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FreeNAS 9.3 Released
An anonymous reader writes This FreeNAS update is a significant evolutionary step from previous FreeNAS releases featuring: a simplified and reorganized Web User Interface, support for Microsoft ODX and Windows 2012 clustering, better VMWare integration, including VAAI support, a new and more secure update system with roll-back functionality, and hundreds of other technology enhancements. You can get it here and the list of changes are here. Existing 9.2.x users and 9.3 beta testers are encouraged to upgrade.
My CPU doesn't support x64 guests so I'll remain on 9.2.x, which still works pretty well. The only downside is the minidlna plug-in is a bit old and needs to scan the entire collection when adding new files. Newer versions will either have inotify/kqueue working, if not already.
Users of 9.2.x and 9.3 beta who don't exist don't need to upgrade.
News of this release seems to address many of the short-comings Ars Technica had when Ars reviewed FreeNAS.
http://arstechnica.com/informa...
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
Slashvertisment. I ran FreeNAS for almost two years. It is designed to be a NAS appliance. The jailing system makes it very restrictive, dare I say too restrictive for home users. For instance, there isn't an easy way to install and access a zip utility. I switched to Ubuntu with ZFS support and have been much happier. I kind of miss the web interface but losing it isn't that big of a deal.
Agree with you here.
I tried it and really wanted to like it. ZFS + a nice GUI and a lot of plugins.
Then the "quarks" started. Some things you have to do via the command line, then in the forums it is all "never use the command line, bla bla"..
Like you, I reverted to Ubuntu after a few months. Not nearly as friendly but at least the system doesn't create 60GB of non-raid swap (2gb/disk is the default on freenas) among other oddities...
I think it needs a different name. When I pronounce "FreeNAS" at a typical discussion speed, it ends up sounding like "freeniss". That, obviously, sounds far too much like "penis". "Penis" is a word that's forbidden in most non-medical workplaces, and even some medical ones these days.
So me and the other IT guys could be sitting in a meeting, talking about integrating "FreeNAS" into our stack. Some young HR intern happens to walk by the meeting room door, and hears what she mistakenly thinks is us saying stuff like, "How much is this penis going to cost?" or "How are we going to stick penis into our stack?" Then she'll get offended, tell her supervisor, and we'll all get accused of being "sexist, racist, misogynist, intolerant bigots" and probably sent off for sensitivity training.
Sorry, we just can't risk it. This might be the best software out there, but if there's the chance that it'll land us in deep shit, then we just can't use it.
I tried both FreeNAS and NAS4Free for a home server, and they were both good for what they aim to do. The problem I had was when I wanted to run something other than a NAS on the same box, such as tvheadend. I consequently tried OpenMediaVault as this is based on linux. In the end, I concluded that these only work if you're running your box purely as NAS. After a look at virtualisation using docker, and concluding that this was overkill, if not a bad idea, I went with Ubuntu Server and webmin. The storage is using BTRFS. I could have used ZFS, but BTRFS seemed a better choice, for what I wanted, at the time.
Note that if you want proper NAS, you'll probably want to avoid everything I've done at home. :)
Who ordered that?
is just as bad and will result in your trip to sensitivity training, or will get her into sensitivity training for not respecting the nuances of your lifestyle :)
still waiting for wireless support before I consider making the jump
NAS OS is restricted to doing NAS duty plus run arbitrary software via Jails. News at 11.
I like having smaller NAS boxes at home, but I'd really like the option of ZFS too. Most of the mini-systems I've looked at aim strictly at Linux, and the official FreeNAS Mini is overkill--$995 diskless, partly because it has 16GB of ECC RAM. Any suggestions for a small, 2 disk setup that will run FreeNAS at closer to $500?
I'm planning on setting up one of these in a month, and I'm considering FreeNAS and NAS4Free. I'm very interested in comments from anyone with experience with both.
A serious question: why use FreeNAS, a repackaged FreeBSD, when you can just use the way more up to date real thing - FreeBSD 10.1 itself?
Yeah, because "wireless" is a critical feature for a NAS?
You going to run 100TB and 1,000 clients over that as well?
ZFS highly recommends ECC memory. You can always go against the recommendation and run the risk of a total failure later.
I ran a RAIDZ1 system over 8 drives for 1.5 years on NON-ECC memory without issue, YMMV and this is NOT an endorsement as i later picked up a proper box and it used ECC.
Exactly what does "way more up to date" get you when you are talking about a file server and ZPOOL v28 with feature flags which is not "up to date" with solaris which is now at ~ zpool 32.
People use it because it has a nice GUI.
Is it free as in beer, or free as in freedom? Is there a mobile app available?
The upgrade of FreeNAS from 9.2.1.9 to 9.3 does NOT include roll-back when using the GUI upgrade method. It may going forward, but not on this upgrade.
I know because I 'tried' to fall back when the upgrade killed my iSCSI connections. Also the NFS4 version is not NFS4.1 capable.
The jailing system makes it very restrictive, dare I say too restrictive for home users. [...] I switched to Ubuntu with ZFS support and have been much happier. I kind of miss the web interface but losing it isn't that big of a deal.
Perhaps FreeBSD could emulate Linux containers which are much easier to break out of instead of the secure jails (where even root-within-the-jail can't get out of the system).
Damn that overly-effective security! :)
for me, the difference is that I can run NAS4free from a LiveCD. I don't see that option for FreeNAS. Config is stored on an external USB stick. All hot-swap trays are for USER ORIENTED, NON-HOST/OS data. (slim CD doesn't really take any additional space, either).
I've been running FreeNAS systems on hardware that's considered junk by most standards for years, and I think I'll have to stay with the 9.2 branch for now. The 9.3 version makes ZFS mandatory and the hardware requirements for running the drives in ZFS is huge compared to a NFS setup.
Before someone replies the ECC is only a little more than regular RAM, yeeeah. But it's a lot more RAM you need, and to use ECC you also need the rest of your system to be compatible with it. That means a new motherboard and processor, and a beefier processor capable of keeping track of the ZFS overheard on top of what you want to actually want to do.
I can't see how you can compare ZFS with NFS, you can easily share a ZFS volume over NFS, i.e. they are not mutually exclusive.
You don't need more RAM just because it is ECC. You can use ZFS without ECC RAM although it isn't recommended. But that is not because of some inherent weakness of ZFS that supposedly would make it unable to run without ECC RAM. The same problem would persist with any other file system. Usually you want to use ZFS for the extra protection against data corruption that it provides compared to other file systems. In that context you should use ECC RAM.
I believe he just wants a simple NAS and doesn't care about all the awesome things about ZFS.
He considers snapshots, error-correction and such to be bloat.