FreeNAS vs Linux

[Alice Wonder]

Hi, I came to this project with the full intent of using FreeNAS for my backup project but I am seriously having second thoughts and thinking about using CentOS instead.

I would like my reasoning checked because I would hate to make this decision based upon a mis-conception.

Nutshell - I have an old Mac II that I aquired in 1998 and back then was planning to fix (bad power supply) to run some of the classic Apple applications for nostalgia - e.g. Tetris and Dungeons of Doom. I never fixed it and now not going to.

So I will be gutting the inside (lot of room inside) and basically custom building a backup server out of it - so I can have the unit sitting in my entertainment cabinet as a conversation piece but also acting as a backup server for my LAN.

Four 4TB 5400 RPM disks for the NAS, 1 SSD for the OS, motherboard / CPU that do not use a lot of power, low profile power supply. Obviously I'll have to cut out the original back and custom make one.

I also want to use it for an SVN server, CTAN mirror, and yum mirrors for Fedora and CentOS. The SVN server being backup to the NAS but the mirrors are pointless to backup.

From what I gather, FreeNAS has been designed to use the entire disk it is installed on with fixed partition sizes that can not be modified at install time and without the ability to run arbitrary services within the FreeBSD environment that FreeNAS is built upon.

So in order to do what I want with FreeNAS, I would have to install a second disk (e.g. thumb drive) for FreeNAS creating an additional point of failure, and then run those things from a virtual machine using the SSD creating additional complexity and resource management such as how much RAM is allocated to the virtual machine.

I don't want a system where I'm not really root and all design decisions, including what software is available to install, is controlled by someone else without me being able to easily modify it.

I want a system where I can do a minimal install, set up the SSH daemon (and I always use a non standard port even on my LAN), ssh in and use a package manager to install the additional software I need.

I like the concept of virtual machines in enterprise, it is especially important for security where an exploit in, say, your mail server doesn't result in your web servers being compromised. However I really don't think I need them for my home LAN NAS server.

So I've decided that even though ZFS is superior to LVM2 for backup (ZFS on Linux is possible but license issues it's not in the kernel, so I would have to patch the kernel or use userspace implementation - neither of which appeal to me) that I will use CentOS with LVM2/ext4 for my LAN backup server, giving me true control over my system designed to meet my needs running on my hardware.

I already have to have an SSD separate from the NAS spin disks for the additional services it will provide, going the CentOS route also thus avoids the need for a thumb drive that creates additional points of failure (the thumb drive and the USB ports, which do occasionally go bad)

I don't need the GUI web based administration, ssh works fine for me.

Thoughts?

 

[cyberjock]

If you don't need the GUI web based administration than FreeBSD is certainly better for you. You seem to have an interest in doing things yourself and not needing a GUI to do the "hard" CLI stuff.

Just keep in mind that virtualizing ZFS is REALLY dangerous if you are wanting reliability.

 

[pirateghost]

I would say go for a Linux distro you want or go with FreeBSD. Sounds like you don't need an appliance which is what freenas is considered.

 

[John M. Długosz]

Alice, my thoughts were that the only thing you get with the FreeNAS image other than the appliance boot image is the GUI front end. If you don't want an appliance, just having a machine that has ZFS file systems and does whatever you want with it should be just fine, right?

But, what is really under the hood here? There's all this development work that's clearly more than a mediocre HTTP interface. The "new management" developers have reported pretty much rewritten "it", and it's substantially different from the 7.x line. So what exactly is "it" other than (1) the GUI, and (2) the ZFS file/volume system itself? I'd really like to know; that's not a rhetorical question.

Then, is the ZFS available for Linux (some effort required) the same "enhanced" version in use here, or a base version, or otherwise different or inferior?

But, it sounds like you are just fine without ZFS. And you are quite comfortable with CentOS. So why put up with a foreign OS, stricter hardware requirements, and limited add-on ability? If you don't need ZFS, you don't need FreeNAS.

Note that FreeNAS has "jails" which allow you to install whatever you want in a container/sandbox. But you need FreeBSD versions of the stuff. Point is, you could indeed install your other things. The 1GB boot drive is not an issue; the stuff is installed on other partitions.

Personally, I'm worried about "silent data corruption" on large drives, especially for archival material. If you're not using ZFS or btrfs (I don't know any other available file systems that offer a layer of data integrity checking) then what are you doing about it? You describe it as a "backup server", so are the files it stores a special backup archive format? If so, that ought to offer its own verification process and you can scan them regularly.

BTW, I used to use TeX and really like it.

—John