Virtualization costs have dramatically increased after the acquisition of VMware by Broadcom, often by 200 – 1,000% or more . In response, organizations are looking for safe-harbor elsewhere in their infrastructure stack to find cost savings to alleviate the pain. Some particularly savvy organizations are turning to TrueNAS for mission-critical NVMe solutions that reduce both storage and VMware licensing expenses .
When paired with the powerful performance of TrueNAS Enterprise all-flash systems, connected vSphere host servers can spend less time waiting for storage, completing their workloads faster. This increased performance allows you to run more workloads on the same hardware, bumping up density and reducing VMware licensing costs. As an example, a leading electric vehicle manufacturer estimated $2M in overall savings on VMware licensing over 5 years by leveraging TrueNAS F-Series systems.
We’re excited to announce that TrueNAS is bringing NVMe-powered deduplication to the table with the latest TrueNAS 25.04 (codenamed Fangtooth) release. Ideal for virtualization, Fast Dedup technology makes its debut on the TrueNAS H30 and F100 . This powerful data-reduction technology makes high-efficiency, low-latency storage more accessible for mission-critical environments.
NVMe data reduction can reduce virtualization storage costs by over 50% or more while maintaining sub-millisecond latency performance from robust TLC Flash. Fast Dedup technology works in conjunction with TrueNAS Adaptive Compression to achieve data reduction rates of 3:1 or better. Fast deduplication, combined with licensing reductions from hardware consolidation, delivers substantial financial benefits without compromising performance needs.
NVMe flash is particularly well-suited for data reduction due to its exceptionally high raw performance per device and its relatively higher cost per terabyte compared to traditional HDD storage. By leveraging some of this excess performance, data reduction significantly lowers the effective cost per terabyte while still delivering speeds that are orders of magnitude faster than HDDs, which makes it ideal for virtualization storage.
TrueNAS leverages a suite of data-reducing technologies to help shrink the storage capacity needed for common use cases, including:
ZSTD Compression – A flexible, intelligent compression algorithm that enables multiple levels of compression based on performance and capacity targets.
Fast Copy (aka Block Cloning) – Uses OpenZFS’s Copy-on-Write technique to create rapid, metadata-only copies and avoid the overhead of physical copies. Block Cloning is now enabled for iSCSI (XCOPY, VAAI), offering speeds more than 10X faster than physical copies.
Fast Dedup – More efficient metadata storage and updates to the Deduplication Table (DDT) handling have reduced the latency impact of deduplication
With the combination of these technologies, many use cases will see a 70% or more reduction in the raw NVMe capacity required. Virtualization workloads benefit the most since multiple copies of the same operating system are stored within a datastore. Other use cases, like video storage, may not see the same data reduction benefit, as the data is not compressible, but can still leverage other features like Fast Copy for performance benefits. Like all OpenZFS capabilities, deduplication is fully portable with no proprietary lock-in.
When the data stored can benefit from the full suite of data reduction features, TrueNAS reduces the effective cost per usable TB of NVMe flash to a level where it is price-competitive with spinning HDDs, yet still vastly outperforms due to the incredible performance of NVMe drives. Early testing has shown a 10x performance uplift at the same price per effective TB as HDDs.
The TrueNAS data reduction features do require additional processing and RAM resources, and for these reasons, we’ve selected two specific performance-oriented TrueNAS appliances that will be the first to support the Fast Dedup capabilities.
The TrueNAS H30 and TrueNAS F100 both have powerful processors, additional RAM, and support for high-performance TLC (triple-layer-cell) NVMe drives. The remarkable benefit of Fast Dedup and block cloning is that latency remains at the sub-millisecond TLC level demanded by high-performance workloads, without relying on slower multi-millisecond QLC drives to reach a lower effective cost per TB.
There is no additional license cost for the new Fast Dedup features in TrueNAS Enterprise. However, Enterprise Gold support is required to support 24×7 operation and the added complexity of diagnosing performance and capacity issues. While Deduplication is available for multiple use cases, it is best leveraged where the storage media savings are significant. Talk to a TrueNAS sales representative to discuss whether your data is a good match for Fast Dedup technology.
Both the TrueNAS H30 and F100 platforms were chosen to debut the new Fast Dedup technology for their powerful processors, ample RAM capacity, and support for large-capacity NVMe devices. Both units deliver sub-millisecond latency, averaging just 0.5ms in mixed-workload testing as shown in the chart below.
NVMe data reduction with Fast Dedup is only supported on TrueNAS Enterprise systems with properly allocated CPU, RAM, and NVMe capacity. The TrueNAS Engineering Team then tests these systems as complete solutions to ensure optimal performance. For our Fast Dedup feature, we have chosen 30TB NVMe drives as the preferred media type to ensure an excellent user experience. The table below describes the primary systems.
| Platform | TrueNAS H30 | TrueNAS F100 |
| Cores | 20 | 48 |
| RAM | 256GB | 512GB |
| Max Network | 2 x 100Gbe | 4 x 100Gbe |
| Max Drives (non-DDUP) | 12 x 60TB = 720TB | 168 x 60TB = 10PB |
| Max Raw Capacity | 12 x 30TB = 360TB | 24 x 30TB = 720TB |
| DDUP Effective capacity | Up to 1 PB | Up to 2PB |
| Max Recommended VMs/Hosts | 1500 | 3000 |
For customers looking to start small and scale up later, deduplication works with any of our available TLC NVMe SSDs. Fast Dedup on the TrueNAS H30 and F100 requires TrueNAS Enterprise Gold support, and additional appliances and configurations are being tested for future support.
TrueNAS is uniquely focused on reducing enterprise storage costs and slashing the cost of virtualization solutions. The key components that deliver these cost savings are:
Combined with the highest Gartner Peer rating for Enterprise storage, TrueNAS delivers performance, efficiency, and value without compromise.
Have questions about which TrueNAS system fits your needs? Our experts will match your use case requirements with the most cost-effective and future-proof platform. Optional usable capacity guarantees for our new Fast Dedup are available at an additional cost for organizations with reducible data.
Reach out today and learn how the new Fast Dedup technology available on the TrueNAS H30 and F100 can help you unlock the power of your data.
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