TrueNAS CORE is a free and open-source FreeBSD-based operating system that provides free network-attached storage (NAS) services produced by iXsystems. In addition, TrueNAS is the best-known and most powerful free NAS software.
It has some of the best features you can find in NAS software, such as data snapshots, a self-repair file system, encryption of data volumes, and so on.
To remind our readers, in addition to the FreeBSD-based TrueNAS CORE, the iXsystems also offers the Debian-based TrueNAS SCALE, built on the same foundational software and middleware as TrueNAS CORE but significantly expands its capabilities.
However, the recently released TrueNAS 13.0-U3 version of the FreeBSD-based TrueNAS introduces some significant improvements, so let’s look at them.
TrueNAS 13.0-U3 Highlights
FreeBSD 13.1
TrueNAS 13.0-U3 is based on the latest FreeBSD version, 13.1, which was released in May this year. This brings all of the benefits of FreeBSD 13.1 with it. For example, cryptography, networking, drivers, and NUMA scheduling have significantly improved.
The plugins and jails used in the TrueNAS CORE version to run additional applications on top of the TrueNAS platform are now FreeBSD 13.0 compatible. But, more importantly, there is up to a 20% gain in performance, IOPS, and bandwidth for bigger NAS systems.
OpenZFS 2.1
Unlike most file systems, ZFS combines the features of a file system and a volume manager. It is scalable and includes extensive protection against data corruption, support for high storage capacities, efficient data compression, integration of the concepts of filesystem and volume management, snapshots and copy-on-write clones, continuous integrity checking and automatic repair, RAID-Z, native NFSv4 ACLs, and can be very precisely configured.
On top of that, OpenZFS 2.1 brings Distributed Spare RAID (dRAID) onto the scene. In other words, it can create pools using a new distributed variation of RAIDZ that provides significantly faster resilver times with integrated hot spares.
Other TrueNAS 13.0 Features
TrueNAS 13.0 features the Samba 4.15 release, which includes significant security and virtual file system upgrades to ensure SMB support is secure and robust. In addition, TrueNAS 13.0-U3 also adds support for larger native I/O sizes and general performance enhancements.
Furthermore, the built-in NFS server allows many TCP connections from a Linux client to run in parallel, resulting in faster and more stable performance. This can boost single-client performance by up to 400% on high-speed networks.
Finally, TrueNAS CORE and Enterprise systems can now use the iX-Storj service with TrueNAS 13.0-U3. In other words, TrueNAS systems can now serve as either the client for the iX-Storj service or as “Storj Nodes” for GDS storage.
You can refer to the release notes for detailed information about all changes.
Download
Those who have TrueNAS 12.0 installed on their system can quickly upgrade to TrueNAS 13.0-U3 via the web-based management interface. Upgrading to TrueNAS 13.0-U3 will provide significant benefits without requiring major changes to features, data layout, tools, or user interface.
TrueNAS CORE is entirely free to download and use. The hardware that will run TrueNAS 13.0-U3 has the following minimum system requirements:
- 2-Core Intel 64-Bit or AMD x86_64 CPU
- 8 GB RAM
- 16 GB SSD Boot Device
- Two identically-sized devices for a single storage pool
- Network Port
- Hardware RAID is not required
