FreeNAS & TrueNAS Get Name Changes

iXsystems announced today that it was making some changes around its popular open source storage software. iXsystems has two major products, the ever popular FreeNAS and the enterprise TrueNAS. With the next update the two will become one, with a few caveats.

First, to assuage the fears of FreeNAS users, FreeNAS will remain free. For those that leverage enterprise version, TrueNAS, the company is only looking to improve and move forward. Last month, the two versions gained parity in version 11.3. Version 12.0, coming out later this year, unifies both products into a single software image and name. As of version 11.3, both systems already shared 95% of the same source code. Now they will have a common Open Source code, unified documentation, and a shared product name.

Benefits of the combination include:

Rapid Development: Unified images accelerate software development and releases (for example, 12.0 is a major release that would normally have taken 9-12 months to release, and with these new efficiencies, iXsystems can bring that closer to six months)
Improved Quality: Reduced development redundancy and unified QA increases software quality and allows the company to streamline testing
Earlier Hardware Enablement: Staying in-sync with upstream OS versions will be easier, allowing earlier access to newer hardware drivers. For instance, 12.0 brings improved support for AMD EPYC / Ryzen platforms and enhanced NUMA support for more efficient CPU core handling.
Simplified Documentation: Unified documentation eliminates redundancy such as separate user guides
Reduced Redundancy: Unified web content and videos refer to one software family without the need for duplication.
Flexibility: Unified images enable simpler transitions or upgrades between editions
Resource efficiency: frees up developers to work on new features and related products
Open ZFS 2.0: The planning for the “unified” 12.0 release began over a year ago and included the major investment in the development and integration of what will soon be released as “OpenZFS 2.0”. This effort is fast-forwarding delivery of advances like dataset encryption, major performance improvements, and compatibility with Linux ZFS pools

As stated, FreeNAS is very popular. iXsystems stating it is the #1 Open Source storage software since 2012. The name is well loved as well. It tells users right up front that it is free. Free does have a stigma of perhaps not being worth it to use in larger environments causing it to lose some traction. In that vein, iXsystems has renamed FreeNAS to TrueNAS CORE. The name has changed, but everything else about the product remains the same. TrueNAS CORE is the core of the enterprise edition as well as a nifty acronym: Community supported, Open source, Rapid development, Early availability. Like FreeNAS, TrueNAS CORE will be free to use without restriction.

TrueNAS will have a less drastic name change to TrueNAS Enterprise. Keeping all the benefits it is known for, TrueNAS Enterprise now has a name that can’t be mistaken for its intended use case. TrueNAS Enterprise will have all of the same enclosure management, high availability, and support that TrueNAS 11.3 benefits from along with all the TrueNAS CORE features.

Availability

iXsystems will offer a TrueNAS 12.0 preview to let users check it out and offer feedback. 12.0 will go through the usual ALPHA, BETA, RC1, RELEASE states that FreeNAS has gone through. The company plans to release TrueNAS CORE 12.0 in the third quarter of this year.

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Adam Armstrong

Adam is the chief news editor for StorageReview.com, managing our internal and freelance content teams.