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TrueNAS is the branding for a family of network-attached storage (NAS) products produced by iXsystems. They include both free and open-source and commercial offerings, based on the OpenZFS file system and either FreeBSD or Linux. It is licensed under the terms of the BSD License and runs on both commodity x86-64 hardware and turnkey appliances offered by iXsystems.
The FreeNAS project was started in October 2005 by Olivier Cochard-Labbé who based it on the m0n0wall embedded firewall and FreeBSD 6.0. Volker Theile joined the project in July 2006 and became the project lead in April 2008. In September 2009, the development team concluded that the project, then at release .7, was due for a complete rewrite in order to accommodate modern features such as a plug-in architecture. Volker Theile decided that the project best be reimplemented using Debian Linux and shifted his development efforts to the interim CoreNAS project and eventually OpenMediaVault where he continues as the project lead. Cochard-Labbé responded to community objections to "The Debian version of FreeNAS" and resumed activity in the project and oversaw its transfer to FreeNAS user iXsystems. Developers Daisuke Aoyama and Michael Zoon continued developing FreeNAS 7 as the NAS4Free project. Meanwhile, iXsystems rewrote FreeNAS with a new architecture based on FreeBSD 8.1, releasing FreeNAS 8 Beta in November 2010. The plug-in architecture arrived with FreeNAS 8.2 and FreeNAS versioning was synchronized with FreeBSD for clarity. FreeNAS 8.3 introduced full-disk encryption and FreeBSD 9.1-based FreeNAS 9.1 brought an updated plug-in architecture that is compatible with the TrueOS Warden jail management framework. FreeNAS 9.1 was also the first version of FreeNAS to use the community-supported OpenZFS v5000 with Feature Flags. FreeNAS 9.2, based on FreeBSD 9.2 included performance improvements and introduced a RESTAPI for remote system administration. FreeNAS 9.3, based on FreeBSD 9.3 introduced a ZFS-based boot device, an initial Setup Wizard and a high-performance in-kerneliSCSI server. FreeNAS 9.10, based on FreeBSD 10.3-RC3 brought an end to the FreeNAS/FreeBSD synchronized naming and introduced Graphite monitoring support and experimental support for the bhyve hypervisor.
In October 2015, ten years after the original FreeNAS release, FreeNAS 10 ALPHA was released, providing a preview of what would become FreeNAS Corral GA on March 15, 2017. FreeNAS Corral introduced a new graphical user interface, command-line interface, underlying middleware, container management system and virtual machine management system. FreeNAS Corral departs from FreeNAS by providing not only NAS functionality but also hyper-converged functionality thanks to its integrated virtual machine support. However, on April 12, 2017 iXsystems announced that FreeNAS Corral would instead be relegated to being a 'Technology Preview', citing issues such as "general instability, lack of feature parity with 9.10 (Jails, iSCSI, etc), and some users experiencing lower performance than expected" and the departure of the project lead. Instead, the decision was made to revert to the existing 9.10 code and bring Corral features to 9.10.3 and further.
In March 2020, iXsystems announced that the 12.0 release will merge the FreeNAS code base with that of their commercial TrueNAS offering. FreeNAS will become TrueNAS CORE while TrueNAS will be renamed TrueNAS Enterprise. This change was made official with the release of TrueNAS 12.0 on October 20, 2020.
In October 2020, iXsystems announced a new product, TrueNAS SCALE would be developed. TrueNAS SCALE would still utilize ZFS, but be based on Debian Linux.
In February 2022, iX announced that TrueNAS SCALE has reached General Availability quality for their 22.02 release.
In May 2022, iX announced that TrueNAS CORE, their FreeBSD-based version of TrueNAS, has reached General Availability and is suitable for large deployments.
TrueNAS CORE (previously FreeNAS) version history
Branch
Initial release
Latest Build
Released
FreeBSD version
Status
Notes / Changes
9.10
2016-03-23
9.10.2-U4
2017-05-25
10.3 STABLE
Previous Release
10.0 ("Corral")
2017-03-15
N/A
Withdrawn: relegated to preview only
The "Corral" branch was cancelled on or around 23 April 2017, the developers citing as reasons that although it had been a major "ground up" rewrite of FreeNAS, too many issues had emerged within 2 weeks of release. Development reverted to the proven 9.10 branch of FreeNAS and the Corral branch was relegated to a "technology preview".
