IxSystems has recently released Distribution Truenas scale 24.04, which is built on the Linux nucleus and the Debian package base. This marks a departure from the company’s previous products, such as Trueos, PC-BSD, Truenas, and Freenas, which were based on FreeBSD. Similar to Truenas Core (formerly Freenas), Truenas Scale can be downloaded and used for free, with its ISO image size being 1.5 GB. The initial texts for specific assemblies, scenarios, web-interface, and layers for Truenas Scale have been published on GitHub.
Truenas Scale, now based on the Linux kernel, has become the main branch, while Truenas Core, based on FreeBSD, will continue in escort mode for error and safety fixes. New features and versions will only be developed for the Truenas Scale branch. Notably, Truenas Scale is not the first Freenas option based on Linux, as OpenMediavault distribution made the switch to the Linux kernel and Debian package base in 2009.
Truenas Scale offers the capability to create storage facilities across multiple nodes, in contrast to Truenas Core (Freenas) which was designed for a single server setup. The use of isolated containers in Truenas Scale simplifies infrastructure control and makes it suitable for building program and determined infrastructures. The file system used is ZFS (OpenZFS) and support is provided for Docker containers, KVM virtualization, and ZFS scaling to multiple components using a distributed Gluster file system.
Access to the repository is organized using SMB, NFS, ISCSI BLOCK Storage, S3 Object API, and Cloud Sync, with VPN (OpenVPN) for secure connections. Storage can be initially deployed on one node and expanded horizontally by adding additional nodes as needed. Furthermore, the nodes can be utilized for services and applications in containers orchestrated via the Kubernetes platform or in virtual machines based on KVM.