When did FreeNAS become a media server?

[diedrichg]

Seriously, when did FreeNAS become a media server? Where are all these new users coming from where they read that FreeNAS was the way to go to store and stream their pirated TV and movies? How did FreeNAS get the reputation of being a media server rather than an enterprise storage and account server? I have a computer that holds all my pirated TV and movies but it's called a HTPC and that's all it does.

/rant

 

[Jailer]

Why do you assume that all new users are pirates of movies?

I was drawn to freenas after a recent hard drive failure that resulted on a loss of many files. Nothing critical thankfully but a lot of stuff I'd really like to have back. Once I found freenas and discovered all it had to offer I was hooked.

And just as an FYI, I have over 500 movies transcoded and served by plex and I own every one of them so not everyone who uses plex is a movie pirate. :p

 

[zambanini]

well, it is a free nas software scnr.
people also see it as as recycle hw project. not the truenas community section with zfs, iscsi, nfs and AD supported cifs.

 

[Ericloewe]

I believe it's mostly due to "tech" publications who talk out of their asses. A nice example is that technikaffe.de site, where they have a "guide" for FreeNAS recommending 8GB of RAM (could be worse, but still...) and a laughable Atom J1900 motherboard with Realtek GbE.

What really triggered my "Hold it. I don't like where this is going..." reflex was the guy who showed up asking about 15 simultaneous 1080p Plex transcodes (15!).

Also, the people who do look for enterprise-grade storage typically know enough to read through whatever material there is OR pay someone to put it together/buy it straight from iX. I imagine there's a very small amount of companies that knows enough to get an NAS device (that they have to assemble themselves, no less) but is naïve enough to end up with a frankenserver. Of course, there's also the "We paid someone to put this together, but they're gone and we'd like to know more about this and/or fix this problem we're having" niche - the photography studio from a few months back comes to mind.

 

[zambanini]

isn't there a community manager from ixsystems who could contact such sites?

 

[diedrichg]

What really triggered my "Hold it. I don't like where this is going..." reflex was the guy who showed up asking about 15 simultaneous 1080p Plex transcodes (15!).

I remember that one!

 

[gpsguy]

*i* doubt they would.

That being said, if the site allows user feedback, perhaps you might want to include a comment. Slashdot (/.) ran an article on FreeNAS about a month ago and I was surprised (not really) to see Ericloewe's comments in that thread.

isn't there a community manager from ixsystems who could contact such sites?

 

[cyberjock]

isn't there a community manager from ixsystems who could contact such sites?

I've been around for almost 3 years now. For the post part, even if you call them on the phone and tell them they look like the stupidest people on the planet because they did the exact opposite of everything that you could possibly do 'right', they often still won't take it down. They want clicks to their website for advertisement revenue. They want that money, and they want their "newest, shiniest, bestest, most awesome-est article on FreeNAS as a media server" to make them money.

Do I hate websites like that? Absolutely. There's only one that I have commented to by email or on their actual comments for the article that was actually taken down. After they took it down I emailed them personally and asked if they wanted to do a proper article on the topic and I offered to help them put together an inexpensive FreeNAS server that would have the power to do some basic media server stuff and they said they were reevaluating the article, they appreciated the offer and they'd contact me if they wanted to do a proper FreeNAS article. They haven't tried to contact me since.

About the best you can do is go to their comments and post links and try to inform the masses that the article is incorrect and shouldn't be used.

 

[diedrichg]

Holy crap! This was in an article in my January PCWorld magazine about uses for recycling an older computer. Shall I point out the obvious?!

 

[Ericloewe]

Holy crap! This was in an article in my January PCWorld magazine about uses for recycling an older computer. Shall I point out the obvious?!

FreeNAS 0.6...? Holy crap, I really hope you do not mean "January 2015".

 

[diedrichg]

Yes. It's my brand new issue; January, 2015!!!

 

[Ericloewe]

Yes. It's my brand new issue; January, 2015!!!

Good thing PCWorld is hard to get around here, otherwise I'd be pissed off at the cash I'd have given out for such a piece of crap.

