 Tom here from Lawrence Systems and on April 15th, 2020, TrueNAS Core is the new FreeNAS was announced. Basically it's the conversions of the two products. And I have loaded here the latest version as of June 17th, the nightly build of TrueNAS. And I wanna go over some of the features and I'm playing around with it and doing some testing and it's got some really great things that they've added on here. And I'm kind of excited about it and it's getting closer to beta. So this is still not beta. This is still not ready for production, but it's still cool to play with. And if you, you know, hey, if you wanna play with some of these fancy new features you can load it yourself on there and give it a try and help with the progress of the product by filing bug reports and whatnot. But we're gonna dive into the features in just a second. But first, if you'd like to learn more about me and my company, head over to LawrenceSystems.com. 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We keep repeating this, people keep asking it, but the answer still hasn't changed several months. Well, two months and two days later, the answer is still 100% yes. TrueNAS Core will not have fewer features than FreeNAS and TrueNAS Core will remain open source. So there's actually, and to point out, and this is kind of the proof now a few months later, TrueNAS Core will have more feature than FreeNAS does today. So they've kept their word on it. So what are we gonna, why did they merge them? I'll leave a link to all this and that can be covered, but basically simplified documentation, improved quality. When you're not maintaining two separate pieces of software, even though they share most all the same code, once they get these all merged together and only have one piece of code to maintain, it just gets a lot easier. So rapid development's gonna occur. They have an entire matrix here for what the differences are between the TrueNAS and the enterprise features that you'll get with the enterprise feature only version where that's the paid version. And it's not like they're encroaching on all that matter. In fact, one of the things that's important to remember here is a lot of these features have a lot more to do with the hardware. I mean, I'll leave you through this, I'm not gonna go in detail on them, but things like visual enclosure management and the dual controller HA, it's not just a matter of enabling HA features, it's also a matter of actually having hardware that can properly support HA. So it's open source and if you want to write your own because you found separate hardware than the hardware IX system makes, you want to make it redundant, that question comes up, yes, you can go do that, it's open source and you can start building your own levels of redundancy if that's what you want. There's a few other little details like the fiber channel support and I'll leave all those little things over here. They're not that significant. You know what's the significant portion is all in the well version anyone can download, the fully open source free version. The other things that are in there, of course are some of the telemetry things to contact them for support agreements and generally speaking, HomeLab and end users don't want something that, well, phones home at all. So you're probably happy that feature does not come in there by default. All right, let's get to the product to talk about what's new. Metadata on Flash, special SSD VDFs can be used for metadata acceleration. This can include both file system metadata and Ddupe tables. This is one of the core features of OpenZFS 2.0 and let me show you how some of these things work. So as we go over, I'm going to go over here and kind of show you where that feature exists. And what they've done is under pool operations, add VDFs, you've got different options to add the cache like in log, like before hot spare, but then a special allocation class used to create fusion pools, which was the name they adopted for these. So the fusion pools are special blocks that can be used for metadata or Ddupe. So there's certain scenarios where that may be helpful. There'll be something, maybe I'll explore it a little bit deeper in the future. If you read through, there's still writing some of the documentation of like the best scenarios to use them and how they will help. But I believe from what I've read so far, it's going to be most helpful in scenarios where you have like a bunch of databases residing in a ZFS system where there's a lot of metadata requests going back and forth. And what this does is doing it at the file system level. So you're not going to specify that a GL lives specifically in there or anything like that. What you're going to do in this scenario is use this, turn it on and it will then provide better performance if you have those specific use cases. And then those specific drives that would be more likely, you know, faster drives is where the metadata call will go. This gives you a really interesting scenario where instead of just caching something, you go a little bit deeper. And I really like this. I'm looking forward to these features. Now I haven't explored much to Dduping but some of the same things in there. Dduplication tables are stored in this special VDEB type. These VDEBs must be sized X gig for each X terabyte of general storage. So I don't have the sizing specific guides for them but that's going to be another feature that comes in there. So having these kind of like faster drives and then you have the larger pool because well, you know, the spinning rust drives are still going to be around at least for a little while longer. We haven't had enough breakthroughs