New FreeNAS 9.2.1.6 update brings several new updates which get the software up-to-date with latest release of Samba for example and according to the release notes, there is a performance improvements of of ZVS ZVOLS when used in ISCSI with VMWare vSphere or ESXi.
For home labers FreeNAS offers an easy way to build a home nas system or shared storage for ESXi. One of the advantages is that you can install it on USB stick and keep the local disks (or SSDs) for storage only. A way back I did a step-by-step guide which walks you through the steps of configuring VMware ESXi for connection via iSCSI.
For enterprise, the FreeNAS storage is available as hardware appliance, with support where different models are visible via TrueNAS website here. Those solutions are also VMware ready.
Here is a list of improvements and fixes in the FreeNAS 9.2.1.6 update :
- Performance improvements of ZFS ZVOLS when used over ISCSI with VMWare or ESXi
- Samba is updated to 4.1.9
- Netatalk is updated to 3.1.2
- Several fixes related to the System Dataset
- A new VirtualBox jail template
- Several fixes related to ZFS replication
- A new mpr driver, officially sanctioned by LSI, for the LSI 12 Gbps SAS HBA
- An experimental in-kernel iSCSI target
- A .usb file which can be imaged to a USB key. This can be used for installing FreeNAS from a USB key.
- various iSCSI fixes
- scponly shell has been fixed
- SMB2 protocol is the default for CIFS shares
- VirtualBox template updated to 4.3.12
- Security fixes in file(1) and libmagic(3), and gss_pseudo_random interoperability issue. CVE-2013-7345, CVE-2014-1943, CVE-2014-2270, [EN-14:08]
Check out the release notes page here. You can download latest Freenas version from the download page.
