
FreeNAS and TrueNAS Are Unifying - whalesalad
https://www.ixsystems.com/blog/freenas-truenas-unification/
======
jacquesm
Excellent news. This is something far more open source projects should do. All
this fragmentation is good for nothing, it is _far_ better to have one really
good piece of software than 20 half baked ones all doing roughly 80% of the
whole.

~~~
Deeplybrassic
>it is far better to have one really good piece of software than 20 half baked
ones all doing roughly 80% of the whole.

I have to disagree on this one. Multiple diverging projects create
_Stability_, whereas a single project creates _fragility_. One bad step on the
only project, and it will be all who suffer

~~~
BiteCode_dev
Try to provide a package of a GUI app "for linux". After you support centos,
fedora, debian, ubuntu, gentoo and arch, you'll maintain a mess of brittle
packaging scripts for years, breaking at each release and some updates. Just
making the first release for each is a challenge. Even app images, the least
well integrated system will fail at some point.

You'll see how stable is diversity.

Then package for windows xp. It probably works on windows vista, 7, 8 and 10.

Now I do see a lot of value in diversity. Resiliance, ethics, competition,
collaboration...

Stability isn't one.

~~~
kick
Do developers not know how to statically compile software anymore?

Also, you shouldn't be writing your own packaging scripts: leave those to
distribution packagers. There are thousands of people who work on packaging
these things, and the user of the distribution is much safer if they don't
touch software distributed by random people.

This stuff is completely stable, just don't break the assumptions of the
system without knowing what you're doing.

~~~
BiteCode_dev
Oh, but you still need to make a deb, rpm, nix, whatnot then compose with the
os tooling, conventions and expectations. And use those to provide your
conf/update/failure, menu integration, permission system, logging, init
system, notifications, etc.

Or provide an app image and ignore most integration.

This is my point exactly: to get stability, you remove diversity.

Static linking, one packaging system, and you don't have to care about how
diverse the universe it.

But it also means you don't benefit from what make those differences add:
security updates, dependancy graph, automation, signing, jails, user
documentation and training, os integration, native window theming, etc.

~~~
kick
_Oh, but you still need to make a deb, rpm, nix, whatnot then compose with the
os tooling, conventions and expectations. And use those to provide your conf
/update/failure, menu integration, permission system, logging, init system,
notifications, etc._

This shouldn't need to be done? The distribution's packagers handle most of
this. Except for Nix, maybe? I hear they have a particularly fucked up
ecosystem for packaging.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> The distribution's packagers handle most of this.

And often fuck it up and introduce bugs or even vulnerabilities, intentionally
ignore the developer, or simply fail to update packages in a reasonable time
frame.

Relying on free labor to package software for you is a terrible terrible idea
that helps keep Linux Desktop a shitshow.

~~~
doesnt_know
Disagree strongly and as a user I feel distributions and package maintainers
are a necessary defense against overly opinionated developers.

I'm glad there is a layer there that will patch and configure to better
integrate into the system and in some (very rare) cases remove user hostile
"functionality".

~~~
icedchai
Sometimes it's better to trust the developers, not the packagers. Example is
the Debian SSH vulnerability from 2008:
[https://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1576](https://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1576)

This was a bug introduced in packaging. See
[https://lwn.net/Articles/281436/](https://lwn.net/Articles/281436/) for more
details.

------
justinclift
Looking a bit deeper (eg
[https://www.reddit.com/r/freenas/comments/fdx8rj/freenas_and...](https://www.reddit.com/r/freenas/comments/fdx8rj/freenas_and_truenas_are_unifying/fjkwjcl/)):

> Some of the features of TrueNAS Enterprise include support for dual-
> controller/HA systems, native Fibre Channel support, integrated chassis
> monitoring and management, as well as certifications with platforms like
> VMWare, Veeam, and Citrix.

The "native Fibre Channel" support bit sound a bit worrying. Isn't that just
the inclusion of appropriate drivers in the kernel config used to compile the
image?

People do ask about that on the FreeNAS forums (Fibre Channel support), so
it's not like there's no demand for FC from FreeNAS users.

~~~
tw04
Why is that worrying? They consider FC support to be an Enterprise feature
which I'd say is a pretty fair assessment. They are in the business of making
money and their way of doing it is by charging for certain features. If you
don't want to pay, build your own freebsd nas from scratch and enable FC. I
don't understand why that's concerning.

~~~
justinclift
My point is there isn't an "enable FC" option in the base FreeNAS image.
Otherwise people would be doing it already. :(

It's sounds like FC is being "kept back" from people that want it, in maybe
more an open-core approach.

