Is it possible to install FreeNAS on a commercial NAS applicance? Please share

[konung]

Hello.


I was wondering if people could share their experience installing FreeNAS on commercial appliance such as QNAP, Synology, Netgear ReadyNAS, Buffallo Stations or DLink NAS or any other product.

Main reason - I want a small NAS appliance for my home ( running RAID 1 or 5) with all the features of FreeNAS. Right now I have a Linux (Debian) box which is my computer as well, that runs 24/7 . It has Raid 5 and 5 fans - it's kind of loud, and eats up load of electricity. However most of my remote access needs are - access bittorrent queue , maybe find an occasional photo or document on my local drive ( when I'm at work), and backup my files and stuff. All these things FreeNAS would be good at. However I don't want to spend time / money building a compact low-energy machine to do this, especially since there are already so many good hardware solutions out there.

So hence the question - were people able to do any of this already?

To compare I guess I'm looking for a NAS version of dd-wrt or tomato.

Thank you

 

[HolyK]

These cheap "dedicated" NAS are ... well ... almost unusable ... lack of memory, slow network speed if the machie need take care of multiple clients, etc... and, if you thinking about FreeNAS over this prebuilded HW (so you loose their system), i can tell you, it will be more expensive that building your own machine :)

For example, in my country (Czech republic), you can build lowcost machine like this:

Intel Packton D525MW - 1.466 CZK
Kingston SO-DIMM 2GB DDR3 1066MHz CL7 - 473 CZK
Eurocase Mini ITX Wi-05 (200W) - 1.095 CZK
WD Caviar Green 2TB - 1.870 CZK
Total: 4.904 CZK WITH 2TB HDD! (3.043 CZK without HDD)

It will take max 10min to put it together and you can start.

EDIT
I miss the info you want RAID 1 or 5, ok, so you will need a bit bigger case and a bit different MB, but the difference in price will be minimal.
/EDIT

And in one of our eshops i can buy these NASs for example:

For the same price (without HDD), there is only some sh!tty Zyxel NSA221 with no information about processor/ram !!
For price 3.200 there is QNAP TS​-110 - CPU Marvell 6281 800MHz, DRAM 256MB DDRII RAM
Cheapest Synology DS211j starting at 4.430 CZK with CPU 1.2GHz, DDR2 128MB
For the price 4.970 CZK, QNAP TS-212 can be obtained - CPU Marvell 6281 1.2GHz, 256MB DDRII RAM -> for the same price you can build your own with 2 TB HDD.
... etc
Also, in all of this cases, you are limited by max storage space, you cant extend the memory and who knows, if there is way how to replace FW with some unix based OS.


So, check e-shops in your country and try to draft something based on Intel Atom / Amd Zacate :)

 

[esamett]

I am more interested in repurposing my Promise Freenas 4300 so it can to ZFS/1 instead of Raid5.

 

[HolyK]

You mean this? PROMISE TECHNOLOGY NS4600

Processor: Intel 600 MHz
Standard Memory: 256 MB DDR2 SDRAM

Not good enough for ZFS i think ...

 

[esamett]

older version, now legacy: NS4300N

 

[ohnename]

The NS4300N hast a MPC8343 CPU, this is a PPC CPU.
Most of the commercial NAS applicance are using ARM CPUs so installing FreeNAS (only x86 or x86-64) is not possible. Even if a NAS is using a x86 Atom CPU so the lack of memory is making it unsuable for FreeNAS with ZFS.

 

[SoftDux-Rudi]

Most commerical NAS appliances use DOM (Disk On Module) to store the NAS OS, and normally connects to either an IDE / SATA / onboard USB port. Very few have a ROM chip soldered onto the motherboard with the OS on. So you should open it up and see what it in there, then see if you can take it it, or bypass it and boot of a USB port. With Thecus devices I could change the boot sequence to boot of a USB port and run FreeNAS on a USB memory stick. The Thecus devices, at least in our country, are cheaper to buy than to build something similar (considering 8 hot swappable HDD's, hot swappable redundant PSU's and hot swappable FAN's.

 

[jober]

I have it running on a QNAP 639PRO but the ram will max out at 4GB. You may ask why the hell would I install FreeNAS over the oh so great QNAP OS. Well, I did an update and it totally F UC Ked the ethernet controllers. So the best option was to install FreeNAS on a USB drive and use a USB to Ethernet device. It's not fast like the DIY box I built but it's great for a backup server for the DIY box. BTW, the QNAP only had 1GB of ram to start with and it ran about as well as it does now with 4GB. Only time will tell how it holds up as I load it up with data.

 

[SoftDux-Rudi]

I have it running on a QNAP 639PRO but the ram will max out at 4GB. You may ask why the hell would I install FreeNAS over the oh so great QNAP OS. Well, I did an update and it totally F UC Ked the ethernet controllers. So the best option was to install FreeNAS on a USB drive and use a USB to Ethernet device. It's not fast like the DIY box I built but it's great for a backup server for the DIY box. BTW, the QNAP only had 1GB of ram to start with and it ran about as well as it does now with 4GB. Only time will tell how it holds up as I load it up with data.

well you now at least have a NAS with more flexibility than what you had before.