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Good on them. It sounds to me like they hired a cowboy who did 90% of the work and then left for a shinier new project. It's hard to admit a mistake like this,

Good on them. It sounds to me like they hired a cowboy who did 90% of the work and then left for a shinier new project. It's hard to admit a mistake like this, I hope others follow their example. And don't trust the cowboy!

awinder 10y ago
Read alternatively, it came off extremely amateurish to straight up admit (or blame, depending on reading) that they're making a wholesale switch off a product line that was in development for a wild, and after public release. There's dozens of things that went wrong to get them to this point, 1 dev leaving shouldn't have even risen to the point of being mentionable. I don't even host mission-critical data on my freenas instance, it's mostly a first-line backup for me + internal apps I run for the house, and I'm hesitant to go forward with them following this.
- myrandomcomment 10y ago
  Hey, they made a mistake and then owned up to it. It is a great reason to go forward with them. Most companies never are this honest. I run FreeNAS at home and have a rack of iXsystem servers and a TrueNAS at work. We are buying more. Great team, great support.
  - awinder 10y ago
    If Apple released 10.13, waited 2-3 weeks, and then explained that one of their big devs left the company so ~ shrug ~ everyone just downgrade, we're gonna re-do it again but throw everything away, and oh yeah, here's a THIRD beta UI we've got in development because apparently we've learned 0 lessons, people would absolutely claim amateur hour. And they'd be right. I haven't even gotten to why they went from a new React UI to an angular 2 based UI, which, I just can't even on that one yet.
    - myrandomcomment 10y ago
      They are not Apple. They are a smallish company in Silicon Valley that sold servers and built a business around being an alternative to NetAPP / EMC on the storage side. Mistakes where made. It is growing pains. If that does not work for you then please go buy from EMC / Dell. Also IIRC Apple pulled an iOS release or 2 in the last few years for major issues. I have worked at a few startups that have sold for a few $100M or gone public for a few billion. Stuff happens. It is how you handle it. They owned up to it fully and have a path forward. That is much better then most.
      - snuxoll 10y ago
        One should also note as far as their enterprise product, TrueNAS, is concerned, there was never an upgrade to "Corral" pushed in the first place since it lags behind FreeNAS releases to ensure everything works correctly and any gotchas have been ironed out. I understand ixSystems also sells the FreeNAS Mini, which is target at home users and small business - but anyone who uses any network storage product for production or mission critical use should be wary of any upgrades coming from the software vendor without thorough testing. I stayed far away from Corrall on my FreeNAS server at home explicitly because so much of the UI and underlying infrastructure was changed, didn't seem reasonable to upgrade without letting people braver than I am test (plus, I rely on iSCSI support for my VM's - that was missing).
        myrandomcomment 10y ago
        Correct. Our work systems are on TrueNAS and left alone. I upgraded my FreeNAS because it was my home system and I wanted to see how things looked as a preview for when they pushed things into TrueNAS. It was broken so I reverted. The best part is it was so simple just to go back and it all worked.
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  The UI is sketchy and the plugins / jails can be janky, but the underlying tech / idea is solid (FreeBSD + ZFS + the concept of your data on the disks and the OS as just some ephemeral thing on a thumb drive). I had a USB key go bad on a freenas and had it running again in an hour. The total config backup / restore makes it pretty darn painless. With that said, I'd recommend cloning your USB key to a backup one once you get your system configured how you like, in addition to keeping a few copies of the golden config around. It's possible to data recover the actual config file from a dead-ish flash drive, but at <$10 a pop it just makes sense to me to keep a spare or two ready to go.

awinder 10y ago

Read alternatively, it came off extremely amateurish to straight up admit (or blame, depending on reading) that they're making a wholesale switch off a product line that was in development for a wild, and after public release. There's dozens of things that went wrong to get them to this point, 1 dev leaving shouldn't have even risen to the point of being mentionable. I don't even host mission-critical data on my freenas instance, it's mostly a first-line backup for me + internal apps I run for the house, and I'm hesitant to go forward with them following this.

myrandomcomment 10y ago
Hey, they made a mistake and then owned up to it. It is a great reason to go forward with them. Most companies never are this honest. I run FreeNAS at home and have a rack of iXsystem servers and a TrueNAS at work. We are buying more. Great team, great support.
- awinder 10y ago
  If Apple released 10.13, waited 2-3 weeks, and then explained that one of their big devs left the company so ~ shrug ~ everyone just downgrade, we're gonna re-do it again but throw everything away, and oh yeah, here's a THIRD beta UI we've got in development because apparently we've learned 0 lessons, people would absolutely claim amateur hour. And they'd be right. I haven't even gotten to why they went from a new React UI to an angular 2 based UI, which, I just can't even on that one yet.
  - myrandomcomment 10y ago
    They are not Apple. They are a smallish company in Silicon Valley that sold servers and built a business around being an alternative to NetAPP / EMC on the storage side. Mistakes where made. It is growing pains. If that does not work for you then please go buy from EMC / Dell. Also IIRC Apple pulled an iOS release or 2 in the last few years for major issues. I have worked at a few startups that have sold for a few $100M or gone public for a few billion. Stuff happens. It is how you handle it. They owned up to it fully and have a path forward. That is much better then most.
    - snuxoll 10y ago
      One should also note as far as their enterprise product, TrueNAS, is concerned, there was never an upgrade to "Corral" pushed in the first place since it lags behind FreeNAS releases to ensure everything works correctly and any gotchas have been ironed out. I understand ixSystems also sells the FreeNAS Mini, which is target at home users and small business - but anyone who uses any network storage product for production or mission critical use should be wary of any upgrades coming from the software vendor without thorough testing. I stayed far away from Corrall on my FreeNAS server at home explicitly because so much of the UI and underlying infrastructure was changed, didn't seem reasonable to upgrade without letting people braver than I am test (plus, I rely on iSCSI support for my VM's - that was missing).
      - myrandomcomment 10y ago
        Correct. Our work systems are on TrueNAS and left alone. I upgraded my FreeNAS because it was my home system and I wanted to see how things looked as a preview for when they pushed things into TrueNAS. It was broken so I reverted. The best part is it was so simple just to go back and it all worked.
seanp2k2 10y ago
The UI is sketchy and the plugins / jails can be janky, but the underlying tech / idea is solid (FreeBSD + ZFS + the concept of your data on the disks and the OS as just some ephemeral thing on a thumb drive). I had a USB key go bad on a freenas and had it running again in an hour. The total config backup / restore makes it pretty darn painless. With that said, I'd recommend cloning your USB key to a backup one once you get your system configured how you like, in addition to keeping a few copies of the golden config around. It's possible to data recover the actual config file from a dead-ish flash drive, but at <$10 a pop it just makes sense to me to keep a spare or two ready to go.