~~~
jaywalk
All of the "Enterprise" features are being "kept back" from Core. That's kind
of how tiered software packages work...

~~~
justinclift
Ugh. It's not just "Enterprises" that use FC, though it's the most common
case.

It's also in use by people that buy FC gear on Ebay, as they want some of the
capabilities that FC offers for whatever reason.

If they've really decided to lock OSS customers out of using FC gear (which
would be crappy), this definitely sounds like a move to "Open Core" or
something like it and would a shame. :/

~~~
jaywalk
Come on man, you can make that exact same argument for damn near every
"Enterprise" feature locked away behind a paid tier in every piece of
software.

------
ricktdotorg
happy and long-time (home) FreeNAS user/admin here. last year i managed to
convince our internal corp IT dept to not renew their overpriced yet
inexplicably not that good Dell storage and go with purchasing some TrueNAS,
and they have been very satisfied. great product, great support, great
company. a really solid recommend.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Seriously? Can a FreeNAS setup actually support the kind of uptime and
performance features of modern enterprise storage? I've never heard of an open
solution supporting redundant controllers and multipath, for instance.

~~~
ricktdotorg
well, re: "enterprise storage", note that i did specify "internal corp IT
dept".

so i guess it depends on what you mean by "enterprise"? and what that
enterprise does?

we serve a decent amount of video content out (~35Gbps during peak) and we
have a lot of video content stored and edited in-house. we made the decision
to use TrueNAS for our _internal_ work video storage and sharing, but (not
yet) for _public_ serving of video.

all the in-house edit masters, work files/partial renders etc are stored on
the in-office TrueNAS systems, but the actual _serving_ of the final encoded
HLS content out to customers is via in-DC clustered NetApp sitting behind a
lot of striped SSDs (FS-Cache) serving out http(s). we have an autoencoding
pipeline that picks up the finished masters from the TrueNAS, does the various
encodes and throws them up on the NetApps for public serving once they're
done.

i'm a longtime enterprise storage user (and specifically a big fan of NetApp),
but i would very much like to see if its possible to transition out of such a
giant dollar-suck as NetApp and give something like TrueNAS a chance at the
frontend.

these baby steps (so far successful!) are our foray into these uncharted
waters!

------
mmanfrin
Question to those who know:

I used FreeNAS and liked it, but my recent build is Unraid because I had 24
bays, and didn't want to buy all my drives at once, and afaik FreeNAS/ZFS is
not super great with adding drives to the pool, especially if they are
different drives. Unraid, though, is not great with drive failure and I'm
starting to think I want to go back to FreeNAS, but I am torn:

1\. I don't know how to move 80TB.

2\. I still dont want to buy all my drives at once, is FreeNAS better about
adding new drives these days?

~~~
seized
With ZFS you add VDEVs not drives. Pools are collections of VDEVs.

Buy 8 drives, have a RAIDZ2. Fill. Buy 8 more, add as another RAIDZ2 VDEV.
Capacity is the sum of both, it's one pool.

------
squarefoot
Nas4Free user here. Home server, nothing fancy but worked perfectly for a few
years on a Atom CPU based board with 4GB RAM which could not be expanded
further and is listed as minimum required for ZFS. Would this hardware run
FreeNAS/TrueNAS or its differences and additional features would require
beefier iron? Current configuration is two ZFS RAID 1 pairs plus one
additional disk for quick buffering. System currently boots from a USB dongle;
the board very conveniently does have a USB receptacle directly soldered, so
it doesn't expose the flash key to the outside. No problems in about 4 years,
but some day probably this year I'll have to get new disks either due to aging
or available space, then get the ball rolling and manually upgrade to XimaNAS
(automatic update from this NAS4Free version is risky), or moving to
FreeNAS/TrueNAS, or jumping ship completely and get one Helios64 box plus OMV
since BSD support on ARM isn't there yet. Any comments?

ps. I'm more of a Linux guy, my BSD knowledge is limited to this NAS4Free
installation and a pfSense firewall I run ages ago on PCEngines embedded
boards which worked like charm as well.

~~~
bluGill
More RAM is better, it will probably work, but be slow. However the same can
be said for your current configuration which you seem happy with.

Don't use a USB boot disk though. FreeNAS writes to the boot disk enough to
detroy most USB drives in a few months. A high quality USB drive wouldn't have
that problem but they don't seem to exist.

~~~
magicalhippo
I've used my FreeNAS with the same USB drive for a few years now, so seems to
be fine. Most activity is against the system dataset (which is on my RAID-Z),
no?

~~~
bluGill
When did you last update? If you have used FreeNAS for years you might be on
an old version that almost never wrote to the USB and so you are fine. A
couple years ago they made some changes and now FreeNAS writes to the USB
often and as a result most USB drives last for only a few months.

