Wilhelm Stürmer
Dabbler
- Joined
- Dec 19, 2017
- Messages
- 11
As my intro states, I came upon FreeNAS because the long used method for file storage and sharing at the company I work for has been having repeat issues the past 1 - 2 years. It's an all Apple environment and there is a Mac Pro (Late 2013) that was being used for several functions, including file sharing. Problem is, since about OS X 10.12, there was a repeating issue where users couldn't connect to shares and files they had in the past. After numerous hours troubleshooting, I ended up wiping the server and installing the OS fresh. This happened twice. I got fed up with the issue and started looking into NAS options. Trouble is, nobody wanted to pay for a NAS... even though a 4 bay desktop NAS would be more than sufficient for this company. After some discussion with friends and associates, I was directed towards FreeNAS. I instantly liked what I initially read, BUT... where would I get hardware? I had a eureka moment when I realized that the previous Mac Pro (Early 2009) wasn't being utilized, outside of my occasional tinkering with it. After a bit of research, I realized the system looked compatible.
Quad-core Intel Xeon 3500 seriesCPU
16GB 1066MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM
4x 3.5-inch cable-free, direct-attach SATA drive slots
2x additional SATA connection on cable meant for optical drives
2x network ports
I came up with 3x 2TB HDDs for RAID storage and a 2.5" 160GB HDD (pulled from a laptop) for FreeNAS.
Initially, I wanted the latest and greatest FreeNAS 11, but after a few hours of trying to get around a persistent error while attempting to load the software, I decided to attempt to load an older version. I picked 9.2.1.9 and installed it without issue. I figured out how to create volumes and shares, set up mirror folder and share structure to the existing environment, and began... manually... copying all the data. Why manually, you might ask? Well, I attempted to copy everything at once, however, I kept encountering errors with files whose file names were too long. So, I'd have to drill down until I found the file and rename it, then start the copy again. Eventually, all the data was copied.
So that's where I'm at. We only have 3 - 5 users that consistently use the file share, but so far (fingers crossed) there has been no issues (outside of not assigning proper permissions).
Quad-core Intel Xeon 3500 seriesCPU
16GB 1066MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM
4x 3.5-inch cable-free, direct-attach SATA drive slots
2x additional SATA connection on cable meant for optical drives
2x network ports
I came up with 3x 2TB HDDs for RAID storage and a 2.5" 160GB HDD (pulled from a laptop) for FreeNAS.
Initially, I wanted the latest and greatest FreeNAS 11, but after a few hours of trying to get around a persistent error while attempting to load the software, I decided to attempt to load an older version. I picked 9.2.1.9 and installed it without issue. I figured out how to create volumes and shares, set up mirror folder and share structure to the existing environment, and began... manually... copying all the data. Why manually, you might ask? Well, I attempted to copy everything at once, however, I kept encountering errors with files whose file names were too long. So, I'd have to drill down until I found the file and rename it, then start the copy again. Eventually, all the data was copied.
So that's where I'm at. We only have 3 - 5 users that consistently use the file share, but so far (fingers crossed) there has been no issues (outside of not assigning proper permissions).
