The plans for TrueNAS CORE 13.3 are becoming reality with today’s release of TrueNAS 13.3 BETA. TrueNAS CORE 13.3 continues the tradition of being the most reliable and highest-quality platform for traditional primary storage use cases.

The focus of TrueNAS CORE continues to be ensuring storage reliability, stability, and security for existing users. Taking into account its macro lifecycle, TrueNAS CORE is now entering a sustaining engineering phase within the TrueNAS project. It is not anywhere near its end-of-lifecycle phase. We are just going through a new release cycle for CORE and users can expect to receive maintenance updates for many years still to come.

This BETA version is only recommended for developers and testers. TrueNAS CORE 13.3 includes the following updates:

• FreeBSD 13.3
• OpenZFS 2.2.3-1
• Samba v4.19
• Updates to SMART, Network UPS Tools (NUT), and other services
• Various security and bug fixes

Much of this new code has also been successfully tested in TrueNAS SCALE Dragonfish, which is breaking all records for adoption rate and Release quality. Please review the Release Notes before using.

The release candidate for the next version of TrueNAS CORE (13.3) is planned for June, followed by its formal release in July 2024. TrueNAS CORE 13.3 will continue to receive bug fixes related to stability and security. These updates will ensure that 13.3 is a reliable platform for both homelab and enterprise customers as well as a staging version for those users who wish to migrate to SCALE at a later date.

When Should You Migrate?

If you are installing a new TrueNAS system, iXsystems recommends that you begin with TrueNAS SCALE. There is more added functionality, vastly broader support for hardware, catalogs of Apps, better performance on most workloads, and an improved Web UI, all of which make managing TrueNAS easier than ever.

Existing TrueNAS 13.0 users who are comfortable with their TrueNAS system can update to TrueNAS 13.3 when they see a need based on the TrueNAS Software Status page. Upgrading from 13.0 to 13.3 will be a simple and direct process and includes storage services, VM, Jails, and Plugins. This BETA version is only recommended for developers and testers.

TrueNAS 13.0 users looking for the new capabilities outlined above can sidegrade to TrueNAS SCALE anytime, preserving data and essential NAS functionality such as SMB, NFS, iSCSI, S3, and VMs. Jails do not have an automated migration path to SCALE, and are also more mature in TrueNAS 13.3 than the Linux Sandboxes in TrueNAS SCALE Dragonfish.

Community Involvement

Thanks to the Community for feedback during the planning phase of TrueNAS CORE 13.3.

The BETA version is where we are keen for users to test systems in non-production environments and provide both positive feedback and bug reports. We expect quality to be higher because of the improved QA process.

In addition to your input, there are many ways TrueNAS users can give back and enrich the experience of others in the Community. Check out how you can make a meaningful contribution and play a part in shaping the future of TrueNAS.