Is FreeNAS right for me??

[Bains999]

I am a Windows technical person that Is used to using the GUI and seldom going into the command line.

I have about 40 downstream systems that I need to support. All systems are Netgear RedadyNAS systens, They are running out of processor power and Netgear does not have any responsible solution's.

The use of a GUI is essential since the downstream systems are maintained by technically capable but not proficient individuals.

I have moused around some of the forum responses and looked at the documentation. It seems that to manage and use the FreeNAS solution the user must be proficient in command line interface with BSD.

Is my impression correct or can the system be installed and managed with the GUI interface available?

 

[melloa]

Is my impression correct

No. The beauty of FreeNAS is that most tasks can be performed using the GUI. In fact any changes made on the shell won't "survive" a reboot.

My suggestion: get it installed on a test box or a VM. Use it, read the forum, get acquainted with it; map your needs -> CIFS/NFS/etc, storage -> What is ZFS, what raidz type is the best for your scenario; understand memory need; CPU need; etc.

 

[Constantin]

Agreed. I have yet to use the command line other than for mundane things like ping to see if the network config blew up. I’d like to think that my FreeNAS is fairly well set up now despite my non-IT, mostly MacOS background.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I experienced a steep learning curve even with the GUI. FreeNAS can do a lot of stuff.... so read the manual, set up a test server and then dive into the details. The community here is great.

 

[artlessknave]

FreeNAS is definitely intended to be GUI-centric. you generally only need the command line because you want to do something advanced...or because you need to fix something that went wrong.... because you tried to do something advanced.
one limitation that does exist is that the webGUI is only usable by root, so any local admin users would have full access to root.

 

[Arwen]

@Bains999, I'd say maybe FreeNAS is right for you.

A weird thing is that Netgear offers a line of NASes called ReadyDATA that use ZFS. They were intended for small businesses, not home users.

One thing to understand, is that ZFS, (aka OpenZFS), is radically different from most file systems. ZFS goes out of it's way to protect your data. Read up on ZFS and understand what you want, and how to implement it using ZFS. Then decide.

Be aware that ZFS has different terminalogy for it's storage pieces. So, to give you an idea, here are some;

• Pool - disks in a specific ZFS group, (you can have multiple ZFS pools on a server)
• Mirror, (aka RAID-1, but not quite the same)
• RAID-Z1, (similar to RAID-5, but again not quite the same)
• RAID-Z2, (similar to RAID-6, but basically RAID-Z1 with 1 more parity block)
• RAID-Z3, (again, RAID-Z2 with 1 more parity block)
• vDev - a sub-piece of a storage pool that can contain a disk, Mirror, or RAID-Zx, (you can have multiple vDevs in a ZFS pool)
• Dataset - A file system in the ZFS "pool", (Datasets can have children Datasets)
• Volume - A block volume in the ZFS "pool", (Volumes can not have children Volumes)

It's always helpful to know these words and how they are used. Especially when asking for help. Sometimes people come to the forums and say something like "my pool is made up of 2 ZFS1s". That's somewhat meaningless. They probably meant, (but can we be sure?), "my pool is made up of 2 RAID-Z1 vDevs". But, they could have meant, "my NAS is made up of 2 ZFS pools, each RAID-Z1".

We in the forums want you to be successful. So at times we ask clarification questions, or outright say that something is not recommended. They are not intended to be rude.

 

[Bains999]

Thanks for those who responded. Very useful info and a good source of research prior to buying.

 

[Tsaukpaetra]

The nice thing about FreeNAS is, you can totally try before buying! So long as you have a box (virtual or not) with minimum 8GB of RAM and a few drives, you can toy with FreeNAS until you get a good feel for it and learn how to do things (and how not to do them).

 

[artlessknave]

(and how not to do them)

unfortunately, the way too many people find out how not to do things is after they put all of their mothers wedding pictures on a raidz1 of 10TB drives with no backups.....

 

[Tsaukpaetra]

put all of their mothers wedding pictures

Funny you mention that, I actually built a teensy NAS (unfortunately, so teensy it couldn't work with FreeNAS proper, but still just OK enough for ZoL) for mother this Christmas. Now we can cross-replicate and I have another leg in my backups! ;)

 

[blanchet]

If you have dozens of NAS to support, it would be easier to buy official servers from iXsystems.

Therefore, I suggest to

• buy FreeNAS Mini. The most interesting models are the Mini E and Mini XL+ with the new Atom C3000 processor. These machines have an IPMI port, which is very useful for remote management.
• install TrueCommand to monitor all of them from a single console (the license is free for up to 50 disks)