in storage that we can retire them and they still make up the majority of this disk out there when it comes to people who need large storage arrays but there are certain things you may want faster. Now, alternatively, some people will just build a specific VDEB or specific pool that are just SSDs for their fast storage and that this kind of gives you an opportunity to spread it differently. So you can have one single pool but then have that faster performance drives in there as a caching method. So, well metadata caching essentially putting it where it's fastest. Really cool feature. I'm looking forward to diving into that. And that's right here is what they were talking about that fusion pools right below there. SSD where monitoring any SSD boot L2 arcs log or VDEB can be monitored for where and alerts created. So as SSDs become more mainstream that's really cool that that's gonna be in there. Data encryption specific datasets can be selected or de-selected for encryption with user provided key when replicating the dataset to another true NAS that key does not have to be provided so the data can be transmitted and stored in the original encrypted state. This is really neat. Let me show you how this works. So normally you can encrypt when you're building a pool and we have this right here to show us, you know, new icon shows us that it's unlocked. And then I have like this test share right here and let's go and edit the encryption options. And by default it inherits encryption options and instead of inheriting you can set specific passphrases for each one of the datasets on there. So this is a rewrite of the way it works. It doesn't use the old system as it used to. It's still gonna be accelerated with AES and I processors which any most modern systems have. So it's not gonna be that much of a form. As a matter of fact, it's likely and we don't have the numbers on this yet but the new performance should be better with this. And the reason why they're not doing it like on a per drive basis as I understood it is doing it right in the file system in the ZFS level. And it's just supposed to be a much more efficient way to handle the encryption in here. I don't have like said every detail on it but they did it and it's really from everything I've read so far it looks really nice in terms of performance enhancement and being able to get more granular with your what you use for keys and what you use as a passphrase because it does support both keys and passphrase just like before. Faster ZFS boot that's included in there because it's more parallel processing for importing ZFS pools when there's many drives, asynchronous trim, trim commands, free up space particularly with SSD so making these trim commands asynchronous, they scale and perform better so that's really good. ZFS Linux compatibility, Linux and free BSD peer operating system for open ZFS 2.0 compressed duplication encryption data can be efficiently replicated from a Linux host to a TrueNAS system for backup and archive so that's really nice there. Accelerated ZFS, several performance improvements have been reduced both IOPS and the CPU cycles required more features, higher performance together with bigger big win for ZFS users. Now this one is OpenVPN client and server. Let's look at that, that's right here in this so we have the client and the server. So you can now take your system and tie it to an OpenVPN tunnel and maybe because you need to be able to tie it to one server that's elsewhere this could be ways to transport data back and forth across instead of doing it over SSH. Now SSH is encrypted but why not encapsulate it in a VPN as well so there's one option if you're doing it replicated. Other options are you need to disconnect to another server for whatever other reasons maybe there's just data on here and you want to use some of the plugins and have it all consolidated. I have not really tested this but it's nice that they added it right here. Now right below it, OpenVPN server. So this is acting, the FreeNAS is acting as a client where it's gonna connect to a server and then this acting as a server itself so this being able to access a server so if you don't have let's say a firewall or some other VPN server you can have something that connects directly to your TrueNAS system and it can act as a server for those connections and that's gonna be really handy because there are sometimes where maybe you only want users to act directly to this so they can share some files but they don't need access to the greater network and you can just restrict them right to here and do shares across that. So need that they've added it as you know added right here as a service in the system. Next is two factor authentication. Brain Key Security, two factor authentication is highly desirable and that's just right here. So we go over here to system, to FA, enable it, confirm, put in the QR code and standard TOTP authentication. Nice addition to the system there. API keys, access the REST web sockets API can now be done via API keys. Keys can be created and revoked directly via the web GUI for security. Now this is really, I like this feature a lot so we're gonna call this Tom's key add and now it's gonna generate an API key and I can copy it to the clipboard. Now the advantage of an API key is I can now give an application access to my system without giving it the password and I can delegate so let's say I had different apps I wanted to control via the API. By the way, there's actually a lot of expandability you can do because maybe you have some script that adds users maybe you have some script that performs some task or function as an API call that you