I think FreeNAS will be a perfect solution but...

[psilikon]

My dad runs a small business where he and his employees routinely accesses network shares for company data. Currently he has four other employees that access network shares that are all hosted on one Windows 7 Home computer that is acting as a make-shift file server. The file 'server' also runs a Carbonite client that performs nightly backups. Everything is actually working and the only thing my dad wants to add is a way to have user or group level access to the shares. For instance the receptionist shouldn't have access to every SMB share but only some and I would assume that FreeNAS would be able to add this type of access-level control. The other things is that my dad does not want to loose Carbonite ability and I don't blame him as off-site backups are highly important. So I figured we could possibly configure the FreeNAS box to rsync to the Windows machine that is currently acting as a file server if we install an rsync daemon/server on it (if they exist for Windows) and then just carry on with the Carbonite client like we already do. I would really like to help Dad out on this one and add some reliable opensource technology to his office but I want to see if this is possible. What do you guys think?

 

[kashiwagi]

Hi psilikon,

as much as I like FreeNAS, I think it might be a little bit too much for your dads business, unless they have someone reasonably computer proficient to help them out. I think that Windows 7 should be perfectly fine for their use case actually. Windows 7 file sharing can definitely have user based permissions (which are a lot easier to set up for a novice than proper permissions in a unix system like FreeNAS, but this point is highly subjective).

Have a look at this microsoft document on basic file sharing in Windows 7:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/File-sharing-essentials

Do note this particular point:
"Specific people. This options opens the File Sharing wizard, so you can choose particular people to share with."

It sounds like they already have a good system for backups, which is paramount! Remember to always keep up to date off site backups and to do disaster recovery every once in a while to see that the backups actually work!

 

[globus999]

I fully concur with kashiwagi. You don't want FN at this stage. You will spend countless hours fiddling and fighting with it until you get it just right. So, I would stick with Windows 7. Remember, the golden rule in business is "whatever works" and "good enough".
Now, if you insist on using FN, I would *strongly* (actually emphatically!!!) recommend two things:

1 - Get a crappy test box. Any ol 'puter running PIII with a bunch of ol hdds (40 Gb and up) will do. You will need at least 2Gb of RAM. The more hdds the merrier so you can experiment with what FN can do.

2 - Do *not*, and I mean NOT use FN8. Go back and use the latest version of FN7, which is stable and quite bug-free. You most definitively do not need sleepless nights in a production environment.

 

[ProtoSD]

And don't forget the old computer rule... Garbage In = Garbage Out meaning crappy test box = crappy test results

However, I will agree with globus999 (maybe just this time) ;-) , FreeNAS 8 might not be the best idea for a production environment at this point. Maybe the way you were thinking as a secondary backup server would be alright. It would give you time to get familiar with it so when things get ironed out with FN8 you'll be ready to go.

 

[psilikon]

Thanks for the information guys. You bring up a great point; if I were to provide a solution with a high learning curve I might get roped into supporting it more than I might like. Well, having said that I am off to look into the Windows 7 shareing thing as I was under the impression that the 'Home' edition was incapable of password protected sharing.

 

[matthewowen01]

i kinda have to agree too.... kinda...

if you have a small business with an IT staff, let them handle it. if they choose FreeNAS, awesome, it's great software.

if you have a small business without an IT staff, you run the risk of doing things wrong. FreeNAS is very powerful, but i would not call it easy to use and debug when problems arise. I've been in IT for nearly a decade and am 6 months away from my BS in Computer Science. I have no problem fixing problems i come across, puzzles are fun for me. but for a business that looses money for each hour a system is down, the company does not have the luxury of time.

all that being said, same thing goes for any home brew situation, i have the same feeling for the current setup. so where do we go from there? back to FreeNAS.

i would pick up some new hardware that you'd be happy with as a regular system as well as a FreeNAS box (in case things don't work out). (remember, crap in crap out)

something like a 45 watt AMD x2, x3 or x4, $50, $100 and $150 respectively a decent motherboard with no less than 4 on board sata 2 and 4 slots for ram and a gigabit NIC, get 4 or 8 GB of ram and build your system. install FreeNAS on a USB stick of a CF card on an IDE adapter (my preference). Buy 2 drives and setup a ZFS mirror, then setup some shares and get used to working with FreeNAS. Deploy the system at home and mess with it. setup some users, shares, play around, get used to it. then yank a drive. take it to another system, format it and deal with the consequences. Make sure you got an email from FreeNAS to notify you somethings gone wrong. Once you've got your system back working, yank the USB drive (or CF) format it and set the system back up the same way. Next play with the snapshots, get good enough so you can explain it to your dad. you've got to be 100% confidant with this.

now as long as this has gone well and you haven't bailed for something else. buy 2 more drives, set those and the original 2 into a raidz2 (so you'll have 2 disks of redundancy) and deploy it with caution. just remember, when something breaks at 2 am, you get the phone call. :)

good luck!

 

[matthewowen01]

Thanks for the information guys. You bring up a great point; if I were to provide a solution with a high learning curve I might get roped into supporting it more than I might like. Well, having said that I am off to look into the Windows 7 shareing thing as I was under the impression that the 'Home' edition was incapable of password protected sharing.

oops missed this post, windows 7 does support password protected sharing, you need to disable 'simple file sharing' all my versions are pro so i can't really help but google is your friend.