TrueNAS Unified Storage is always improving its support of virtualization and private clouds. Pairing the reliable and scalable performance of ZFS with all-flash and hybrid-flash configurations, TrueNAS is a natural fit for the virtual storage backends of VMware ESXi®, Microsoft® Hyper-V®, XenServer®, or KVM hypervisors. Today, we announce the availability of TrueNAS vCenter Plugin 3.2 with support for the newly released vSphere 7.
Unlike most virtualization storage solutions, TrueNAS is flexible enough to provide file, block, and object protocols with the performance to work as both a VM datastore and file share in mixed environments.
TrueNAS versions 11.1-U7, 11.2, 11.3, and onward support VMware VAAI protocol for iSCSI and Fibre Channel and enable an enhanced TrueNAS vCenter plugin for easier management. With the TrueNAS vCenter Plugin 3.2, TrueNAS now supports vSphere7 as well as all 6.5 and 6.7 releases.

TrueNAS Optimized for VMware vSphere 6.5, 6.7, and 7.0

In a vSphere environment, TrueNAS acts as a high performance ESXi datastore using either iSCSI, Fibre Channel (FC), or NFS. Storage capacity and performance can be independently scaled, and the appliance can be managed natively in vCenter, via the TrueNAS vCenter plugin.
Key TrueNAS optimizations for VMware include:

• “VMware Ready” Storage Certification with vSphere for TrueNAS High Availability configurations. Details are available in the VMware Compatibility Guide.
• Enhanced Integration of VMware vSphere Storage APIs – Array Integration (VAAI) for efficient performance on iSCSI or FC block storage.
• Updated TrueNAS vCenter Plugin 3.2 supports the new APIs in vSphere 6.5, 6.7-U2, 6.7-U3 (a,b), and 7.0. The plugin enables admins to setup and monitor VMs and storage from within the vCenter web interface. Existing customers can contact support@ixsystems.com to gain access to the plugin.

The TrueNAS vCenter Plugin is described in this video. Technical highlights of Plugin 3.2 include:

• Simpler deployment in vCenter 6.7U3 (a,b) builds
• Improved security through encrypted API
• Management of scheduled periodic tasks
• Improved Capacity and Snapshot management
• Asynchronous updates to datastore status
• Improved management of NFS volumes

Kubernetes on TrueNAS

With vSphere 7, VMs and Containers (Kubernetes) are supported on the same physical infrastructure with TrueNAS. TrueNAS systems start with capacities as low as 10 TB and scale to 10 PB and 800K IOPS. Organizations of any size can configure one or more platforms to fit their capacity, performance, and budgetary needs.

TrueNAS Virtualization

Whether you are using vSphere 7.0, 6.7, or another stack and hypervisor, TrueNAS provides virtualization solutions that stretch your budget further. The utilization of Open Source economics reduces the costs of all-flash performance solutions and hybrid backup solutions.
For organizations with tens of thousands of VMs, multiple TrueNAS M50s can be logically configured via vCenter and managed as a single infrastructure via TrueCommand, a single-pane-of-glass management system. The ability to scale compute and storage independently can save significant costs in virtual environments.

Additional Resources & Information

Find out more information on integrating TrueNAS into your VMware environment:

• Virtualization Solutions, White Papers, Use Cases, and Case Studies
• General TrueNAS Information
• Video Overview of TrueNAS vCenter Plugin

Talk to iX

For any questions, please schedule a call with one of our TrueNAS experts or email sales@iXsystems.com, and we can help configure, size, and price a system that meets (and exceeds) the needs of your virtual environment.