TrueNAS CORE Continues: Community Forks Open-Source Project zVault

The TrueNAS CORE operating system is set to continue its legacy as the community has initiated a fork named zVault, which is based on FreeBSD. This development comes in response to iXsystems' decision to transition its focus towards the GNU/Linux version of TrueNAS, known as TrueNAS SCALE. The community aims to evolve TrueNAS CORE as an open-source project under the zVault name.

For some time, users faced a dilemma: they could either continue using TrueNAS CORE, which has received minimal updates since 2021, switch to the newer TrueNAS SCALE, or migrate to alternative products like XigmaNAS. Since then, iXsystems has only provided sporadic patches for the FreeBSD-based TrueNAS CORE, focusing its resources on developing TrueNAS SCALE.

To create the zVault fork, the development team utilized the openly available source code from TrueNAS CORE 13.3, removing the proprietary brand elements from the code. Kris Moore, the development lead at iXsystems, commended the zVault team for their initiative but pointed out that certain files within TrueNAS CORE are proprietary, thus requiring their removal. Following this guidance, the zVault developers eliminated 55 such files and made the new ISO image available for download, ensuring that zVault operates similarly to the original TrueNAS CORE.

The origins of TrueNAS date back to 2009 when iXsystems took over the FreeNAS project based on FreeBSD. In April 2020, with the release of version 12, iXsystems transitioned the end-user variant to the commercial TrueNAS CORE, while simultaneously announcing a port of the project based on GNU/Linux for Debian platforms. The first version of TrueNAS SCALE debuted six months later, and it has since gained traction, surpassing TrueNAS CORE in user numbers, leading iXsystems to discontinue support for the FreeBSD variant.

The latest release of TrueNAS SCALE, version 25.04 Fangtooth, features the Linux kernel 6.12 and integrates OpenZFS 2.3.0, which offers storage savings for NVMe-based systems. Additionally, the NAS operating system now supports LXC containers and QEMU/KVM virtualization through Incus. It also employs Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA), enabling direct data transfers between the memory of two systems without routing through the CPU, caches, or operating system kernel.