What's New in FreeNAS 9.1.0

Dru LavigneDocumentation Lead, iXsystemsILF, July 27, 2013

Outline

Introduction to FreeNAS Releases and Features

Brief ZFS Overview

What's New in 9.1

Additional Resources

Introduction

Open source NAS (Network Attached Storage) based on an embedded version of FreeBSD (nanoBSD) and released under 2-clause BSD license

Enterprise-grade appliance (TrueNAS) is also available in 2U/4U form factors with tiered professional support

Releases

8.0 was released in May, 2011 with a focus on NAS core functionality (redesign of .7x which was EOL'd in 2011)

8.2.0 introduced the original Plugins architecture for installing non-core software (July 20, 2012)

8.3.0 introduced ZFSv28 (October 26, 2012)

8.3.1 introduced full disk encryption (March 20, 2013)

9.1.0 is at RC2, release expected early August

Features

Create UFS or ZFS volumes (ZFS recommended)

Import existing UFS/ZFS RAID/z volumes

Import existing UFS, DOS, NTFS, EXT2/3 volumes

Create shares using Appletalk, NFS, and SMB protocols

Configure access through FTP/SFTP, SSH, and iSCSI

Features

Integration with OpenLDAP, Active Directory

Automated, secure replication via rsync/ssh

Automated ZFS snapshots and scrubs

Front-ends to cron, sysctls, loader.conf

Reporting graphs, scheduled S.M.A.R.T. tests, automated alerts, UPS

Features

Link aggregation, failover, and VLAN support

DDNS, SNMP, and TFTP support

Control panel to stop/start and view the status of services

PDF of Users Guide published with each release (per-release documentation)

Features

Supports OSX Time Machine and Windows Shadow Copies

OS is installed on USB stick/CF and is separate from data on storage disks

Upgrades keep a backup of the old OS, allowing for rollback

Administrative GUI accessed through a web browser; 8.2 added a web shell for command line operations

ZFS

128-bit filesystem designed to be “self-healing” with checksums to provide data integrity

Snapshots (point in time) only store what has changed since the last snapshot (COW)

Scheduled scrubs verify integrity of disks and data

Deduplication saves space (removes duplicate data)

Datasets have properties (quotas, compression)

ZFS

RAIDZ* levels designed to overcome hardware RAID limitations

RAIDZ1: equivalent to RAID5

RAIDZ2: double-parity solution similar to RAID6

RAIDZ3: triple-parity solution

Caveats: resilvering takes time and can stress disks

What's New in 9.1.0

Based on FreeBSD 9.1-STABLE:

Latest drivers and bug fixes

Adds new ZFS feature flags (ZFSv5000), including LZ4 compression

Same ABI as PC-BSD PBIs (over 1100) means that there is more software available for installation and conversion to FreeNAS PBIs

What's New in 9.1.0

Redesigned Volume Manager:

UFS and ZFS now have separate managers

How to extend a ZFS pool, create multiple pools, or add log/cache devices is more intuitive

Easier to manage a large amount of disks

Estimated storage capacity of ZFS pool is displayed for selected RAIDZ* layout and GUI will not let you create an unsupported layout

ZFS Volume Manager

Plugins Easier to Use

Users no longer have to first configure a jail as the Plugins mechanism automaticaly creates and uses a default jail

New integrated AppCafe browser lists available FreeNAS PBIs, simply highlight the app and click its Install button

Appcafe.org (launching soon) will make it easy to find PC-BSD, pfSense, and FreeNAS PBIs

Plugins Easier to Use

Jails for Advanced Users

Users who want more control over software installations now have a choice of what type and how many jails to create and can install software using FreeNAS PBIs, PC-BSD PBIs, FreeBSD packages (traditional and pkgng), or FreeBSD ports

The only required parameter when creating a jail is the name, however users can choose to configure the IPv4 and/or IPv6 address(es), MAC address, and whether or not to use vimage

Jails for Advanced Users

Jails for Advanced Users

What's New in 9.1.0

GUI now available over IPv6 and can specify alternate port

What's New in 9.1.0

Shell now supports paste and resizing

What's New in 9.1.0

Alerts can now be dismissed

What's New in 9.1.0

Init/Shutdown Scripts

What's New in 9.1.0Can now configure replication user

What's New in 9.1.0

Can now change SFTP logging level/facility

What's New in 9.1.0

Can now specify NFS bind ports

What's New in 9.1.0

Ability to boot into a debug kernel

What's New in 9.1.0

Directory Services menu added

What's New in 9.1.0

zilstat utility added for testing dedicated ZIL:

http://www.richardelling.com/Home/scripts-and-programs-1/zilstat

Easy-RSA has been added to the base, making it easier to create and manage RSA keys for use with OpenVPN

Resources

Website: http://www.freenas.org

Forums: http://forums.freenas.org

Bug tracker: http://support.freenas.org

Source code: https://github.com/freenas/freenas

Documentation: http://doc.freenas.org

IRC: #freenas on Freenode

Questions

Contact:

dru@freebsd.org

URL to Slides:

http://slideshare.net/dlavigne/ilf2013