It’s a bold statement, but one we are very comfortable making. We have the data!

Achieving RELEASE Status

Our primary objective is to advance each version of TrueNAS to RELEASE status, optimized with the maximum number of useful features and the minimum number of bugs possible. RELEASE status means that the software has passed rigorous testing and is deemed stable for general use. To reach this milestone, we initiate a Release Candidate (RC) process for each version, during which the software is deemed functionally complete and subjected to intensive testing. We gauge the quality of our RC versions by two key metrics: the growing number of RC users and the declining number of bug reports.

TrueNAS 24.04: A Marked Increase in Early Adoption

The BETA phase for Dragonfish (SCALE 24.04) began in early February. Four weeks ago, we released Dragonfish-RC.1, which has already outperformed all previous CORE and SCALE versions. As seen in the chart below, it has attracted nearly ten times the number of early users compared to TrueNAS 13.0, our most popular version to date.

TrueNAS 24.04 had 10X Early Users of TrueNAS 13.0

Dragonfish (SCALE 24.04) started its BETA in early February. The latest Dragonfish-RC.1 version has been available for 4 weeks and has far surpassed all other CORE and SCALE versions, growing almost 10x in early users over TrueNAS 13.0, the most widely used version today.

Driven by Quality Assurance

While new features are always exciting, they can introduce bugs. Our significant quality improvements are a direct result of four strategic enhancements:

With record level usage, we have only seen a small fraction of the bug reports. The official RELEASE, SCALE 24.04.0, will be available next week. We are eager to receive and share the early adopter feedback.

Quality Assurance (QA) infrastructure: From tiny 1 TB VMs to Minis, R-Series, and F-Series, all the way to a large 1200-drive M60, our QA infrastructure has grown by tenfold with the build-out of the TrueNAS Innovation Center (TIC) in Tennessee.

Automated testing: The QA team has greatly increased the number of automated tests for each release. The automation includes functional testing, UI testing, performance testing, and failure testing for our HA systems. In each two-week sprint, we perform over 10,000+ tests.

Better user feedback: Built into the Dragonfish WebUI are bug-reporting capabilities that can capture debugs and screenshots for more straightforward diagnosis.

More early users: With 10x the number of early users, we get quality feedback almost 10x faster. This gives us more time to fix issues and more confidence in the quality at an earlier stage of development. We deeply appreciate our TrueNAS community for their invaluable contributions through testing and feedback.

In addition, we are delighted to report that the major components that make up TrueNAS, such as OpenZFS, SAMBA, and Linux, have all proven to be of the highest quality for this release. We are happy to continue contributing to the Open Source ecosystem with bug fixes and improvements alike!

The other evidence of the quality improvements has been the impressively positive verified customer reviews for TrueNAS in the distributed file system and object storage category, where Bluefin and Cobia users rate their experience 5 stars (out of 5). While those ratings also encompass their experiences with our  Sales and Support teams, they surely would not be possible without excellent software quality. Currently, we have no service-impacting software issues in our 5,000+ Enterprise accounts.

We at iX wish to thank our phenomenal Engineering / QA teams and TrueNAS community testers for all the significant efforts going into Dragonfish. And we are still just getting started.

We are immensely grateful to our TrueNAS community for their dedication to testing and providing feedback.

Continuous Improvement with TrueNAS 13.3

Following the release of Dragonfish (24.04), TrueNAS CORE 13.3 will undergo the same rigorous QA process, offering an easy update path for users of TrueNAS 13.0. This update benefits from proven components already used in Dragonfish, including the latest updates to OpenZFS and Samba. Despite the complexity of updating from FreeBSD 13.0 to 13.3, we are committed to ensuring a reliable process for our CORE users with a full BETA release scheduled to start in May. Nightly versions are already available for developers, and we are eager to see the engagement levels during the BETA and RC.1 phases.

Your Data, Your Way

With each new release, our focus remains unchanged: to empower you to access and manage your data exactly how you want. As TrueNAS evolves, it offers a cleaner user interface and new features such as apps and catalogs tailored to meet your needs. TrueNAS facilitates the seamless migration of storage services and VMs from CORE to SCALE, and allows for the replacement of plugins and jails with apps and sandboxes, enhancing your storage experience.