iXsystems’ TrueNAS, the popular storage software, is getting high availability and SMB clustering for the enterprise.
TrueNAS says it has more than 1 million installations and >10EB of capacity under management. The scale-out version is called TrueNAS SCALE and is based on Linux and supports Docker Containers, Kubernetes, KVM, and Scale-out OpenZFS.
The updated software supports SMB, Gluster, and NFS File Sharing, iSCSI Block Storage, S3 Object API integration, and Cloud Sync for interoperability with public cloud storage.
TrueNAS SCALE supports up to 2EB of capacity and 1,000GB/s bandwidth. The scale is indicated by its support of 100 racks, 400 CPUs, and 1,200 drives with clustered M-Series hardware.
Release 2 of TrueNAS SCALE, codenamed Angelfish, adds high availability on dual-controller TrueNAS M-Series systems for scale-out storage, VM, and Container workloads. If one storage controller fails or is taken down for maintenance, the other controller takes over and provides all services.
The upgradable single or dual-controller M-Series start with the M30 (24 x 3.5-inch drive bays) at <$13,000, and runs through the M40 and M50 to the top-end M60. This supports up to 20 PB and 20GB/sec on a single node, and 100 clustered nodes supports the 2EB of capacity.
SMB clustering is the second main addition. With it, clients can connect to any cluster node for access to the cluster’s total capacity and bandwidth; potentially hundreds of petabytes of capacity and terabits of bandwidth per second.
Fleets of TrueNAS Open Source and Enterprise systems are managed using on-premises or cloud-delivered TrueCommand software. TrueCommand v2.2 has been enhanced to use the additional TrueNAS SCALE APIs and clustered SMB with wizards for creating SMB clusters.
It also has a reworked and faster statistics engine, improved certificate handling for added simplicity, and updated middleware for better error handling and testing frameworks.
Angelfish has been tested by more than 20,000 users in the four months since its initial availability, and is now ready for mainstream production use.
In general, iXsystems is a small and medium enterprise supplier that also counts larger enterprises among its customers. It may surprise you to learn that more than 40 percent of the Fortune 500 are TrueNAS customers. iXsystems is owned by its employees and has no VC funding. Features such as high-availability and SMB clustering will strengthen its enterprise appeal as will the sheer size of its customer base. And there is a roadmap for future functionality additions.
This company is growing its revenues, growing its product, and growing its user base. It’s a force to be reckoned with in open-source storage.
TrueNAS is available as Open Storage software that is downloadable at no cost, or as TrueNAS appliances for a turnkey experience with enterprise-grade features and support.
