some understandably might want to do.

Not intending to. I just want TrueNAS CORE supported beyond 2026 and you won't be able to deploy new jails after FreeBSD 13 is EOL.

 

[Juan Manuel Palacios]

Not intending to. I just want TrueNAS CORE supported beyond 2026 and you won't be able to deploy new jails after FreeBSD 13 is EOL.

Yeah, exactly, pretty much what I meant, in so many words. You may want to jump onto FreeBSD 14.x right now, for various reasons (technical, curiosity, etc.), or you may *need* to come 2026 when 13.x goes by the wayside, and you still need to keep your system going.

As most others, I think I can safely presume, I'm going to fall somewhere in between those two ends, but hopefully there'll be enough time between now and then to figure out what the future will look like.

 

[Ericloewe]

Note to the zVault people: Do not make a gigantic 7360x4912 image your website's background. Goodness does it slow down the loading time...

A whole 2.5 MB, you could have literally a Pokémon Crystal with room to spare for a less-insane image.