FreeNAS 8.3 adds ZFS version 28

With the release of FreeNAS 8.3.0, the FreeBSD-based Network Attached Storage (NAS) distribution is now based on FreeBSD 8.3 and introduces ZFS version 28. There are also improvements to the plugin system and the distribution's web-based UI. It has also been announced that the FreeNAS 8.2 release from July and ZFS version 15 will no longer be supported.

ZFS version 28 brings de-duplication on the filesystem level to FreeNAS, but the developers urge caution in using the feature; it can be quite RAM intensive and will slow the system down if it runs out of memory and has to store the de-duplication data on disk. In the words of the FreeNAS developers: "Think carefully before enabling dedup! Then after thinking about it use compression instead."

They also urge that users update their BIOS before updating to the new FreeNAS version in case they run into problems where the distribution will not boot. Also in FreeNAS 8.3, users can now update the plugin jail without losing all of their installed plugins. A list of changes and fixes in FreeNAS 8.3.0 is listed on the project's wiki. The distribution is available to download for 32- and 64-bit systems. FreeNAS is released under the BSD licence and development is sponsored by iXsystems.

(fab)