FreeNAS Corral Canned – Development Essentially Halted for Now

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whitey

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Jun 30, 2014
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Can we keep the easy replication piece w/ FreeNAS Corral and get that into 9.x...THAT sure as heck was easier/a step in the right direction than in 9.x! :-D
 
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brettdavis

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Apr 13, 2017
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Can we keep the easy replication piece w/ FreeNAS Corral and get that into 9.x...THAT sure as heck was easier/a step in the right direction than in 9.x! :-D
FreeNAS Corral has a lot of great concepts that we'll be implementing in the next version. We've received other positive feedback on the new replication engine, so I don't see why we wouldn't pull that over.
 
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whitey

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FreeNAS Corral has a lot of great concepts that we'll be implementing in the next version. We've received other positive feedback on the new replication engine, so I don't see why we wouldn't pull that over.
That is great news...yeah I never could get peering/rep to work/happy between FreeNAS 9.10 to Corral...admittedly only spend 10-15 mins on it...there's always trusty zfs send/recv over a netcat tunnel thank goodness which is what I resorted to! :-D
 
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Pri

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Jul 30, 2014
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Fair questions, Pri. I'll have to walk a fine line between transparency and professional decorum here.
Thank you for being so open and honest. It is refreshing and I now understand the predicament you found yourselves in. I can surely understand it having been in a similar situation myself in my own working life as a software engineer.

I hope only good things for FreeNAS moving forward.
 
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cheezehead

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Sep 23, 2012
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Been using FreeNAS since version 0.7 (it's been awhile) and this isn't the first time there was shift in the project which cause heartburn by some users (ie when Volker left to go linux). IMO Corral was never fully baked and was released as stable to get people to actually start using it.

The existing UI has been part of FreeNAS for a number of years now and has been showing it's age as new features are bolted on. As all development teams learn as time goes by what works and what doesn't. For many, unless there is a real dire need to use some small project framework it's better to avoid it. Commonly used frameworks are easier to find support on, easier to hire for, and generally have been more thoroughly tested in production. From that standpoint, I totally get the move to AngularJS. Being on a bleeding-edge development team lets you try new things but you always need to remember that somethings will result in innovation while others become learning exercises.
 
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sth

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Oct 29, 2015
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Thanks for the comments Brett, I value the added clarity. Its a brave move stepping back from Corral and I can appreciate how difficult it must be for everyone at IX. My ask of IX would be to introduce some more stringent testing of the FreeNAS products going forwards, there were numerous issues with the '9' train which contributed to a general feeling of 'don't be the first to upgrade / cross your fingers' and I suspect a lack of internal QA also contributed to the Corral situation too. I understand FreeNAS is the free version of the commercial TrueNAS and part of the IX strategy is some QA is done by the FreeNAS users but I think its skewed too far now - certainly my confidence was declining before Corral and recent builds and ultimately this announcement doesn't do anything other than suggest I was right be wary.
Please take your time with the next 9 release and don't mess it up putting on the fancy lipstick.
 
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brettdavis

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Thanks for the comments Brett, I value the added clarity. Its a brave move stepping back from Corral and I can appreciate how difficult it must be for everyone at IX. My ask of IX would be to introduce some more stringent testing of the FreeNAS products going forwards, there were numerous issues with the '9' train which contributed to a general feeling of 'don't be the first to upgrade / cross your fingers' and I suspect a lack of internal QA also contributed to the Corral situation too. I understand FreeNAS is the free version of the commercial TrueNAS and part of the IX strategy is some QA is done by the FreeNAS users but I think its skewed too far now - certainly my confidence was declining before Corral and recent builds and ultimately this announcement doesn't do anything other than suggest I was right be wary.
Please take your time with the next 9 release and don't mess it up putting on the fancy lipstick.
This is great feedback, STH, and a perception we're fully aware of. Over the years, and under previous leadership, the FreeNAS releases became what I liked to call a "QA crutch". It was easier to release, then fix, than it was to develop a strong internal QA framework for FreeNAS. All of that energy was instead put towards creating a stable enterprise product (TrueNAS), with all internal QA resources focused on that version of the software.

That said, since last Summer when Kris Moore took the reigns for the FreeNAS 9.x and TrueNAS software, the first thing he did was augment QA and integrate a CI/CD process. FreeNAS 9.10 and beyond have been our most stable releases out of the gate, bar none, and they continue to get better. Currently, with every single commit to the 9.x branch, over 500 automated QA tests are run. Last month, that number was somewhere around 350 tests. So, you can see the progress and emphasis we've placed on making sure that even the newest FreeNAS 9.x releases are thoroughly tested before they reach the community.