don't wanna do through the UI. There's actually, especially in the larger scale enterprise level systems where these are deployed you'll find people putting together scripts that automate certain tasks and having an API is really handy for that and going a step further having it so we know what applications we've attached to our TrueNAS system and maybe as they expire we get rid of them or if we need to remove something that is awesome so we can reset the key but you can't display the key a second time so each time it only displays the key and then the key is gone after this so I can copy it to clipboard which thank you for anyone who puts copy to clipboard when you're generating long alphanumerics like that it's just really handy but we can add another one we can add another one and they have documentation link here for that so you understand what you give an access to and if you change root passwords and things like that well it's not gonna have any effect on the API key so that's a welcome feature and I think we're gonna start seeing more people expand on that and write different utilities where they can go hey I can just script this for you with this particular utility. KMIP support key management interoperability protocols and enterprise-grade approach to securing systems and data through central eyes key management system this feature will be able to TrueNAS enterprise to secure your devices or data sets so that's going to be more of an enterprise feature but it's probably not something homelab or people are using it's global key management definitely important right there and that specifically is listed I will mention though in the enterprise only features. Also of note in if you're going over here go to support one of the ways they're gonna be doing this is it's still gonna be the same download you'll just enter your license to unlock those particular features if you're an enterprise user if not it's basically just a you know the standard open source one so I do like that little noted ad that they had here so it's kinda like well do you have to read download or re-upgrade this what if I wanna start with the basic move to that later and I'm not positive I'll let them confirm this I would assume that if your license expires for one of these it kinda just goes back into the mode where those couple extra features that you get are missing and just works normally so this is nice because if you lose support on some of the other ones now you have different errors having one converged system means well yeah once your license runs out and you have one of these older systems it just essentially can be downgraded by the license expiring without actually changing or reloading the operating system you'll just lose that couple little things like this KMIP or any of the features listed over here that's in there for example like the dual controller HA system but like I said that's also hardware dependent as well TrueNAS command data set management this is still something I'm gonna have is a completely separate video TrueCommand has joined at the HIP with TrueNAS and will provide some exciting features including snapshots replicating migrating data sets between systems. I'm gonna dedicate a separate review to this because there's a couple things they've done here and one of them is status of TrueCommand is shown up right here you can connect this to a TrueCommand cloud instance and provide API keys. They have a complete system that they're working on so you can control all your systems in the cloud. Now they're even thinking about and I don't know all the limitations yet but they're gonna have like some free versions for people with less than 50 drives and they're gonna have paid versions where you can manage everything in the cloud and manage multiple servers. I don't think it's a real problem for the home users or in the home lab market because they generally aren't gonna wanna have everything attached to some cloud usually the opposite from a lot of the home users support but it's cool if they have it from an enterprise standpoint and from our standpoint of managing free NAS and TrueNAS systems for our clients having everything in one dashboard in the cloud that we pay a subscription for actually sounds pretty attractive being able to manage especially as some clients scale out and have a lot of different servers in there so it's kind of a neat feature but it goes a little beyond the scope and it's specifically a cloud management platform through here so I'll dive into that in its own separated video at some time soon. And then you have plenty of comments and everything else below and the nightlies keep coming on there. One thing I didn't see in here but it was actually really it's the little things as you're using it you notice and we go here to users you notice how it says root and Tom and that's it and we click over here it'll show all the other users. That was actually something I was always kind of annoyed by is like I don't wanna see all the users because there's all the different users that are actually services running on the system. I like that when you're setting up on the TrueNAS core that this just shows that by default. Now the last thing I wanna mention is I'm gonna miss the shark. So this is the dashboard on the TrueNAS system and this is the one on the FreeNAS system and I kinda say it because I have this little drawn shark right here and we've doodled a couple sharks. This was actually drawn by the folks over at the FreeNAS team a few years ago and I've always kept this pin to the wall. They sent us a swag shark cause they liked some of the videos before I got to know them. That goes back