FreeNAS was a free and open-source Network-Attached Storage operating system based on FreeBSD and OpenZFS, developed by iXsystems. In 2020 it was renamed and relaunched as TrueNAS CORE — active development continues under the TrueNAS name.

Status

Discontinued / superseded. FreeNAS is no longer developed; the final FreeNAS line (11.3) was followed by the rename to TrueNAS CORE 12 in 2020. New deployments should use TrueNAS, which continues the same FreeBSD and OpenZFS foundation.

Key Features (historical)

• FreeBSD + OpenZFS — a dependable storage platform with checksumming and RAID-Z
• Web-based management UI for pools, shares and services
• File sharing — SMB/CIFS, NFS, iSCSI and AFP
• Snapshots and replication for point-in-time data protection
• Plugins and jails for running extra services on the NAS

Why It Matters Today

FreeNAS is the reason TrueNAS exists. Many long-running home and small-business storage systems were built on it, and its OpenZFS workflow carries directly into today’s TrueNAS releases. If you are still running FreeNAS, migrating to TrueNAS CORE keeps the same familiar approach on a maintained base.

Use Cases

• Legacy FreeNAS installations
• Historical interest and documentation
• A migration path to TrueNAS

Platform

x86-64.

Licence

Free and open source. FreeNAS was released under the BSD 3-clause licence and other OSI-approved licences. It is superseded — no longer maintained.

Website

truenas.com (formerly freenas.org)