iXsystems Expands TrueNAS Product Line with R-Series Systems and Scale-out HCI Software

By Tiera Oliver

Associate Editor

Embedded Computing Design

October 26, 2020

News

The TrueNAS Open Storage portfolio expanded with the TrueNAS R-Series storage systems and the TrueNAS SCALE Open Source HyperConverged Infrastructure (HCI) software.

The TrueNAS Open Storage portfolio expanded with the TrueNAS R-Series storage systems and the TrueNAS SCALE Open Source HyperConverged Infrastructure (HCI) software. The new R-Series storage systems include four models designed for maximum density, performance, Open Storage flexibility, and cost savings. TrueNAS SCALE introduces ideal hyperconvergence based on scale-out OpenZFS.

The TrueNAS R-Series combines the advantages of purpose-built storage systems with the flexibility of TrueNAS. The R-Series includes the ability to run any of three TrueNAS software editions:

  • TrueNAS CORE: Free and Open Source, the Community edition, formerly known as FreeNAS, supports File, Block, Object, and Application storage.
  • TrueNAS Enterprise: The Enterprise edition with Enterprise-grade support provides additional security, Fibre Channel, and Enterprise integrations.
  • TrueNAS SCALE: The new hyperconverged edition includes scale-out ZFS, KVM, and Kubernetes.

Unlike proprietary alternatives, the R-Series is designed to provide CapEx/OpEx storage economics, performance, deployment flexibility, and storage density. Per the company, each of the TrueNAS R-Series models feature Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs and can be configured with the processing, memory, and networking needed to deliver up to 100 Gb/s of storage performance:

  • TrueNAS R50: High capacity 4U with 48 x 3.5" & 4 x 2.5" NVMe Bay, and up to 890 TB capacity.  The TrueNAS R50 can also scale-up to 3PB and then scale-out to 300PB.
  • TrueNAS R40: High density 2U all-flash system with 48 x 2.5" Bays, and up to 360 TB of flash capacity.
  • TrueNAS R20: Power efficient 2U with 12 x 3.5" and 2 x 2.5" Bays and up to 230 TB capacity.
  • TrueNAS R10: Compact 1U all-flash system with 16 x 2.5" Bays and up to 120 TB of flash capacity.

iXsystems is also announcing the first release of TrueNAS SCALE: an HCI platform for converged compute and scale-out Open ZFS storage. TrueNAS SCALE is available as Open Source software built atop Debian Linux, or as an appliance-based solution that combines TrueNAS SCALE with purpose-built systems, including High-Availability (HA) systems like the X-Series, M-Series, or the new R-Series systems. The Open Source economics of TrueNAS SCALE changes the existing HCI playing field.

TrueNAS SCALE Open Source HCI addresses the cost of scaling compute and storage with all of the advantages of Open Storage, Open Virtualization, and Open APIs. The platform uses components that deliver SMB and NFS File Sharing, iSCSI Block Storage, S3 Object API integration, and Cloud Sync with public cloud storage like S3.

Unlike other HCI platforms, a user can get started with TrueNAS SCALE on a single node and incrementally scale up and scale out to over 100 storage nodes with many additional compute-only nodes. TrueNAS SCALE is true Disaggregated HCI, meaning storage and compute can be scaled independently. Each node can support Virtual Machines (via the KVM hypervisor) as well as Docker containers via native Kubernetes.

R-Series pricing starts at under $4,000 and grows with processing and storage capacity. All-flash system prices of less than $300/TB are provided with TrueNAS SCALE software included.

For more information, visit: https://www.truenas.com

Tiera Oliver, Associate Editor for Embedded Computing Design, is responsible for web content edits, product news, and constructing stories. She also assists with newsletter updates as well as contributing and editing content for ECD podcasts and the ECD YouTube channel. Before working at ECD, Tiera graduated from Northern Arizona University where she received her B.S. in journalism and political science and worked as a news reporter for the university’s student led newspaper, The Lumberjack.

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