TrueNAS is a family of

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

and

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

based

network-attached storage Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a Heterogeneous computing, heterogeneous group of clients. In this context, the term "NAS" can refer to both th ...

(NAS) storage products developed by iXsystems. The products consist of TrueNAS Enterprise and TrueNAS Community Edition. TrueNAS Enterprise is a storage appliance, with fully integrated software and hardware, that is sold as a commercial product with enterprise support. TrueNAS Community Edition can be installed for free on commodity

x86-64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set architecture, instruction set. It was announced in 1999 and first available in the AMD Opteron family in 2003. It introduces two new ope ...

computers. The operating systems include components released under a proprietary license, GPL and

BSD licenses BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lice ...

. Built around the

OpenZFS OpenZFS is an open-source implementation of the ZFS file system and volume manager initially developed by Sun Microsystems for the Solaris operating system, and is now maintained by the OpenZFS Project. Similar to the original ZFS, the impleme ...

file system, TrueNAS provides a number of built-in file and block storage services as well as an OS-level virtualized app store ( Linux containers and

FreeBSD jail The jail mechanism is an implementation of FreeBSD's OS-level virtualisation that allows system administrators to partition a FreeBSD-derived computer system into several independent mini-systems called ''jails'', all sharing the same kernel, with ...

s respectively) and

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization or emulator, emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve ...

hypervisor A hypervisor, also known as a virtual machine monitor (VMM) or virtualizer, is a type of computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is called ...

to host additional services.

History

The TrueNAS project originated as FreeNAS, created by Olivier Cochard-Labbé in October 2005, based on the

m0n0wall m0n0wall was an embedded firewall (networking), firewall distribution of FreeBSD, one of the Berkeley Software Distribution, BSD operating system descendants. It provided a small image which could be put on flash memory, Compact Flash cards as w ...

firewall and FreeBSD 6.0. Volker Theile joined the project in 2006 and later assumed its leadership. In 2009 Theile concluded that FreeNAS required substantial rewrites to remain relevant. Considering the extent of the changes needed Theile proposed migrating the project to

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

, however, Cochard-Labbé preferred FreeNAS to remain on BSD, resulting in Theile agreeing to fork FreeNAS and ultimately creating OpenMediaVault. FreeNAS would remain on FreeBSD with development taken over by iXsystems, a company founded by original

Berkeley Software Design Berkeley Software Design, Inc. (BSDI or, later, BSDi), was a software company founded in 1991 by members of the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG), known for developing and selling BSD/OS (originally known as BSD/386), a commercial and part ...

developers whose company supported the PC-BSD OS and sold a line of storage servers. FreeNAS 8.x was released in 2010 following a substantial rewrite of the front and back-end, and it integrated the OpenZFS file system. ixSystems also introduced the "TrueNAS" branding for their enterprise hardware appliances and proprietary OS based on FreeNAS, adding enterprise centric features such as

high availability High availability (HA) is a characteristic of a system that aims to ensure an agreed level of operational performance, usually uptime, for a higher than normal period. There is now more dependence on these systems as a result of modernization ...

and

Fibre Channel Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed data transfer protocol providing in-order, lossless delivery of raw block data. Fibre Channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to Server (computing), servers in storage area networks (SAN) in ...

support. In July 2020, iXsystems announced TrueNAS Scale, a "scale-out" Linux-based project based on TrueNAS Core. In 2021, iXsystems merged the commercial and free operating systems into a single codebase under the TrueNAS branding. The feature-limited free community edition was renamed TrueNAS Core, distinguishing it from TrueNAS Enterprise. In 2022, iXsystems released TrueNAS Scale, a Debian Linux port of the TrueNAS OS. The "Scale" moniker was intended to be an homage to the scale-out storage capabilities of the Linux based Gluster File System and

Kubernetes Kubernetes (), also known as K8s is an open-source software, open-source OS-level virtualization, container orchestration (computing), orchestration system for automating software deployment, scaling, and management. Originally designed by Googl ...

based containerized app system. However, both Gluster and Kubernetes would be deprecated shortly thereafter. At the end of 2023, citing higher adoption rates of the Linux-based TrueNAS Scale iXsystems announced that the BSD-based TrueNAS Core would only receive maintenance/security updates going forward with no further feature development. In January of 2025, iXsystems announced that the Scale offering had reached full feature and performance parity with Core. As such, they announced that Scale would be renamed TrueNAS, available as the free "Community Edition" (CE) and the paid Enterprise edition, with all future development going into the Linux-based branch. The announcement recommended that all users of Scale and Core upgrade to the unified version 25.04 "Fangtooth" by the mid-late 2025.

Recommended versions

Version history

References

External links

* * {{FreeBSD Network-attached storage Home servers Free file transfer software Enterprise Linux distributions Debian-based distributions Software using the GNU General Public License FreeBSD Software using the BSD license

History

Recommended versions

Version history

See also

References

External links