about three or four years now but I like it it's one of the little keepsakes I have on my wall over here. So I'll still remember the shark. I'm gonna miss it but I do the new dashboard overall outside of the shark logo which I'm not here to debate their logo choices. It's not bad but I still like the shark logo. Anyways, I do like the new interface. They've really done a nice job on this dashboard kinda giving you more information. You know little highlights, the mouseovers and things like that. Being able to go to reports. Your reports still look like this. I know some people are gonna be clamoring going well I would love a more advanced reporting. That'll come with the true command system which does have some better reporting but for the basics and actually from a daily usage standpoint as someone who troubleshoots and works on a lot of free NAS and sure NAS systems I find it very adequate to get the information I need without too many problems. And even though the reports are not the most visually pleasing reports out there they're effective at giving me the information I need and that's actually what matters a lot to me is actionable intelligence more so than eye candy. Eye candy's cool, don't get me wrong there's always room for improvement but actionable intelligence is the most important part. This also, I notice it will give you like the hottest temperature, highest CPU usage so it's definitely a lot more in depth than the current one right here which is free NAS 11.3 U3.2 here. So this is the current one this is my production system and this is our demo system. A big shout out to the folks over at Tech Supply Direct because they provided us with this server right here I have a review on it. This is the R730XD if anyone's wondering it runs the True NAS perfectly fine and I've had no problems at all with it and but I'm looking forward to this as a product I'll be upgrading. I think once it goes beta maybe I'll take one of my machines and throw it in the beta so I can do some reporting. Nightly's I'm a little bit more sketch with when it comes to actually putting me in production but so far the new product is looking great. I really like the you know overall look of it the where they're going with it the fact they've added open VPN. I also seen in here and it's not something I've explored either but if you look under here and one little detail I noticed was right here it said WireGuard and they do have an article from earlier this year about WireGuard and it becoming popular enabled so seeing them kind of bringing up more than just a blog post but also a listing here from Hooks you're hoping WireGuard gets maybe an interface more than command line in here that'd be kind of cool but that's something that's going to be in the TrueNAS as well. Thought I'd bring it up and mention because a lot of people ask about different VPN options because if I say open VPN someone says what about WireGuard? It's got some performance enhancements and it's you know reasonably easy to set up and yes so exciting about that that'll probably be a separate video altogether about VPN options, WireGuard and open VPN inside of the new TrueNAS core. So I'll leave links to where all this can be found where you can get this which is pretty easy. Go to IXSystems.com, go to FreeNAS.com you can download this. You can switch to Nightly's yourself if you want. You go over to system and you go to update and there's no new updates available on here but you can switch to the TrueNAS Nightly train FYI once you switch to this you're on the new train there's not, it removes the ability to go backwards. Let me show you in our system here go here, update. So if I were to switch to the Nightly builds for mine it would then not allow me to roll backwards on that. Just enough why once you're across the point of no return that's a thing that can happen. You may break things. Now you do have the ability here to roll it back again. I don't know and I haven't tried it to see if you can go back to these without any problem but just be warned and back up everything and testing at your own risk because these are still Nightly's not Betas. But they're getting as far as I know right now because we're getting close to where the beta their feature complete just not bug free yet. So I don't think there's any more features can be added. So I'm looking forward to these and once the beta comes out I'll be doing a more updated video and I'll continue testing with the servers that we have here. Actually I actually build another one to test some of the encryption replication features because right now I'm not clear that I can replicate to an old version and have that encryption work. It may work I don't know but I'm gonna actually try it with two properly. On the same version systems to make sure it works flawlessly before I really dive into whether or not how many versions back it will go. All right and thanks. And thank you for making it to the end of the video. If you liked this video please give it a thumbs up. If you'd like to see more content from the channel hit the subscribe button and hit the bell icon if you'd like YouTube to notify you when new videos come out. If you'd like to hire us head over to laurancesystems.com fill out our contact page and let us know what we can help you with and what projects you'd like us to work together on. If you wanna carry on the discussion head over to forums.laurancesystems.com where we can carry on the discussion about this video other videos or other tech topics in general even suggestions for new videos they're accepted right there on our forums which are free. 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