Is FreeNAS right for me?

[Ivolve]

Hi Guys,

I want to have a very simple NAS that can be used as a home server. I have an Athlon 5350 with 8Gb and only 2 disk which I want to mirror. I used to run Openmediavault on it but found that it wasn't very stable at all. Sometimes it would just break down for no apparant reason and I was getting sick of it. I figured out that FreeNAS has a much bigger comminity and dev team so thought it would be more stable. However I'm running into so much trouble already setting it up that I'm seriously beginning to doubt it....

Now the key is I don't want much. I just want to have a NAS to download some torrents and serve is trough SMB an NFS to my laptop and KODI. Also I'd like to use owncloud to synnc about 50 GB of files.

Now I just want a system that I can setup once, prefrably trough a web gui but I wouldn't mind doing things through SSH if there is a clear guide and as long as I don't run into a 1000 problems. Do you think FreeNAS is the proper choice for me?

Ivo

 

[cyberjock]

Now the key is I don't want much. I just want to have a NAS to download some torrents and serve is trough SMB an NFS to my laptop and KODI. Also I'd like to use owncloud to synnc about 50 GB of files.

Sorry, but that's wanting more than "a little" in my book. You're wanting to leverage all of the major features of FreeNAS on one server. You are going to need more than 8GB of RAM if you want to do all that stuff.

FreeNAS is meant to be easier than FreeBSD, but it won't come without you having to put some time into learning it. Guides are written and sometimes work, sometimes don't. Things change, and when you update something you may break something. You should be expected to be able to troubleshoot the problem and fix it yourself though.

So I tend to think that you're wanting something dead simple to setup with no knowledge or experience required, and that's not FreeNAS.

 

[Ivolve]

As was expected and, granted I do like to spend some time configuring it and setting up the system to my liking. Otherwise I would have bought a "simple" synology that offers all those features a lot cheaper....
I just got a little frustraed because I had spent a lot of time configuring my OMV setup and the it just broke down... I though FreeNAS would be more stable but I already spent quite a lot of time with the installation (just figuring out my USB3 ports don't work) and then when I finally got it running the web gui just broke down on me, it felt like my OMV all over again....

I guess the implied question is: How much problems can I expect to have to figure out before I get to a point where I can run it as mentioned above?

 

[danb35]

Well, I dare say that nuking the entire log directory will never be the correct solution to any problem you might reasonably encounter with FreeNAS. It will also render it impossible to track down the source of problems, since that information is almost always stored in the logs. That was a bad decision, and any resulting difficulty is self-inflicted. Fortunately, it's easy to repair--save your config file (it's at /data/freenas-v1.db; you can copy it from there to any shared directory), do a clean re-install, and upload the saved config file. Your system will now be configured just as you left it.

FreeNAS is very stable when run as recommended on adequate hardware. Your hardware may or may not fit the bill. It's definitely light in the RAM department to do anything other than just serve files. It's an AMD board, which doesn't tend to be nearly as well supported as Intel. I'd wager the onboard NIC is Realtek, which isn't going to be a good thing (but shouldn't harm stability). It's doubtful your system supports ECC RAM, which is recommended for best data protection. Will it work? It should. Will it be optimal? Unlikely.

For the large majority of users, for simple file sharing purposes, FreeNAS is very stable and very easy to set up. When you start adding features like downloading torrents and serving ownCloud, it gets more complicated.

 

[Ivolve]

Frustration makes you do dumb things :)

I think I have heard enough, FreeNAS is not the built for a small home NAS with only a couple users.
If just my requirements are more than "wanting just a little" I don't think it's for me. As mentioned I used OMV before where a setting up a torrent client with couchpotato etc is just easy as installing a plugin and configuring it a bit but doesn't require endless SSH setup and a massive ammount of RAM.
I think FreeNAS probably works well for professional users but for me it just doesn't justify the hardware expenses and power required to run it.

 

[danb35]

As mentioned I used OMV before where a setting up a torrent client with couchpotato etc is just easy as installing a plugin and configuring it a bit but doesn't require endless SSH setup and a massive ammount of RAM.

SSH setup is far from endless, and is probably not needed at all if you're using the FreeNAS plugins (I installed transmission and couchpotato manually on my system, so don't have direct experience with the plugins). "Installing a plugin and configuring it a bit" are really all you need in FreeNAS for these features, and for ownCloud, but all of those are going to take some system resources. If you want to use Plex, that's a memory hog, though it's gotten better with recent versions.

Yes, FreeNAS takes more RAM than many other NAS OSs. I don't think that 8 GB, or even 16 GB, is a "massive amount of RAM" in 2015, but others' opinions clearly differ on that subject. The primary driver for this RAM requirement is the use of ZFS, which provides a great degree of protection for your data, but in exchange requires a bit more horsepower than most other filesystems. You'll also find (if you do stick around) that we're a lot more conservative with hardware recommendations around here than users of most other NAS OSs. The reason's pretty simple: we care about our data, and assume that you do too. We care enough about our data that we're willing to pay a bit (though it need not be a great deal*) to use proper hardware to protect it. If you do not, then you're probably right that FreeNAS isn't a good fit for you.

* You can get suitable low-end servers very inexpensively in the Lenovo TS140 or Dell T20; either can be had new for under $300US (and I've seen the T20 recently for under $200). Add some RAM, and whatever hard drives you want, and you're set.

 

[depasseg]

Hi Ivo - I broke apart what I think are each of your questions/concerns into separate parts:
"Can I run a 2 drive mirror for 2 users providing CIFS and NFS and run the owncloud and transmission plugins on an Athlon 5350 and 8GB of RAM?", -Yes
"Will it be stable? - I think that depends on the rest of your system specs.
"Is it easy to manage" - Yes, use the GUI to configure your shares and plugins and be on your way.

 

[toadman]

Yes, it wasn't exactly clear in the original post what would be running on the NAS vs elsewhere. I think depasseg's take is probably right - i.e. run transmission and owncloud plugins and serve CIFS and NFS clients. So yup, should be (relatively) easy to setup and manage.