 

[diedrichg]

I'm considering giving it up as it's quite esoteric. I've kept it to this point just to keep current on new software and devices. My go-to magazine is MaximumPC for bleeding-edge technology, reviews and builds.

 

[diedrichg]

Good thing PCWorld is hard to get around here, otherwise I'd be pissed off at the cash I'd have given out for such a piece of crap.

It's hard to get because it's digital-only now.

 

[nick779]

Seriously, when did FreeNAS become a media server? Where are all these new users coming from where they read that FreeNAS was the way to go to store and stream their pirated TV and movies? How did FreeNAS get the reputation of being a media server rather than an enterprise storage and account server? I have a computer that holds all my pirated TV and movies but it's called a HTPC and that's all it does.

/rant

I like having a multipurpose box that can store my files and movies with replication and redundancy, as well as serve them to my DLNA devices.

 

[Ericloewe]

It's hard to get because it's digital-only now.

And here I thought the decreasing number of stores selling international specialty magazines was limiting my reading.

 

[cyberjock]

Yes. It's my brand new issue; January, 2015!!!

I'd call them on the phone and tell them "cancel my service right freakin' now and I want a 100% refund for my subscription cost!" They are so out of touch with IT they wouldn't deserve my money for that kind of shit. They going to provide tips for using Windows 7 (that came out in 2009 too I think)?

That's just flat out ignorance and neglect. In fact, if you had included the authors name I'd probably have written them to tell them that the author should be unemployed for being so incompetent. My sister could do better and she barely knows how to surf the net.

 

[c010rb1indusa]

Seriously, when did FreeNAS become a media server? Where are all these new users coming from where they read that FreeNAS was the way to go to store and stream their pirated TV and movies? How did FreeNAS get the reputation of being a media server rather than an enterprise storage and account server? I have a computer that holds all my pirated TV and movies but it's called a HTPC and that's all it does.

/rant

Lack of other options for DIY. I was first introduced to FreeNAS through TekSyndicate when Wendell reviewed the ASRock C2750d4i CPU/MB Combo. I had previously owned a QNAP, which has fantastic software BTW, albeit on limited hardware if you wanted to do some of the more heavy multimedia stuff such as Plex, or their HTPC frontend as their newer NASes actually have HDMI out. Buying one of their higher end, 8 drive bay machines without any drives wasn't cost feasible. FreeNAS seemed to offer what QNAP had but I could put it on my own hardware, great.

After researching further however, I discovered FreeNAS wasn't as straight forward, the overhead was lightweight but the ECC memory requirement and the 8GB of RAM for the OS and 1GB of RAM for 1TB of storage, especially if you had lots of storage, did bring up the cost and hardware requirements. But the alternatives aren't really any better. There's NAS4Free which seems great and much more user friendly, but the lack of plugin support is a deal breaker. There are some flavors of Linux that do similar things but not many wrap it up in a nice package that's manageable from a WebGUI like FreeNAS. The closest I've seen is Amahi, but the documentation is sparse. Also FreeNAS with ZFS RAIDz2 with 6 disks is really the sweetspot in terms of redundancy and usable storage space.

I can understand your frustration however, I came into FreeNAS as a novice as well and quickly realized that I should really learn the ins and outs of this OS and FreeBSD to some extent, before I decided to commit my data to it. Luckily this forum has been mighty helpful in clarifying and guiding me through some of FreeNAS quirks and I have my system setup and protected against failure. The only thing I'm worried about now is reporting and monitoring of my system. I've set up email notifications etc and I followed cyberjocks SMART Test and Scrub scheduling guide but the log emails I get might as well be written in Chinese.

AND IMO this is where FreeNAS falls short. It's easy enough to setup and get everything running properly but when something goes wrong, then you have to deal with CLI phobic people like me who might not have realized something was wrong, even if they setup their system 'properly'.

 

[9C1 Newbee]

I came here because a friend of mine said it was better than Windows Home Server. Boy I guess!

 

[nick779]

I needed a winter project, and something to tinker with. Ive been looking at NAS boxes for a while now, but for the price would prefer to build my own.