iXsystems: TrueNAS Scale 22.12 Open Source Hyperconverged Storage OS

iXsystems, Inc. announced the TrueNAS SCALE 22.12 ‘Bluefin’, a 2nd major version of TrueNAS SCALE and the open source hyperconverged storage OS.

Developed in true open source fashion alongside the 100.000s of members in the TrueNAS Community, this storage software release furthers the mission of providing true data freedom by expanding on flexibility, interoperability, and storage efficiency that has already made TrueNAS storage software.

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With the release of TrueNAS SCALE 22.12, the open hyperconvergence and scale-out storage platform are for supporting enterprise file, block, and object storage, while also supporting the deployment of applications and VMs. The freely downloadable software is available after 4 months of testing 2 beta versions and a ‘Release Candidate’. Software quality is assured following more than 2,000 users who tested the release candidate version of Bluefin.

Prior to the availability of TrueNAS SCALE Bluefin, the 1st release of TrueNAS SCALE 22.02 ‘Angelfish’ in February 2022 introduced a Linux OS foundation, OpenZFS file system, containers (kubernetes, docker), and clustering to TrueNAS storage environments, enabling over 40,000 deployed systems in 10 months. Bluefin will build on this solid foundation and expand to many more use cases and environments. Based on current trends, the company’s team expects the software to pass 100,000 installations and 2EB of data under management in 2023. Bluefin is a simple update for Angelfish users, offering new features, higher quality, and improvements.

TrueNAS SCALE Bluefin (22.12) provides a range of capabilities that will go through the normal software lifecycle to maturity.

Some significant feature updates in TrueNAS SCALE 22.12 include:

• FIPS-140 security – Provides restricted administration privileges to non-root users, Role Based Access Control, and verified crypto modules.

• Kubernetes CSI driver – Kubernetes clusters can use TrueNAS SCALE as the storage cluster. TrueNAS SCALE can support Kubernetes CSI, VMware ESXi, and OpenStack Cinder, as well as provide clustered file and object storage services.

• Cluster management – Includes some new APIs to reduce downtime and operational risks when replacing a gluster node in a cluster.

• Docker OverlayFS – OverlayFS support within OpenZFS enables greatly reduced overhead when running containerized workloads.  

• Virtualization improvements – USB device pass-through and CPU pinning are enabled, in addition to the existing pass-through any PCIe devices, including GPUs.

• Apps GPU acceleration – A newer generation of GPUs (Intel Alderlake, Nvidia GeForce-30xx) are now supported for sharing with Application workloads.

• iX-Storj service – Globally Distributed Storage with Web 3.0 technology is a game changer for cloud storage reliability, costs, and performance.

• Enterprise support – TrueNAS SCALE inherits all the HA and Support tools of TrueNAS Enterprise as a separate license with 24×365 support.

“The maturing of HA support for TrueNAS SCALE 22.12.0 will increase Enterprise deployments,” said Morgan Littlewood, SVP, product management and business development. “And with significant FIPS-140 security enhancements, Bluefin can be used in high-security use cases.“

Built on Debian Linux, the Open Source TrueNAS SCALE supports SMB and NFS file sharing, iSCSI Block Storage, S3 Object API integration, and Cloud Sync for interoperability with public cloud storage. It also offers unique flexibility as HCI that allows scaling of compute and storage independently. TrueNAS SCALE can be installed and run on a single node or across 100 clustered nodes, making the massively scalable infrastructure software for a ange of use cases and applications.

TrueNAS R30 NVMe All-Flash Appliance

Also available with Bluefin is the latest TrueNAS storage system from the company. The TrueNAS R30 offers 16 NVMe Gen4 SSD system and 2 dual-port 100GbE NICs in a 1U package, and each node is capable of over 30GB/s bandwidth. Typically configured with 32 cores, 256GB of RAM, and up to 240TB of NVMe flash. When configured in TrueNAS SCALE clusters, the R30 scales-out aggregate bandwidth ^{[1] [2] [3]} to hundreds of Gb/s for clustered file and object workloads and is for analytics and video editing environments.

“We really want to thank the TrueNAS community for their tremendous support in improving TrueNAS SCALE over the past 12 months, which has taken it from a budding project to a fully operational OS,” said Brett Davis, SVP, sales and marketing. “It’s been an exciting ride and there’s still much more to come. Continued engagement from the community is welcomed as we continue to collectively take open storage to new heights of capability with each software release.“

TrueNAS R30 specs

TrueNAS SCALE 22.12 is available for free download and pre-installed on TrueNAS Enterprise appliances with support. The R30 platform is available to order from the company.