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FREENAS Open Source Storage

Discussion in 'Tilted Gear' started by Lucifer, Jan 28, 2013.

  1. Lucifer Slightly Tilted

    Location:
    The Darkside
    I've been running Windows Home Server 2011 on our radio server ever since finishing the build last year and for the most part it has run pretty smoothly. It was cheap ($50), and relatively painless to install and configure. Seamaiden's Ubuntu computer can access it, but not automatically backup like the windows computers can. Most importantly, it can store all our movies and tv shows and stream them to our WD TV Live box and then into our TV. But I've been having an issue with adding additional drives to the server. Each drive that I add has to be formatted and then the original drive has to have it's partition extended to encompass the new drive. It's a bit of a pain in the ass, so I've been looking for an alternative server OS.

    I've gotten wind of Freenas, which is an open source server OS, which can stream to a variety of devices, which is handy because the kitchen and soon, the living room computers are Android, my workshop computer (raspberry Pi) is Debian, Seamaiden's previously mentioned Ubuntu and my Windows are all different systems, but all need access, not to mention the entertainment devices.

    I'm running the 32-bit version to an old Dell of Seamaiden's to test it out before running it on the WHS box. It runs from a USB flash drive instead of installing to a hard-drive, (strange, I know, but it's what they say to do) because the first thing the OS does is partition the drive it's on, into 2 1GB partitions, one for the OS and one for updates. The GUI can be accessed across the web by it's ip address, same as for a router. Now I'm working on configuring users, groups and permissions.

    It's going to be a bit of a learning curve, on account that it's not as intuitive as the WHS OS was to setup.

    Does anyone have any experience with this OS that can give me some pointers.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  2. martian

    martian Server Monkey Staff Member

    Location:
    Mars
    Quick correction: If seamaiden's Ubuntu computer can write to the storage, it can be backed up there. It does require a little bit of commandline-fu, but not a ton. You'd want to look into putting together a script that uses rsync to copy her important data, and add it to the root cron. The caveat from my perspective is that I've never done this over samba; I can't think of any reason off the top of my head why it would be an issue, but changing the data from EXT3/4 or whatever her machine is using to NTFS and back again might introduce some odd issues.

    I've used Freenas in my professional life. There is, as you said, a bit of a learning curve, but it's very powerful. It's a drop-in replacement for the expensive comercial mass-storage options for a fraction of the price, with the gotcha being that you don't get professional support, so you need someone who knows what they're doing. As with anything *nix, the best way to learn how to use it is by tinkering with it. Once you get the hang of managing ZFS volumes and datasets it's not too difficult to work with, especially if you're only handling a small server with 1-2 disks. It's BSD under the hood which means that you can work the crazy command-line magic, but I've never needed it; the gui is very full featured, and much more beginner-friendly. I don't actually do the heavy lifting on our Freenas systems (we have a systems engineer who handles that) but if you have any big questions I can't personally answer I have access to someone who probably can, and would be happy to pass them along.
     
  3. Zweiblumen

    Zweiblumen Slightly Tilted

    Location:
    Iceland
    Sounds interesting, I have been using WHS (not 2011) and adding drives is very simple but after I removed one drive backup's of desktop machines have failed. The WHS idea was good but implementation wasn't good enough, like with many M$ product.
    Please share your experience with FreeNAS.
     
  4. Lucifer Slightly Tilted

    Location:
    The Darkside
    Yes, Seamaiden's computer can be backed up to the server, but it can't be done automatically like it can with a Windows pc. When a windows pc connects to the server for the 1st time, the server configures the pc to run automatic backups nightly. Backups is the one thing that WHS really does well. I'm sure eventually I could come up with a fix, but I haven't gotten that bored yet.

    I've discovered the videos section of the FreeNAS site, which has been very helpful in getting things set up.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  5. Lordeden

    Lordeden Part of the Problem

    Location:
    Redneckhell, NC
    Hmmmmm.... This sounds just about what I need for the shop. I need a place to stuff all the files that I use on a daily basis (repair tools, cleaning programs, portable apps, ect) and would work for the various machines in the shop. Does anyone know if this runs well in a VM environment?

    *****

    Decided to download the iso, throw it on the Esxi server and see what happens. I'll let you guys know what I run into when I do this. I'm hoping I can store a ton of tools on this and share it out to pcs on the network (Installers, repair tools, portable apps) instead of using flash drives.
     
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2013
    • Like Like x 1