Openindiana vs Nexentastor vs FreeNAS

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Catn.com has the beginning of a series comparing the three NAS operating systems - Openindiana, Nexantastor and FreeNAS. All three NAS operating systems feature availability of the ZFS file system which some believe is perfect for NAS devices.

This part of the series describes the three possibilities and then concentrates on FreeNAS with some speed testing supplied. The goal of the article is to explore systems with ZFS storage available:

So what choices did we have for ZFS storage?

One obvious one would be OpenIndiana. For all intents and purposes, it is the continuation of OpenSolaris. It is a stable platform, it has features beyond ZFS that are not found in any other system (i’ll talk about these later), but it has a flaw. Familiarity with the platform is very low. Solaris in general and by extension OpenIndiana where nowhere near as popular as Linux of FreeBSD. For one person familiar with Solaris you could find fifty familiar with Linux.

Another option was Nexentastor. Nexentastor is an Illumos distro that is commercially backed by a company called Nexenta. With Nexentastor one can make a storage appliance out of practically any PC less than 2 years old. Familiarity with the platform is not an issue because the user/admin interacts with the appliance through a web interface. It is a purpose built system just for creating storage appliances.

Another option was FreeNAS. FreeNAS is practically the same as NexentaStor, but using FreeBSD underneath instead of Illumos. Just like NexentaStor, FreeNAS is a purpose built operating system with a nice web interface on top.

Source: Catn.com

The next part of the series will concentrate on Openindiana, so stay tuned!

 

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Convert an Old PC into a Modern FreeNAS Server

I'ts not often that one of the old school "mainstream" publications gives any significant space to one of the free NAS distributions that allow you to turn a PC into a NAS. PCWorld has just posted an article that outlines how to do just that with an old PC and FreenNAS. The article summarizes one of the big advantages of FreeNAS:

Best of all, the software--FreeNAS--that will power this machine is exactly what its name describes: a free operating system for network-attached storage. And side from being free, FreeNAS is easy to install, configure, and run. You'll find everything you need to know in this guide.

Source: PCWorld

The post walks through installing and setting up FreeNAS as a network shared drive and sums up the additional features that aren't covered in detail:

Our simple share drive is but the tip of the FreeNAS iceberg with regard to features. Options include locking drive access to users and groups, creating recurring snapshots for restoring older copies of files or deleted files entirely, and using the power combination of Dynamic DNS and FTP access to give your offsite workers easy access to the files they need. Now that you've mastered the basics, a world of advanced configurations and scenarios is yours to explore!

Source: PCWorld

I've personally built and installed several FreeNAS servers, and I believe it is one of the easiest NAS distros to build with, setup and maintain.

 

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Building an E-350 based NAS

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I came across a nice little post about building a NAS from scratch using an AMD E-350. The author decided to use Centos for the operating system:

In the beginning I was pondering whether to choose FreeNAS or CentOS. Both are probably good choices, but since I don’t consider ZFS as the holy grail of file systems and I’m a passionate Fedora user the final choice was the CentOS 6.2 minimal spin.

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Synology Download Station Add On for Google Chrome

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If you use the Chrome browser and have a Synology NAS, there is a new add on that allows for downloading directly to the NAS using the NAS's download function. This is a pretty neat add on that is easy to setup and use. A video showing the add on installation and use is below:

Source: system-log.com

Looks like a great way to easily move your download tasks directly to the Synology NAS.…

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Openmediavault 0.3.0.7 Beta Available

OpenmediavaultA new beta version of the free NAS software, Openmediavault, is now available. Summary of the changes is below:

  • Update locales.
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  • Check for duplicates before storing network interface configuration object.
  • Mantis 0000447: Reorder login dialog fields.

openmediavault-lvm2 0.3.0.3

  • Fix error message when extending a volume group.
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Comprehensive Guide To Setting Up Your FreeNAS Server To Access Your Files From Anywhere

Scribd has an interesting article with a comprehensive guide (with many screen shots) showing how to setup a FreeNAS NAS with the ability to access your files from anywhere that has internet access.

This guide is somewhat mis-titled because although it covers how to setup internet access to your FreeNAS device, it also covers how to install FreeNAS, configure shares etc.…

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Plex Server Supports DLNA

DLNASome NAS devices come with robust ability to run third party apps - Synology DSM 4.0, for example, allows running Squeezebox Server and Plex to name a few. Plex just got more interesting with its ability to support DLNA devices which means that you don't need to run a special client in order to access videos and files on the sever.…

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How to install and configure SnapRAID on Ubuntu Server

SnapRAIDThere is a new guide on how to install and configure SnapRAID on Ubuntu Server.  Snapraid is a snapshot RAID opensource project that provides the following features:

Beside the ability to recover from disk failures, the other features of SnapRAID are:

  • You can start using SnapRAID with already filled disks.
  • The disks of the array can have different sizes.
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