NOTE: This is historical content that may contain outdated information.

TrueNAS 12.0 RC1 was released yesterday and with it, TrueNAS CORE is ready for deployment. The merger of FreeNAS and TrueNAS into a unified software image can now begin its path into mainstream use. TrueNAS CORE is the new FreeNAS and is on schedule.

The TrueNAS 12.0 BETA process started in June and has been the most successful BETA release ever with more than 3,000 users and only minor issues. Ars Technica provided a detailed technical walkthrough of the original BETA. There is a long list of features and performance improvements. During the BETA process, TrueNAS 12.0 demonstrated over 1.2 Million IOPS and over 23GB/s on a TrueNAS M60.
TrueNAS 12.0 RC1 is suitable for less complex or other non-mission critical environments. Minor BETA issues have been fixed and several performance improvements to ZFS, SMB, iSCSI, and NFS have been integrated. Snapshot your pool, backup your data, and try it out! You can download it here.
In addition to the previously listed features, there are some other major additions:

• Zstandard Compression: A modern compression algorithm has been introduced in OpenZFS. This enables configuration of the compression level. It can provide gzip-like higher compression ratios, but closer to the read/write performance of the default LZ4 algorithm. We’ll be doing more performance testing to confirm the benefits.
• Enclosure Management for Minis: The TrueNAS Minis (fka FreeNAS Minis) have well-defined motherboards, wiring, and enclosures, which enables a graphical enclosure management function. Previously this was only available for the TrueNAS X and M-Series, but is now also available on the Minis. The Enclosure management function simplifies remote management by providing a graphical view of the drives, their status, and temperatures.
  

• TrueCommand Cloud Connections: TrueCommand Cloud is a SaaS offering of TrueCommand that leverages an integrated WireGuard VPN to connect to each TrueNAS system through firewalls. TrueNAS 12.0 RC1 is the first official release to support the TrueCommand Cloud functionality and enables us to begin offering TrueCommand Cloud trials to interested users and organizations. The TrueCommand icon that you see in the “action bar” at the top right of the WebUI can be used to easily establish a connection to your TrueCommand Cloud instance. TrueCommand Cloud is based on the current version, TrueCommand 1.3.1.

TrueNAS 12.0 RELEASE in October

TrueNAS 12.0 is going through the same NIGHTLY, BETA1, BETA2, RC1, RELEASE, and UPDATE stages that FreeNAS has gone through. There is a TrueNAS 12.0 sub-forum on the Community forums for this unification process and Community feedback.
We appreciated the Community testing of the TrueNAS 12.0 BETA releases. TrueNAS 12.0 has also been tested on Enterprise HA systems (M-Series and X-Series) within our labs and is now ready for field testing.
We are looking forward to hearing about user experiences when updating to RC1. You can review the current bugs here. So far, we have hit all TrueNAS 12.0 schedule dates and expect the October RELEASE to be on schedule.

TrueNAS 12.0 Documentation is Maturing

The new TrueNAS 12.0 documentation is more modular and expandable. The Community is invited to edit and contribute. Please check out the documentation even if you don’t upgrade today.

TrueNAS CORE: Still the Best Free NAS

We hope these TrueNAS 12.0 performance improvements have a positive impact on your systems. If you have any questions or comments, we’d love to hear them on the community forums, on the TrueNAS subreddit, or in response to this blog. If you need additional information on how TrueNAS can streamline, accelerate, and unify data management for your business, please email us.
For those with FreeNAS 11.3 installed on your system, you can upgrade to TrueNAS 12.0 RC1 with a single click! Otherwise, download TrueNAS 12.0 RC1 and get started.