FreeNAS 11.0-RC now Available

[Philip Robar]

[Am I] correct in assuming i cannot upgrade a live server to 11? Im on 9.10 stable, and this is just an update plus bsd11?

As Kris said in the opening post to this thread:

Base OS updated FreeBSD 11, which has been the stable FreeBSD release for quite sometime now so no big deal. (Lots of bug fixes, new hardware support, etc. See the FreeBSD site for details.)

Lots of FreeNAS bug fixes and some new features. (Follow the links he provided for details.)

Early access to new, feature incomplete UI; current UI (inconsistent redundancies and all) is still the default.

Can be "updated to by switching to the FreeNAS-11-STABLE train in the System -> Update tab." So, yes, you can update a live system.

 

[Joey DiJulio]

@Kris Moore, after being shell shocked for a few weeks from the announcement that Corral was, for lack of a better phrase, imploding under it's own weight, and then waiting a few more weeks for the dust to settle on where things are going for now, I have a few questions I'm hoping you (or, anyone else who can answer them with authority as opposed to guesses). In no particular order:

- For those of us who were looking forward to the UI feature that allowed you to have visual representation of disks:

The "triangle selector" thing:

etc, what is the status of that in 11-RC and/or 11.0, 11.1, and 11.2?

- For those of us who were excited by the dashboard widgets:

What's the status on those in 11-RC and/or 11.0, 11.1, and 11.2?

- It's my understanding that one of the key features of Corral was a fully asynchronous UI where you could "submit" tasks and then move on to other things while not having to wait for tasks to complete. Is that functional in 11-RC and/or 11.0, 11.1, 11.2?

- In general, when should we expect that FreeNAS 11 will be at the same point where Corral was when it was released?*

* If this question is confusing or too nebulous to answer, let me try and qualify it a bit: When will will you guys consider v11 more or less on-par with the features / goals (where goals need not equal the actual achievements) outlined in the charter for Corral? I think many people, myself certainly included, had the impression of release of Corral being the "plant the flag moment" at the summit of a development mountain. Now that Corral is being effectively shelved, when should we expect to reach that summit once again on the new v11 track? Are we at the base of the new mountain, half way up, just a few steps from reaching the summit once again, etc?

It seems to me that if you're going to have to go through what I can only imagine is a quite painful process scuttle v10 / Corral, introduce a new UI, try and bring over features, etc, wouldn't it make sense to have multiple RCs and only release a v11.0 when it's fully, feature complete with where Corral was at (or, at least "supposed to be") at it's release?

I think for those of us who were following along with v10 / Corral development, BETAs, etc, waiting to build new storage appliances based on the brand new, fully feature-complete OS, we're now lost trying to figure out what v9 (traditional UI), v10 Corral, v11 (RC, 11.0, 11.1, 11.2, etc) do and do not have.

*Light Bulb*

Any thought to publishing a features matrix that has each of those versions listed on the X-axis with a complete list of features on the Y-axis, and then fill in check marks accordingly? That would make it SUPER easy for anyone to be able to tell if the feature that may be important for them is available in v9, Corral, v11-RC and/or what future version it's tentatively scheduled to be included in.

Thanks for any insight you can offer to help those us trying to re-train our focus on v11 and beyond.

PS: I've reviewed this https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ng-from-freenas-corral-to-freenas-9-10-11.36/ and I'm seeing lots of "It is not going to be feature-complete just yet, but it's usable" and "... a functional, but not feature-complete, alternative", etc. Nothing on this page seems to give me a good feeling for when we can expect a full, feature-complete, release.

 

[Junicast]

Please let me try to give you some feedback on how this all feels to me what you're doing. I've been using FreeNAS for some years and I've been watching closely on Corral dev. I've been a network and systems administrator for around 15 years now. I like FreeNAS a LOT, also made some videos and that's why I just have to give you my opinion.