~~~
jlgaddis
Just as an additional data point...

I started out with FreeNAS ~18 months ago but I'm not sure at the moment which
version that was (I could check later). About a year ago, I updated to 11.2-U2
and just two days ago I've updated to 11.3-U1.

Since the beginning, I've had the "freenas-boot" pool on a pair of USB3 flash
drives -- I don't recall which manufacturer/model I'm using but I did
specifically buy "higher end" flash drives to use for this purpose. I do a
weekly scrub of the "freenas-boot" pool and, thus far, I've experienced no
issues with them whatsoever.

FWIW, it's very rare for me to actually log in to the FreeNAS system to make
any changes or perform any "administration". I set it up initially and, since
then, I've mostly left it alone and it "just works".

------
wil421
I’ve been using FreeNAS and it’s been great. There have been some small
drawbacks but over all it’s been great. Hopefully this will improve stability.

~~~
metalliqaz
I've also been using FreeNAS and I'm fairly happy with it. Their botched
version 10 was not fun, and lately I'm annoyed by having to recreate all my
Warden jails.

I hope this transition doesn't ruin things.

~~~
wil421
I read about the botched update and it was the first thing that came to mind.
Hopefully FreeNAS will have less of a transition than TrueNAS.

------
nominated1
These NAS targeted distros are amazing. However, my needs are simple. I just
don’t need 90% of the features they have.

Maybe I’m just a simpleton but I run an rsync script each night. The beauty is
that if I accidentally delete something I can easily recover it and if a drive
fails I lose less than one days worth of data. This trade-off is well worth it
for me.

If I had several drives I’d use SnapRAID to cut down on costs.

Oh and I’m lazy so I installed CentOS on it. In several years when CentOS
reaches EOL I’ll just buy new hardware and install the newest version.

Synology type devices make me nervous. Krebs[1] recently did a piece on IoT
gear being the new target for ransomware. I also wouldn’t feel comfortable
exposing anything running on these devices to WAN.

[1] [https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/02/zyxel-fixes-0day-in-
netw...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/02/zyxel-fixes-0day-in-network-
storage-devices/)

~~~
jlgaddis
I've had FreeNAS running on a 2U Supermicro box for a year and a half or so (I
ran FreeBSD on it prior to that). My needs are pretty simple and I don't need
90% of the features either. I only use iSCSI (for the VMware servers in my
lab) and NFS (for pretty much everything else); occasionally I'll rsync my
workstation's files to it for an "extra" backup.

I've got automated ZFS snapshots set up and when I finally replaced a failing
drive -- just two days ago, I think -- it was a fairly simple matter. I
updated it to the latest version of FreeNAS and that was simple and
straightforward too.

FWIW, this box isn't exposed to the Internet. In fact, it doesn't even have a
default route; besides, my router / firewall filters _outgoing_ traffic too --
not just incoming.

I could have just used FreeBSD and configured the pieces I need instead of
using FreeNAS but it's been quite stable and reliable and has mostly been a
"set it up and forget it" experience.

------
PhantomGremlin
If I already know my way around FreeBSD and around a command line, why would I
want to use FreeNAS instead of just sticking to vanilla FreeBSD?

Is the value added that it is easier to configure? Is there better default
tuning for a NAS setup?

I've occasionally browsed the FreeNAS forums and they seem to have stridently
opinionated people in them telling everyone exactly how things should and
shouldn't be done. But I've never seen a simple clear explanation of _why_.

What I'm looking for is something like a table of items that says:

Here's something that FreeBSD does .... Here's how FreeNAS improves that
thing.

~~~
ricktdotorg
FreeNAS is what experienced/wise long-time unix admins will setup at home for
their giant anime SAN/NAS because:

\- they've been around the block long enough to know that FreeNAS can do 95%
of what they need better than they can do it, with far less chance of errors
introduced, but with 95% less of their valuable time needed to do it

it's that simple honestly.

if you already know how to do setup/configure/tune/tweak all of the components
inside FreeNAS specific to your environment, congrats, you're already a great
unix admin. you've been in your career a while, and you're probably pretty
well paid.

but why would you spend your valuable per$onal time to faff about setting
up/configuring/tuning/tweaking what FreeNAS can do out of the box, unless you
have an edge case scenario that FreeNAS doesn't cover or can't do well?

for the same reasons, again i must specify -- unless you have very specific
edge case scenario(s)/situation(s) or wanted to use this as a learning
exercise -- why would you:

1) hand-craft your own *BSD or Linux-based firewall/VPN/router, instead of
using pfsense/iptraf/etc

2) hand-craft, build and create your own Wifi router OS image, instead of
using OpenWRT

3) roll your own port monitoring and OS proc monitoring notification system,
instead of using Nagios/BigBrother/etc

so to get back to your OG question of

> If I already know my way around FreeBSD and around a command line, why would
> I want to use FreeNAS instead of just sticking to vanilla FreeBSD?

because your time is valuable, and because FreeNAS can do 95% of what you need
better than you can do it.