Changes include the addition of cloud synchronization and preliminary Docker container support, as well as updates to the Angular-based administrative GUI and noticeable OpenZFS improvements for handling large files and multiple snapshots.
11.2
2018-07-09
RELEASE
2018-12-05
11.2 STABLE
Previous Release
Highlights from release announcement:
New, Angular-based UI
Boot loader has changed from GRUB to the native FreeBSD boot loader
Jails backend has switched from warden to iocage
Support has been added for Self-Encrypting Drives (SEDs)
OpenZFS is up-to-date with Illumos
11.3
2019-11-15
RELEASE
2020-01-28
11.3 STABLE
Previous release
Highlights from release announcement:
Re-implemented Replication Engine, allows up to 10Gb replication speeds (a 10x improvement), resume support on failed transfers, as well as ability to replicate locally.
ACL Manager – Allows setup and management of SMB ACL’s directly via the FreeNAS web interface.
SMB Shadow Copies are now enabled by default for new shares – Note: Snapshots will only show up in Windows “Previous Versions Tab” if the snapshot USED size shows changes to the file.
A repository of Community plugins has been created, users can now create and distribute 3rd party plugins which are not officially iXsystems supported.
Updated translations for Czech, French, Japanese, Russian, and Simplified Chinese. Additionally, the process to add additional translations has been greatly improved.
iSCSI Wizard – Streamlines the process of creating new iSCSI targets down to a few clicks.
Alert System Overhaul – More granular alerts, as well as controls to set alert thresholds.
Dashboard Updates – The initial dashboard now shows a live view of system status, including network traffic, CPU / memory utilization and more.
NAT Support for Plugins – Eliminates the need for each plugin to have a dedicated IP address on your network.
Full featured 2.0 API – Includes both REST and Websocket connections, allowing FreeNAS to be fully scripted and driven via the same API used by the web-interface.
Large Pool Creation Assistance – When creating ZFS pools with large number of disks, the UI provides an automated way to repeat a VDEV layout across all remaining disks.
ZFS Performance optimizations across the board for many different workloads.
12.0
2020-10-20
12.0-U8.1
2022-4-22
12.0-STABLE
Previous release
Highlights from release announcement.
Native ZFS encryption, allowing per-dataset encryption and
2-factor authentication support, allowing an extra layer of security when accessing TrueNAS
KMIP support - allowing interfacing with KMIP servers for storage and retrieval of passwords and encryption keys
TrueNAS API 2.0 now supports API keys for remote access. API v1.0 has been deprecated.
Fusion pool support, allowing flash-based VDEVS that store metadata and small-block IO
OpenVPN support (both server and client)
TrueCommand cloud client integration
13.0
2022-5-10
13.0-U2
2022-8-30
13.0-U2
Current release
Highlights from release announcement.
TrueNAS 13.0-U1.1 SMB fixes
ZFS 2.1.5 updates
SAMBA 4.15.9 updates
SMB1 Security vulnerability resolution
NextCloud Jail installation fixes
Intel E810 NIC performance improvement
Collected memory leak fix
AWS S3 Secret Keys for Cloud Sync fix
Architecture
The 8.0 reimplementation of FreeNAS moved the project from a m0n0BSD/m0n0wall/PHP-based architecture to one based on FreeBSD's NanoBSD embedded build system, the Python programming language, the Django web application framework and the dōjō toolkit (JavaScript library). It also used the lighttpd web server, but this was replaced with nginx in FreeNAS 8.2. The terminated successor to 9.10.2, known as FreeNAS Corral, retained the nginx web server and ZFS-based boot device of FreeNAS but replaces the Django/dōjō web application framework with an original one alongside the team at Montage Studios. FreeNAS 11 implemented a new interface using Angular.
