iXsystems has published TrueNAS SCALE 22.12, which uses the Linux kernel and the Debian package base (the company's previous products, including TrueOS, PC-BSD, TrueNAS, and FreeNAS, were based on FreeBSD). Like TrueNAS CORE (FreeNAS), TrueNAS SCALE is free to download and use. The size of the iso image is 1.6 GB. The source code for the TrueNAS SCALE-specific build scripts, web interface, and layers is published on GitHub.
FreeBSD-based TrueNAS CORE and Linux-based TrueNAS SCALE products are developed in parallel and complement each other, using a common toolkit codebase and a standard web interface. Providing an additional edition based on the Linux kernel is due to the desire to implement some ideas that are unattainable using FreeBSD. It is noteworthy that this is not the first such initiative - in 2009, the OpenMediaVault distribution kit was already separated from FreeNAS, which was transferred to the Linux kernel and the Debian package base.
One of the key improvements in TrueNAS SCALE is the ability to create multi-node storage, while TrueNAS CORE (FreeNAS) is positioned as a single server solution. In addition to increased scalability, TrueNAS SCALE is also distinguished by its use of isolated containers, simplified infrastructure management, and suitability for building software-defined infrastructures. TrueNAS SCALE uses ZFS (OpenZFS) as its file system. TrueNAS SCALE provides support for Docker containers, KVM-based virtualization, and multi-node ZFS scaling using the Gluster distributed file system.
Storage access is supported by SMB, NFS, iSCSI Block Storage, S3 Object API and Cloud Sync. To ensure secure access, the connection can be made via VPN (OpenVPN). The storage can be deployed on a single node and then, as needs increase, gradually expand horizontally by adding additional nodes. In addition to performing storage tasks, nodes can also be used to provide services and run applications in containers orchestrated using the Kubernetes platform or in KVM-based virtual machines.
In the new version:
- Improved implementation of root-less mode, which uses less privileged users instead of root to manage the system, who are selectively delegated extended rights and who do not have access to all virtual machines and sandboxed applications.
- Added SMB Share Proxy mechanism to redirect access to SMB partitions.
- Improvements have been made to the web interface. Significantly improved management of storage pools, devices and datasets. Implemented summary page with all statistics.
- Added isolated apps to run Home Assistant, Qbittorrent, Pi Hole, Syncthing, Photo Prism and diskover-community packages.
- Added the ability to update all applications installed in the form of containers at once.
- Added support for the All-NVME platform, which provides throughput up to 30GB / s and the ability to create a pool of NVMe drives up to 240 TB in size.
- Added the ability to replace Gluster nodes via the API without stopping the storage.
- A driver for Kubernetes CSI has been added to allow TrueNAS SCALE to be used in Kubernetes clusters as the cluster data store. A similar feature is also available for VMware ESXi and OpenStack Cinder.
- Added support for using OverlayFS with ZFS to save disk space when running Docker containers.
- Support for virtualization has been improved, the ability to forward USB devices to virtual machines and bind individual CPU cores has been provided.
- Organization of shared access of isolated applications to the GPU is provided.
- Added support for remote access to the system and applications using VPN Wireguard.
- Work has been done to increase performance, among other things, improved performance for encryption, NFS and iSCSI.
- Provides the ability to selectively grant API access and apply role-based access (RBAC).
Source: opennet.ru