(edited for formatting/clarity)

~~~
andyzweb
>giant anime SAN/NAS How did you know???

~~~
bluGill
There can't be two of us in the world with a personal SAN/NAS that isn't a
giant anime collection. Since I know I'm the one with a personal NAS without
such a collection it stands to reason that if you have a personal NAS you have
it full of anime. QED

------
otterpro
But why did it have to rename FreeNAS to TrueNAS Core? It makes it confusing
to search/google, and we'll now need to search for both FreeNAS and TrueNAS
Core. I wished the name remained FreeNAS, as it had been in the past 15 years
of its history.

~~~
ac29
Probably for marketing/sales reasons. The survival of both products depends on
businesses purchasing TrueNAS, so increasing exposure to that project is good
for business.

~~~
koheripbal
Or maybe the "core" version won't be free much longer?

~~~
jlgaddis
Everything in this thread is discussed (in a few paragraphs) in the article.

------
jackallis
now, only question is would they be any better than Synology for non-technical
users?

~~~
virtue3
truth be told; I consider myself highly technical, even with things like
FreeNAS.

I went to check my custom built FreeNAS one day, and it's off, and it wouldn't
properly boot so I needed to haul a monitor out to see what was going on...

I finally hit the age where I don't care to deal with shit like that anymore,
and finally pulled the trigger on a synology. Couldn't be happier.

It was fun setting it up and configuring FreeNAS the way I wanted, but overall
bleh because I didn't get the right HW (went dual core atom at the time, not
beefy enough for plex re-encoding).

~~~
nicolaslem
On the other hand maybe buying a consumer NAS can give you a false sense of
security: [https://kevq.uk/i-nearly-lost-all-of-my-
data/](https://kevq.uk/i-nearly-lost-all-of-my-data/)

~~~
Fnoord
> [...] consumer NAS can give you a false sense of security

Your conclusion is not supported in the mentioned URL.

What has been described in the URL could've happened with a FreeNAS or TrueNAS
or Open Media Vault system or just about any system. RAID is never a backup,
and one backup is not enough.

~~~
nicolaslem
If you read the parent comment between the lines, it implies that Synology
feels worry free in comparison to FreeNAS.

My point is that both options have similar chances of breaking unexpectedly.

~~~
aseipp
It is also a fact that both meterorites and rain fall from the sky sometimes,
but that doesn't mean the "chance" of a meterorite hitting my head are the
same as a raindrop.

You're only going to get actual, reliable and useful numbers about failure
rates between competing products by doing actual studies and analyzing the
aggregate results. Anything else is meaningless. And as a buyer, I'm more
worried about things like warranty and technical support quality, frankly, if
I'm going to buy a prepackaged system anyway, which are easier to gauge from
afar.

------
alimbada
Where is the TrueNAS source repo? I can only find the FreeNAS repo.

~~~
dualscyther
From TFA

> FreeNAS and TrueNAS have been separate-but-related members of the #1 Open
> Source storage software family since 2012. FreeNAS is the free Open Source
> version with an expert community and has led the pursuit of innovations like
> Plugins and VMs. TrueNAS is the enterprise version for organizations of all
> sizes that need additional uptime and performance, as well as the
> enterprise-grade support necessary for critical data and applications.

> In the 11.3 release, FreeNAS and TrueNAS share over 95% of the same source
> code but are built into separate images, each with their own name. The
> Version 12.0 release will change this process by moving to one unified image
> with two different editions: a free, Open Source edition (this will never
> change!) and an enterprise edition.

> Both editions will have common Open Source code, unified documentation, and
> a shared product name.

So I suspect that the source code for TrueNAS is not available.

~~~
alimbada
Ah, I see. I thought they were completely different products, but it sounds
like TrueNAS is an enterprise version of FreeNAS and this unification seems
like it is just deprecating the FreeNAS name.

------
vkaku
The True, Free, NAS. The Free, True, NAS.

------
ronnier
I use unraid. While not free, I think it’s the best home nas software.

[https://www.unraid.net/](https://www.unraid.net/)

~~~
leemailll
Does unraid still not offer real time raid ability? I read before and it seems
it is similar to snapraid which require externally evoked sync command to do
this. Is this still the case?

~~~
venj
Yes, when you use a cache disk (or pool since unraid 6 apparently). Data is
moved automatically at night. Cache pools are BTRFS mirrors so they now can
provide redundancy of the cache.

