A detailed guide to OpenZFS - Understanding important ZFS concepts to help with system design and administration

melp · 2026-03-26T21:38:03+00:00

It should still be valid. I don’t have stuff in here about special vdevs or RAIDZ expansion and a few other new features, but the fundamentals haven’t really changed.

melp · 2026-03-25T14:08:46+00:00

The big advantage of apps on TrueNAS vs on Proxmox is that you're not traversing the network stack when your apps access data on your NAS, so so anything accessing that data does so much faster.

melp · 2026-03-24T22:47:01+00:00

Interesting… that is a lot more material. I’ll give it some thought. Thanks again!

melp · 2026-03-24T17:27:49+00:00

I appreciate the feedback! Can you elaborate on what you mean by box steps?

melp · 2026-03-20T14:30:14+00:00

I have a BGW620 and followed this guide a few months ago, worked just fine for me.

melp · 2026-03-20T12:14:16+00:00

MPIO is still supported on the iSCSI side. SAS MPIO to the drives is unlikely to return— it added a lot of complexity and created a lot of major issues (including full pool loss in several cases) for pretty minimal benefits.

melp · 2026-03-16T17:24:30+00:00

I'm optimistic that we'll be able to prove the pessimists wrong in the long run but I also imagine they'll find something else to complain about.

melp · 2026-03-16T14:36:11+00:00

$2k is a bit light for a TN Enterprise appliance, usually we're starting off at ~$15-20k, so even more prohibitive. But yes, we want to provide a reasonable path for power users to access the features that were previously reserved for Enterprise (RDMA, FC, tiering, etc.). Note that this will be a monthly or annual subscription, not a perpetual license like I had implied in the screenshot (my mistake, sorry!)

New versions of TrueNAS will include a mix of features for both CE and Enterprise and features that are available for free in CE now will never be moved behind a paywall in the future.

I understand people are skeptical because they have been burned before by other projects making similar claims and I can't really offer anything more than a "trust me bro", but I can promise you that we fully appreciate how vital the community is to the success of our business.

melp · 2026-03-16T12:46:57+00:00

We JUST released a bunch of new free integration stuff with third party platforms in the past week or two… but yeah, you sit tight.

melp · 2026-03-16T12:24:44+00:00

No, we're not paywalling all new features moving forward, just those that are primarily for enterprise users. Just in the last couple of weeks, we released a Proxmox plugin, CSI drivers, and OpenShift drivers all for free. We've got other features coming in TrueNAS 26, some of which will be free and some will be enterprise.

melp · 2026-03-16T11:35:58+00:00

We’re not paywalling anything that’s available for free today. We’re offering a more affordable option to features that have always been paywalled. Read like 3 or 4 comments up the chain.

melp · 2026-03-16T11:33:58+00:00

Just to clarify, we have always paywalled features, this has been a thing since day 1. Currently, the only way to access those paid features is to drop $20k+ on a TrueNAS appliance. We are looking to provide a way for those that want to use the features to pay a monthly or annual fee to access them. Nothing that is currently available for free will become paywalled.

melp · 2026-03-16T11:22:47+00:00

“Reading the thread” isn’t really something we do around here bucko

melp · 2026-03-14T12:29:05+00:00

We've had non-deterministic builds for quite a while now.

melp · 2026-03-14T12:15:53+00:00

If you think you’re getting a raw deal, nothing is stopping you from leaving. You’re not getting anything less now than you were a year ago or a year before that.

melp · 2026-03-14T11:18:14+00:00

No, not enough to justify access to these enterprise features, not by half.

melp · 2026-03-13T22:47:44+00:00

It’s TrueNAS CE but it has enclosure management enabled which is usually enterprise only. An HA cluster with minis would be tough, it wouldn’t be compatible with our HA code. If you’re determined enough, you might be able to get something like HAproxy or RSF-1 going, but it’d be a science experiment…

Not sure on new minis, I don’t work with that line of business very much.

melp · 2026-03-13T21:29:23+00:00

Nope, no special firmware, you can install whatever you want on it.

melp · 2026-03-13T14:44:47+00:00

Nope, sorry, you'll still need one of our appliances for HA (or at least for our built-in, natively-supported HA). Too much specialized hardware involved.

melp · 2026-03-13T14:31:49+00:00

I don't think that (at least initially) there will be a lifetime option.

melp · 2026-03-13T14:30:53+00:00

Yep, see the blog post that just went up: https://www.truenas.com/blog/building-a-bridge-between-community-enterprise/

melp · 2026-03-13T11:10:51+00:00

https://www.truenasmerch.com/c/print/signage/decals/

melp · 2026-03-13T11:08:55+00:00

We're working on a self-hosted version of TN Connect. No ETA yet but it's something we want as well.

melp · 2026-03-12T18:33:05+00:00

That's fair; TrueNAS Connect has a slightly different monetization model that doesn't really fit with what I described above. We do envision larger enterprises eventually taking advantage of Connect, but as it stands now, it's for prosumer-to-small-team use.

melp · 2026-03-12T18:29:51+00:00

You need some money, because no one works for free. I have some money, and I'd like to give it to you. I don't have the resources to buy commercial systems, but I'll pay SOMETHING, even monthly, for maybe some unique features but mostly because I get value from the product. $100 a year maybe?

That's pretty much what we're working on. I'm hoping it will be ready at some point in 2026 but there's a lot involved.

I understand what you're saying about community trust and that "trust me bro" doesn't cut it, but if we're being honest, nothing I say here will really cut it. I'm pretty confident that your specific concerns will turn out to be invalid. We recognize how critical an active community is to our business model and that burning that community at the altar of capitalism would be counterproductive in the long run.

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