Here's a link to the Jenkins test framework, if you're curious:
FreeNAS - Master - Install QA Tests [Jenkins]
 

Drewy

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Apr 23, 2016
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back on 9.10 U2 and happy :) I'll take functional over pretty any day, well at least as far as infrastructure goes.
 
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IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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I just want to report back that I've successfully imported my upgraded zpools from Corral into a new 9.10.2 setup. Re-installing 9.10, setting network, and importing my pools took 30 minutes tops. I feel a lot better now.
 
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Fritz

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Apr 6, 2015
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My experience also. Rolling back was as painless as it could be in spite of the fact that I didn't back up the config before updating.
 
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T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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Now that everyone knows they can safely roll back... anyone going to tinker with Corral and keep playing around with it?
 

whitey

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Jun 30, 2014
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Now that everyone knows they can safely roll back... anyone going to tinker with Corral and keep playing around with it?
If it is a dead 'code base' then I am bowing out as well and sticking w/ F5reeNAS 9.x for the time being. :-D
 

avisd

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Apr 14, 2017
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I am in the middle of a very painful rollback at the moment. The upgrade failed due to one or another of the many known issues and only now do I find out that the project was just canned.

I can't believe it's still on the release server as STABLE. Why didn't they pull it down when they decided to cancel it? More bad product management or was leaving it up an intentional decision?

@brettdavis any plans to pull Corral STABLE off the release server?
 

cheezehead

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Sep 23, 2012
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....
Here's a link to the Jenkins test framework, if you're curious:
FreeNAS - Master - Install QA Tests [Jenkins]

An in-depth test suite or developing under test-driven development model helps reduce a lot of silly errors that come up when code changes occur (especially as development teams grow). The one limitation to 99% of test-driven environments is load based testing which rarely occurs outside of a small test lab. For homelab scenarios, I doubt we would run across it but for business customers that might be another story. For someone in a hosting environment, how does the interface function with running containers if you toss a few hundred or thousand containers at it? How does the SMB share interface function if someone has 50k file shares (seen it on windows server....and it's ugly)? What happens when 2-3 admins are making changes to the share interface at the same time? These are all question in which test-driven methodology runs short which businesses often miss.
 

Nnyan

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Mar 5, 2012
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When I first read the news about v10 I was very unhappy. Mostly b/c I was not a big fan of jails. But after reading here and other sources I have to admire the fact that pulling a product your not confident in while a very difficult and painful decision is the right one. That takes courage and yes it comes at a cost (in may ways, reputation, trust, community, etc...) it is by far the lesser of two evils. I know people are upset at time spent on v10 but such is life if you want to play with technology.
 
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brettdavis

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Apr 13, 2017
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I am in the middle of a very painful rollback at the moment. The upgrade failed due to one or another of the many known issues and only now do I find out that the project was just canned.

I can't believe it's still on the release server as STABLE. Why didn't they pull it down when they decided to cancel it? More bad product management or was leaving it up an intentional decision?

@brettdavis any plans to pull Corral STABLE off the release server?
Sorry, missed this post.

Are you referring to the download page on freenas.org? FreeNAS Corral was pulled from there last week. Or, are you referring to the updater in the UI?

It will still be available for those that want to play with it, preview features, give feedback, etc.
 

brettdavis

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Apr 13, 2017
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When I first read the news about v10 I was very unhappy. Mostly b/c I was not a big fan of jails. But after reading here and other sources I have to admire the fact that pulling a product your not confident in while a very difficult and painful decision is the right one. That takes courage and yes it comes at a cost (in may ways, reputation, trust, community, etc...) it is by far the lesser of two evils. I know people are upset at time spent on v10 but such is life if you want to play with technology.
I appreciate the understanding and support, Nnyan. Floating in a sea of bad options, we ultimately chose the one that was best for FreeNAS users, even though we knew we were going to displease a lot of them.
 
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archmagos

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Dec 16, 2014
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I'll certainly be interested in alternative options for my home VM shared datastore.
I switched about a year ago from a two system setup (pfsense + VMs on ESXi) and standalone Freenas to a converged Ubuntu server setup with KVM and ZoL. This has been working quite well and am now looking at docker/LXD to thin down the VM resource usage and minimise the modifications made to the host.

Corral certainly looked very impressive though and was the next logical step. Disappointing to see this reverted back so quickly as it would have met many common use cases.