A Look at FreeNAS Server

NewsForge (Also owned by VA) has a quick look at FreeNAS, an open source network attached storage server that can be deployed on pretty much any old PC you have sitting around the house. From the article: "The software, which is based on FreeBSD, Samba, and PHP, includes an operating system that supports various software RAID models and a Web user interface. The server supports access from Windows machines, Apple Macs, FTP, SSH, and Network File System (NFS), and it takes up less than 16MB of disk space on a hard drive or removable media."

Comments

NAS

[certel]

Would a NAS device not require some pretty good processing power under a bit of a load? I know of course it would be scalable based on the usage, but still, the notion that it runs on 'any old system' wouldn't be entirely true.

User Security Gives MS A Run For Its Money

[doctorcisco]

There is virtually no user security. Any authenticated user has full rights to all data on the system. Fine for home, but until they get user security figured out, not ready for anything more than that. And given that it wants to play nice with Windoze, *Nix, and Apple, the security is gonna be the hard part. *NIX without maddeningly granular security ... who'da thunk? doc

Re:Dedicated solutions are often better.

[EllynGeek]

Can you give some examples? I don't see where you're going to minimize power consumption no matter what you use, because your drive array is going to require a good-quality power supply that can handle multiple 12v lines. You can run it headless, but hard drives are power-hungry no matter what.

OpenFiler?

[Gothmolly]

How is this any different than the OpenFiler Project?

Great, but typically UNIX

[Graboid]

As others have said, been there done that with Linux/BSD. Nice to have a dedicated package, but it's definitely not for the casual user and requires dedicated drives/machines (as one would expect for RAID).

I was amused that he could screw up the installation so easily by just creating a local user and it lacked auto-configuration. Imagine that in a review of a commercial product. "Easy to use and install, but it locked me out of my system and required a re-install and it couldn't find my network card".

Fact is, folks just expect open source to be a pain in the ass to work with and require tweaking or extreme attention to detail. It's almost a right of passage. And users accept and embrace it on a scale they would NEVER accept from a commercial product - particularly 'evil' Microsoft.

Anyway, nice open source addition, but it definitely belongs in the open source group (as in not-ready-for-normal-people group).

Humm...

[wolenczak]

What's new about this? Been doing that for years!, Where's the difference between this box and a linuxbox with samba/nfs/fstab properly configured?

I would think that a home NAS is a case where I can toss in any spare harddrive i find, plug it to the network and that's it. Not a whooooole PC.

OK, a serious question

[caudron]

Tell me why we don't see cheap network appliances at Walmart and Bestbuy that accept USB drives and printers all in one convenient box.

I see the "cheap" drive sharing boxes and the "cheap" printer sharing boxes but, given how easy it is to set up SAMBA on a VERY low end device, why don't we see any that do both?

And while I'm on the subject, why don't we see cheap server appliances for other services? Is it lack of market demand that keeps me from being about the buy a low power, cheap apache server in a box the size of a cable modem? Same for proftpd and squirrelmail/postfix/mailman? Seriously, I know the market is limited, but it's hardly non-existent! Especially if they made it easy to set up and use, then ANYONE could be an end point. That is the real promise fo the Internet to me.

And before I get those "just do it yourself on old hardware" replies, I have already done so and posted the how-to's for others. What I'm asking for is not an easy way to set up apache. Apache is pretty easy out of the box. I'm asking for an easy, low-power apache appliance that EVEN a relatively non-technical person can set up and use. Seems cool to me. Especially coupled with a cheap DNS appliance box.

These services beg for hardware modularization.

Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/

Re:OK, a serious question

[Penguin Programmer]

Tell me why we don't see cheap network appliances at Walmart and Bestbuy that accept USB drives and printers all in one convenient box.

I see the "cheap" drive sharing boxes and the "cheap" printer sharing boxes but, given how easy it is to set up SAMBA on a VERY low end device, why don't we see any that do both?

Because if they put them in one box, you'd only have to buy one box. And then you'd only have to upgrade one box in a few years. The way it works right now, they can sell you two boxen (and if you're an average consumer, you'll be more than happy to buy two boxen) and then in a few years when the latest and greatest printer connector/wireless protocol/ethernet standard/etc hits, they can sell you two new boxen to work with your new network/printer/computer/etc.

Before asking such questions as "why don't they put both things in one box," keep in mind that the entire computer industry is a huge scam and that most consumers are so stupid about computers that they don't even care.

Re:Neat but..

[Daniel_Staal]

It could just as easily be said that you could do that with a bare computer and an assembler. Sure you could, but do you want to? Starting with a basic Linux/BSD distro is easier. This is easier yet.

This is just a specifically-configured FreeBSD-based distrobution. It makes one moderately complicated setup easy enough for a causal computer dabbler. (Not quite a novice, but not an expert either.) It's useful if it can do a good job, because it makes it easier for people to set this up, with less time, effort, and knowledge on their part.

Which means they can focus their time, effort, and knowledge on something else.

Use a spareimage

[bill_mcgonigle]

If you need to do this, setup a sparse disk image on the SMB share and mount it. Copy files to the disk image. Slow but flawless.

I'm also working on some docs on how to do this with rsync, which actually works much faster if you don't need to use it interactively (big if).

Re:Neat but..

[Illbay]

I'm likely in the minority on a site where "nerd is king," but I *REALLY* like this trend toward making the difficult simpler for us casual administrators.

Several years ago I tried to set up my Linux box as an internet router/gateway, using IPTABLES and what-not. I failed just through sheer lack of time to commit to learning all the stuff I'd need to know to do it properly. About that time, the first "Cable/DSL routers" came on the market, and made moot my need.

Now, however, it is very easy to configure the various widgets that you'd need for this task because tools exist on (e.g.) Fedora to make it so.

For myself, I'm glad I can put the effort into learning more in-depth some of the things I can do with Linux, and yet those things I find tedious, or don't have the time to do, have "easy-to-use" tools handy.