How user-friendly is FreeNAS?

[Raident]

The main site implies that FreeNAS is very easy to set up and administer, but the forums here seem to be filled with numerous threads on how it's very easy to completely destroy your data.

 

[cyberjock]

It's both.

Do you consider a car easy to take care of? While you might be a car mechanic and can repair anything yourself, I can't. So I have to go to a mechanic.

It depends totally on how much experience you have, how much you learn, and how open you are to reading the manual, forum stickies, etc.

It is relatively easy to get your work done if you have no FreeBSD experience but want to use ZFS. I was able to figure it out and many others can. But my mom wouldn't be able to figure it out if her life depended on it.

Relativity is the key. As to if you can do it, the only advice I can give is to try it. Either you'll get it or you won't. If you think you'll have it up and running in 2 hours then you shouldn't even try it as there's alot of decisions to be made that cannot be undone later if you are unhappy with them.

 

[Nomad]

If you build a system with ECC
AND you use RAIDZ2
AND if anything goes crazy you ask for help FIRST,
THEN you it's very easy to you and you should be fine.

 

[gpsguy]

Taking cyberjock's analogy a little further ...

Do you do simple preventative maintenance on your car, like: check the oil, other fluids and monitor tire pressure? If you get to the point where your brake disks are grinding, do you take care of it right away or do you wait until you have an accident?

Spend time reading the manual. Read it two or three times. Take a look at cyberjock's guide - it's in his signature. Peruse the forum for answers to questions you might have. If you can't find the answer - just ask.

After you set up FreeNAS, configure it to email you alerts about possible issues. Run SMART tests regularly on your hard disks, as well as scrubs. Keep a journal of things you've done and helpful commands.

If you sense a problem, check this forum first. Don't go to the shell and start entering ZFS commands that you found on a random website. Often people show up here, after the damage has been done. Or, with RAIDz1, they suspected a bad disk (was making noises), but put off replacing it for some reason.

 

[Dusan]

Deleted (wrong thread).

 

[JP1]

In my experience FreeNas has not been easy to use with just any old computer laying around. The reviews I read before installing FreeNas lead me to believe I could make good use of my old PC instead of throwing it away. Instead, it seems like I am having some kind of hardware problem with a PC that was working perfectly with Windows. If you custom build a system with recommended hardware, you will probably be more likely to succeed.

 

[pirateghost]

In my experience FreeNas has not been easy to use with just any old computer laying around. The reviews I read before installing FreeNas lead me to believe I could make good use of my old PC instead of throwing it away. Instead, it seems like I am having some kind of hardware problem with a PC that was working perfectly with Windows. If you custom build a system with recommended hardware, you will probably be more likely to succeed.

I think this is because of the old freenas, now known as nas4free. A lot of info I have come across has to do with the old version.