4 NICS on single FreeNas 8.3 Box Config Question

[centussystems]

Hi Everyone,

I have done a quick search, but not found anything concrete to help me deal with this specific issue. Apologies in advance if this has been asked before.

I am looking to roll out FreeNas as a storage system for our company, and in turn, perhaps customers. We roll out systems in DC architectures regularly, so want to know if it is possible to Split/Dedicate NICs to certain tasks.

For example, on a single dedicated FreeNas 8.3 Server with 4 Gigabit NICS:
- First NIC dedicated for Web interface for GUI Management internally only (connected to dedicated internal management network, example 10.10.10.1 assigned static) This would be an absolute failover network so we can connect even if the machine goes down on the public network.
- Second NIC dedicated for FTP access for customer machines backing up via FTP to storage allowances (static assigned IP example 192.168.100.1)
- Third NIC Dedicated for FTP again, either bonded to NIC 2 to double capacity, or for certain customers only, to reduce bandwidth sharing
- Fourth NIC, All other protocols including windows shares etc

Edit: perhaps looking for using third Nic for dedicated iscsi connections.

Is this possible with FreeNAS? And if so, has anybody got any advice/documentation/experience in setting up such a scenario?

Many thanks in advance,
Toby @ Centus

 

[techiem2]

I haven't gotten quite that complex, but I'm currently running 3 NICs in mine on different subnets (192.168.100, 192.168.150, 192.168.200) without issue on my network.
I just had to tweak bind to report the right IP address to the requesting clients based on what subnet they are in.
If multiple subnets need access to a single interface on the freenas box, that comes down to router/firewall configuration to let the traffic get there (that's what I did before I added the extra NICs, and a couple of my other subnets still go through the router to get there).

It looks like you are trying to do something a bit more complex though.