NOTE: This is historical content that may contain outdated information.

I’m pleased to provide a quick update on the status of FreeNAS 11.0. The RC1 update was released this morning, and can be installed via ISO or updated to by switching to the FreeNAS-11-STABLE train in the System -> Update tab. We decided to start this series off with a Release Candidate (RC) version, because it is rebased on a newer version of FreeBSD (11-STABLE). This version has been tested in the nightlies for several months now, but just to play it safe we are asking for users to test out this release and let us know immediately if anything regresses. Or, if you want to let us know that it improves specific things, that’s cool as well.

Now, for the stats. Your loyal, dedicated, and attractive FreeNAS development team has been hard at work on this release. As of this morning, 11.0-RC includes 111 bug fixes and 23 new features. In addition the user-guide has been updated for 11 as well. As usual, if you find bugs please report them ASAP, since we can only fix things that we know about.
This release also includes the first “official” look at the experimental new Angular-based UI. You’ll be given an option to try this out on the Login screen. I just wanted to give you a couple of quick tidbits about this new UI:

It is NOT feature complete, as we have only been working on this for a few short weeks. While you can use it to do some things, keep this in mind as you “test-drive” it around. The feature complete version is targeted for later this year, most likely the 11.1 or 11.2 time-frame.

It follows (mostly) the same workflow as the legacy UI. This is intentional for now. In order to get us rapidly ported to the new Angular framework, we’ve decided to try and keep most of the workflow similar for the time being and focus purely on getting the functionality brought in. Once we have reached the point where all major features are usable in this UI, we will have a chance to do some navel-gazing and re-think workflows of specific sections one at a time. That being said, you are welcome to send in tickets about the new UI and we will be happy to discuss and get to them all in due course.The current theme will be changing down the road. We are planning to offer multiple themes, allowing you to pick between dark/light or perhaps even user-submitted themes.

Lastly, I wanted to mention support for virtualization. 11.0 now has a VM page, allowing you to spin up your own operating systems on FreeNAS. We are actively working on this functionality, so please give it a whirl and report issues to the tracker.

Thanks everybody! We look forward to making the 11.X series better than ever!

Kris Moore
Director of Engineering
iXsystems