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

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

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: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.