14 DAY TRIAL // FreeNAS, a free implementation of a minimal FreeBSD distribution, has just reached version 9.2.1 Beta.
FreeNAS 9.2.1 Beta has introduced a large number of functional changes as compared to the 8.x branch, not to mention the fact that it also comes with numerous fixes, in comparison with the 9.x branch.
“After a full month of ALPHA releases, during which time many bugs were found and fixed, we now feel that FreeNAS 9.2.1 is ready for its first public debut! You should, of course, run any BETA (or even RC) build at your own risk, and on non-mission-critical data, since it obviously has not been deemed fully release-ready (or this would be 9.2.1-RELEASE!) and may suffer from any number of issues!” said the developers.
“Samba (SMB/CIFS support) has been upgraded to version 4.1.4. This adds support for SMB3, the ability for FreeNAS to be a Windows Domain Controller, and advanced features like server-side copy support in Windows 2012 and later, along with multiple years’ worth of improvements over the version of Samba that shipped in 9.2.0.”
Highlights of FreeNAS 9.2.1 Beta:
• The LSI 12G SAS driver has been added as a module to the build. This can be enabled by adding a tunable for mpslsi3_load with a value of YES; • The distribution has switched from Avahi to mDNSResponder for Zeroconf network configuration, giving better Mac interoperability for share browsing; • A bug that prevented building an encrypted volume using multi-path devices has been fixed; • django (used by the WebUI) has been updated to version 1.6 and dojo to version 1.9.2.
A complete list of changes and updates can be found in the official announcement. Download FreeNAS 9.2.0 RC2 right now from Softpedia.
Remember that this is a beta release and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended to be used for testing purposes only.