FreeNAS Corral was very promising. It was released too early, no doubt, but bury it? WRONG decision. Even in this state it's rotting in now, it has some major advantages over 9 and 11. IPFS not ready ok, but some time later it would've become a nice tool to work with. CLI was a huge help for any administrator who's not afraid of a text based UI. The way network configuration was managed at least two leagues above 9 / 11. WebGUI even though it still had some major flaws - much more mature than what the 11 demo shows. FreeIPA integration also not working flawlessly but that would've gotten resolved. Peering FreeNAS machines were just some easy steps. Quite different to how it's in 9 / 11. Just to name some differences.
You need to know that I almost lost around 8 TiB of storage because I adopted Corral too early. Data that I've been collection for around 15 years and still, how can I praise Corral?
It was a major rework, something new, something innovative.
Don't you have any feeling on how your so called 11 RC looks next to it? It just looks like you urgently need a new major version but without giving a shxx that it doesn't deserve that number elevation at all. It looks like your timetable even got tighter. It doesn't deserve to be a RC.
Ok, well, it follows your FreeBSD naming scheme and it follows your classic strategy but on the other hand when I would jump from version 9 to 11 in any software I would expect something profoundly new especially considering the time that lies between those releases. IMHO you fail to deliver such.
Even in Fall of 2016 when I followed forum activity and bugtracker closely. It felt to me like jkh (may he find peace at his new employer) somehow had to full throttle. I don't mean like just speed it up. I mean like harakiri full throttle and to me it feels like he was somehow pushed beyond the limits. I believe that management made some major mistakes and by that I don't mean the decision to let jkh go for FreeNAS 10 / Corral but not to let him develop it till it's ready for release.
Corral should have originally been published on 2nd of January 2017 IIRC. Then it turned out to be mid of April. If you ask me just take the red pill and get back at fixing the flaws in Corral so you can deliver some groundbreaking new piece of technology.

Please consider this a very remote impression. Please keep going. I expect this to be a very unpopuloar opionion but one should not hide but speak out. I really like FreeNAS and I would like it to become more important as it already is. I would be happy if I can help along the way.
Thank you

 

[Ericloewe]

- For those of us who were looking forward to the UI feature that allowed you to have visual representation of disks:

Very low priority, I'm guessing. It's eye candy with very little substance.
But: I'm sure a pull request for that kind of thing would be appreciated.

It's my understanding that one of the key features of Corral was a fully asynchronous UI where you could "submit" tasks and then move on to other things while not having to wait for tasks to complete. Is that functional in 11-RC and/or 11.0, 11.1, 11.2?

Work is underway. Some things are, some aren't yet.

wouldn't it make sense to have multiple RCs and only release a v11.0 when it's fully, feature complete with where Corral was at (or, at least "supposed to be") at it's release?

No, that's going to be many months. 9.10.3/11 was basically ready by the time Corral imploded.

in any software I would expect something profoundly new

"Bumped up the underlying OS to the latest version" is rather profound, especially on the hardware support side.

the decision to let jkh go

He quit, he wasn't fired.

Even in this state it's rotting in now, it has some major advantages over 9 and 11.

And enormous disadvantages. Like not being very stable in fundamental features. All the bling in the world can't make up for lack of reliability. If you believe otherwise, well, there's always Unraid.

 

[Junicast]

And enormous disadvantages. Like not being very stable in fundamental features. All the bling in the world can't make up for lack of reliability. If you believe otherwise, well, there's always Unraid.

I do not concur. Those are not disadvantages of Corral but actually bugs that needed to be detected and fixed before release, but weren't.
I was comparing features, you bugs. I expect such new software to be faulty and heavily tested before release. Instead the release schedule was just set wrong. That led to death of Corral, which is a pity. I do not know who was responsible for that schedule but I think the flaws were in there, rather than in what Corral represented.

What's happening with 11 is similar. You implement new features, i.e. a new WebGUI but this UI is far from being usable, so why include it in the first place?
Keep working on it until you think this is something people can gain from. Now it's only keeping me from get work done instead of helping me get work done faster.

 

[Kevin Horton]

What's happening with 11 is similar. You implement new features, i.e. a new WebGUI but this UI is far from being useable, so why include it in the first place?
Keep working on it until you think this is something people can gain from. Now it's only keeping me from get work done instead of helping me get work done faster.

The old, proven, GUI is the default. Users only end up in the new GUI if they chose to use it. Having it available in FN11-stable will allow it to get tested in a wider range of situations than it would see if it was only available in the nightly releases. If the new GUI is keeping you from getting work done, go back to the default GUI.

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

You can force it from the CLI:
# freenas-update -v -T FreeNAS-11-STABLE update

That didn't work for us.

We went from 9.10-STABLE to 11-Nightlies in April on our test system. Tried your command line option twice to get to 11-STABLE with a reboot palate cleanser. It did a lot of stuff but didn't get us to 11-STABLE.

Ended up booting to an old 9.10 image then swapping to the 11-STABLE train. That worked. Looks good, too. Glad to see the classic interface is sticking around for a while.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[Jon Moog]

And enormous disadvantages. Like not being very stable in fundamental features. All the bling in the world can't make up for lack of reliability. If you believe otherwise, well, there's always Unraid.

