Use Case · Virtualization

Shared Storage for Every Hypervisor

TrueNAS is VMware VAAI certified and supports Hyper-V, KVM, and Xen — serving iSCSI, NFS, SMB, and Fibre Channel from a single platform with the data integrity guarantees virtualized workloads demand.

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TrueNAS for VMware and Hyper-V virtualization storage

The Challenge

Virtualizing workloads consolidates compute — but storage becomes the single point of contention. A poorly-sized or poorly-architected storage platform starves VMs of IOPS, causes storage vMotion to stall, and turns a single HDD failure into a critical incident affecting dozens of workloads simultaneously.

TrueNAS was designed to be a shared storage platform from the ground up. VMware VAAI acceleration offloads cloning and zeroing to the array, eliminating host-side CPU overhead. ZFS copy-on-write ensures that a VM snapshot never degrades read performance for other VMs on the same pool. And with dual-controller HA options across the F-Series and M-Series, there is no single controller failure that takes the array offline.

How TrueNAS Supports Virtualized Environments

Multi-protocol block and file storage with the management integrations that modern hypervisor stacks expect.

Hypervisor Integration

VMware VAAI Certified — Hardware Acceleration for vSphere

TrueNAS is VMware VAAI certified for both NAS and block. VAAI primitives (Full Copy, Block Zeroing, ATS, Clone File) offload the most storage-intensive vSphere operations to the array — VM deployments, Storage vMotion, and datastore provisioning complete faster and without taxing ESXi host CPUs. TrueNAS also integrates with VMware vCenter via the TrueNAS SCALE vCenter plugin, providing array management from within the vSphere console.

Hyper-V ODX and VSS Integration

TrueNAS supports Microsoft Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX) and Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) for Hyper-V environments. ODX accelerates Hyper-V live migrations and VM copies; VSS integration enables application-consistent snapshots of Hyper-V guests directly from TrueNAS.

KVM, Xen, and bhyve Support

TrueNAS serves NFS and iSCSI storage to KVM, Xen Project, bhyve, and any other POSIX-compatible hypervisor. No proprietary agents required — standard Linux NFS client or iSCSI initiator on the hypervisor host is sufficient.

Protocol and Connectivity

iSCSI Block Storage

Present TrueNAS LUNs as iSCSI block devices to VMware datastores, Hyper-V CSVs, or bare-metal servers. CHAP authentication, iSCSI multipath (MPIO), and jumbo frames are supported natively in TrueNAS SCALE.

NFS Datastores for VMware

Mount TrueNAS shares as NFS v3 or v4.1 datastores in vSphere. NFS datastores give every host in the cluster simultaneous read/write access to the same storage, simplifying HA and DRS cluster operations.

Fibre Channel (FC)

TrueNAS F-Series and M-Series support Fibre Channel block access for environments already on FC fabric. Present TrueNAS LUNs over FC to existing SAN infrastructure without requiring a protocol gateway.

High-Speed Ethernet Up to 400 GbE

TrueNAS supports 10, 25, 40, 100, and 400 GbE networking with LACP link aggregation. Run iSCSI and NFS storage traffic on dedicated VLANs with dedicated NICs while management remains on a separate interface.

Data Protection for Virtual Workloads

ZFS Copy-on-Write, Zero Performance Penalty

ZFS snapshots use copy-on-write semantics. Taking a datastore snapshot does not introduce a write-performance penalty for VMs still running on that dataset — unlike LUN snapshots on traditional arrays that create split-I/O overhead.

Dual-Controller HA for Zero Planned Downtime

TrueNAS F-Series and M-Series ship with dual controllers in active-standby HA configuration. Controller failover completes in under 30 seconds with no data loss — VMware HA can resume affected VMs before the storage failover completes.

Replication for DR

Replicate entire datastores or individual VM volumes to a remote TrueNAS appliance asynchronously. In a disaster scenario, mount the replicated dataset read-write on the DR TrueNAS and register VMs in the target vCenter — no proprietary DR appliance required.

OpenZFS Self-Healing

Every block in a TrueNAS pool is checksummed. Silent data corruption — a real risk in long-running VM storage pools — is detected and corrected from redundant copies during background scrubs or at read time, before the hypervisor sees corrupted data.

Trusted by leading organizations

Recommended TrueNAS Systems for Virtualization

Models commonly chosen for this workload, with reasoning.

F-Series

TrueNAS F60

2U all-flash · 32-core · 9 PB

All-NVMe block storage for iSCSI/NVMe-oF datastores — predictable low latency for VMware, Hyper-V, and Proxmox.

View F60 →

M-Series

TrueNAS M50

4U · 20-core · 10 PB

Dual-controller HA hybrid with NVMe cache — preserves uptime for production VMs and supports vCenter snapshot integration.

View M50 →

H-Series

TrueNAS H30

2U · 20-core · 8 GB/s

NVMe-accelerated single-controller hybrid for VM workloads where HA isn't a hard requirement. 20-core, 8 GB/s.

View H30 →

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Right-size your hypervisor storage

Tell us your hypervisor platform, VM count, IOPS requirements, and capacity target — we’ll configure the right TrueNAS and stay on the order until it ships.

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Recommended Hardware for Virtualization

SMB / Remote Office VMware

TrueNAS H-Series

Dual-controller hybrid NAS with NVMe caching. Up to 8 GB/s throughput, 3 PB raw, optional 100 GbE. Cost-effective for small-to-mid vSphere clusters up to ~100 VMs.

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Enterprise HA Storage

TrueNAS F-Series

All-flash dual-controller HA with up to 20 GB/s and 9 PB effective capacity. Ideal for dense VMware or Hyper-V clusters requiring sub-millisecond latency and zero planned downtime.

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Tiered VM + Archive

TrueNAS M-Series

Dual-controller hybrid with NVDIMM write cache. Flash-tier IOPS for active VMs and high-density HDD for VM archives and backup repositories — up to 30 PB raw.

View M-Series

Find Your Fit

Not sure which series fits your workload?

Four deployment paths. Pick the one that fits.

Home, Office & Remote Site

Quiet, compact ZFS storage for creators, home labs, and branch offices. ECC RAM, 10 GbE, and IPMI in a desktop or 1U chassis.

Mini X+ Mini R

Explore Mini Series

SMB & Mid-Market Rackmount

High-density hybrid and all-NVMe rackmount NAS. From 3.4 PB hybrid up to 60 GB/s NVMe.

R20 R50 R60

Explore R-Series

Enterprise HA & High-IOPS

Dual-controller failover with TrueCache NVDIMM, hybrid or all-flash, and 25/100 GbE. Built for VMware, SAP, and 24/7 business-critical workloads.

H-Series M-Series F-Series

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AI/ML & Petabyte Scale

Tri-mode SAS + Gen4 NVMe with 400 GbE fabric and 60 GB/s system bandwidth. MinIO AIStor object storage for GPU clusters and AI/ML pipelines.

V160

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