Having used FreeNAS 9.X and 10.0 quite a bit I have to say that I agree with Peter Brille on the whole. The only thing wrong with FreeNAS 10 is the lack of further development. If you want to make an omelette you have to break a few eggs. I don't consider FreeNAS 10 production ready exactly, but overall it was a hell of a lot more promising than a bunch of vaporware sold as FreeNAS 11 which is really only a rebased 9.10 on FreeBSD 11. For all the people in love with the interface in FreeNAS 9.X I'm happy for you but expect to have your lunch eaten by the rest of the world as ease of use, attractive interface and simplicity do not have to mean less power or stability.

Maybe FreeNAS 11 will be competitive in the future but for now it's showing it's age and looks to be a long road ahead. So the real question is, how long before FreeNAS 11 hits feature parity with FreeNAS 10?

 

[maydo]

i agree also totally even though migrated from corral to FN11.

not really missing docker containers, you can run them easily on a vm, but missing some basic stuff from corral like
#1 CLI
#2 Volume Management
#3 Background Tasking
#4 Dashboard

i think these features are more important than docker.

as i currently see the situation on fn11(9) is missing 2 years of development to come nearly corral

 

[Ericloewe]

bugs that needed to be detected and fixed before release, but weren't.

But that's exactly the problem. The architecture is far more prone to bugs than that of 9.x / 11 and it's apparently poorly-instrumented, which makes bugs harder to find.

vaporware

Vaporware is software that never gets released, which is certainly not the case here.

#1 CLI

A simpler one is planned.

#2 Volume Management

What do you mean?

#3 Background Tasking

It's certainly planned.

 

[lopr]

[about if jails have to be recreated with the switch to FreeBSD 11]

Likely yes since it will also come with an update to FreeBSD 11. Past base OS updates have had to do the same.

Is this confirmed? and is this really unavoidable? I just recreated my jails when FreeNAS switched from FreeBSD 9 to 10.

 

[amiskell]

[about if jails have to be recreated with the switch to freeBSD 11]


Is this confirmed? and is this really unavoidable? I just recrecreate my jails when freenas switched from freeBSD 9 to 10.

I don't think it's been confirmed yet. Also, they are changing from warden to iocage which will require some yet to be determined conversion as well.

If I were you, I'd wait until FreeNAS 11.1 (which is the target for implementing iocage to replace warden) and see what'll be required of your jails.

 

[Jailer]

If I were you, I'd wait until FreeNAS 11.1 (which is the target for implementing iocage to replace warden)

Iocage is already in 11.0-RC.

 

[Ericloewe]

But it's not yet used for the GUI.

 

[amiskell]

Iocage is already in 11.0-RC.

But it's not yet used for the GUI.

What @Ericloewe said. :)

Also, all of the plugins in the UI are still Warden/PBI based so any jails built in the UI for FN11 RC (and FN11.0 release) will most likely require some kind of conversion/rebuilding to migrate over to iocage when iocage is officially in the product when FN11.1 is released (iocage technically isn't "official" yet even in the FN11.0-RC).

 

[Jailer]

My bad, I thought it was moved over already. They have started the conversion of a few of the plugins on github IIRC.

 

[amiskell]

My bad, I thought it was moved over already. They have started the conversion of a few of the plugins on github IIRC.

Yeah, I saw that too. But the whole iocage thing is what I was talking about in my previous post on the previous page (#43). Unfortunately, FreeNAS 11 won't be usable enough for me to switch from what I've got running on Corral until FreeNAS 11.1 as I don't want to start setting up jails in 11.0 knowing I'll have to do "something" to migrate or even rebuild all that in 11.1.

And I say "something" because it's currently unknown what conversion from warden to iocage will actually mean yet. There's a bug for a conversion script, but it doesn't provide any details.

 

[Jailer]

Yeah I'll be staying right where I am (9.10.2-U1) until 11.x and the jails are sorted as well. Once jails are stable and reliable I'll make the switch and rebuild my jails......again...... ;)

 

[diedrichg]

What's the point of docker (VM required) vs just building a VM and installing all your software within the virtual OS? The latter would give you full control of when to update.

 

[Stux]

What's the point of docker (VM required) vs just building a VM and installing all your software within the virtual OS? The latter would give you full control of when to update.

With docker you don't have to "building a VM and installing all your software"