TOP TIPS
1. Upgrades are usually the best way to install a new FreeNAS version.
2. If you downloaded files using BitTorrent, you may not be able to delete them via CIFS or FTP. Use the Quixplorer file Manager feature under the WebAdmin tools. It's located under Advanced - File Manager, you need to login with an account that has the proper rights, such as the admin account.
3. Always backup your configuration. Very useful if you have problems after an upgrade. You can find it in the WebAdmin under System - Backup/Restore.
4. Start Simple. When configuring FreeNAS initially, use a system with one disk, one NIC, etc.. Have as few variables as possible. Once you get familiar configuring it, you will learn and know the details and how to get around certain issues.
5. Running a LiveCD system works just as well as an installed version. Just remember that your settings will be gone upon Shutdown. If you need to save it, save it to a USB drive.
6. Getting a Disk up and running caused me the most amount of problems. Just remember you need to first Define a disk in Disks - Management, then Format the Disk in Disks - Format, finally Mount the Disk in Disks - Mount Point. Only after doing all this can you Share the disk via CIFS/SMB, FTP etc..
7. Remember to Save and Restart the service after you make a change or enable a service. The Button is at the very bottom of the service enabling page.
1. Upgrades are usually the best way to install a new FreeNAS version.
2. If you downloaded files using BitTorrent, you may not be able to delete them via CIFS or FTP. Use the Quixplorer file Manager feature under the WebAdmin tools. It's located under Advanced - File Manager, you need to login with an account that has the proper rights, such as the admin account.
3. Always backup your configuration. Very useful if you have problems after an upgrade. You can find it in the WebAdmin under System - Backup/Restore.
4. Start Simple. When configuring FreeNAS initially, use a system with one disk, one NIC, etc.. Have as few variables as possible. Once you get familiar configuring it, you will learn and know the details and how to get around certain issues.
5. Running a LiveCD system works just as well as an installed version. Just remember that your settings will be gone upon Shutdown. If you need to save it, save it to a USB drive.
6. Getting a Disk up and running caused me the most amount of problems. Just remember you need to first Define a disk in Disks - Management, then Format the Disk in Disks - Format, finally Mount the Disk in Disks - Mount Point. Only after doing all this can you Share the disk via CIFS/SMB, FTP etc..
7. Remember to Save and Restart the service after you make a change or enable a service. The Button is at the very bottom of the service enabling page.
FreeNAS - 0.69
With an old Pc in my room and me looking for a NAS i decided to build a test NAS box. At work we obesely have backups and have been running two NAS backup boxes for over a year now, running on Openfiler.
But with recommendation from a twitter follower @FreeNAS i opted to test the install and interface.
i want bore you with how i installed or setup you could find that info on 100's of sited via google.
One of the interesting things is the option of running the NAS from a live CD installing the OS onto RAM. Im a big fan of LiveCD's but i fail to understand why one would want/need to do this on a NAS, as as soon as you reboot or power failure you need to reconfigure, especially as the OS needs less then 16mb.
I opted to install FULL and partition one of my 2 HDD's.
The web interface is nice and polished (IMAGE1) Simple interface with easy access to all its features. adding my drives was 4 clicks, setting up ftp another 2. Who could ask for more, and its all from using an old PC, true in this unit i only have two 40GB drives, not much for a backup but for the price of a 1Tb drive being less then £100 its a much better option then using a purpose built NAS box from PCWorld (Other outlets available) with 2 or 3 services, or worse yet a NAS that needs some shitty preparatory software to be installed on all the PC's that want to access the NAS.
But with recommendation from a twitter follower @FreeNAS i opted to test the install and interface.
i want bore you with how i installed or setup you could find that info on 100's of sited via google.
One of the interesting things is the option of running the NAS from a live CD installing the OS onto RAM. Im a big fan of LiveCD's but i fail to understand why one would want/need to do this on a NAS, as as soon as you reboot or power failure you need to reconfigure, especially as the OS needs less then 16mb.
I opted to install FULL and partition one of my 2 HDD's.
The web interface is nice and polished (IMAGE1) Simple interface with easy access to all its features. adding my drives was 4 clicks, setting up ftp another 2. Who could ask for more, and its all from using an old PC, true in this unit i only have two 40GB drives, not much for a backup but for the price of a 1Tb drive being less then £100 its a much better option then using a purpose built NAS box from PCWorld (Other outlets available) with 2 or 3 services, or worse yet a NAS that needs some shitty preparatory software to be installed on all the PC's that want to access the NAS.
Like i mentioned before, one of the main features of setting up your own NAS apart from it being upgradable its its vast number of services it can run. (IMAGE2). With the option of installing third-party system packages (LINK1).
If you happen to have a spare PC laying around and you are tech savvy enough not to want to buy off the shelf NAS, a good option is to build your own NAS server. There are a few small time options but the big boys in open source NAS is FreeNAS and Openfiler, both of these are based on a variant of Unix.
Pros
* Being Unix it’s more robust, secure, and FREE.
* Even with a PC several years old its more than enough power to run both Openfiler or FreeNAS. FreeNAS requires a Pentium CPU with at least 64 mb RAM while Openfiler needs a bit more beef needing a 32 bit 1 GHz CPU with 512 MB of RAM.
* Flexible because it runs Unix so you can execute Unix commands and even run other Unix apps for additional capabilities.
* Very high performance due to the low OS overheads.
* Supports multiple network card bonding for increased performance with load balancing.
* Its also easily scalable.
The few cons are.
* It’s Unix which means it’s not user friendly with out web-interface, poorly documented apart from other tech users, and compatible with some hardware cant be assured.
* Its also going to take a large footprint and possibly greater power consumption in relation to a small NAS box.
But me and others like me we tend to care less about looks or ease and look to the challenge and finding a use for our spare parts. Failing that, install onto a virtual environment, VMWare, parallels, and without testing i assume Hyper-V and test away.
If you happen to have a spare PC laying around and you are tech savvy enough not to want to buy off the shelf NAS, a good option is to build your own NAS server. There are a few small time options but the big boys in open source NAS is FreeNAS and Openfiler, both of these are based on a variant of Unix.
Pros
* Being Unix it’s more robust, secure, and FREE.
* Even with a PC several years old its more than enough power to run both Openfiler or FreeNAS. FreeNAS requires a Pentium CPU with at least 64 mb RAM while Openfiler needs a bit more beef needing a 32 bit 1 GHz CPU with 512 MB of RAM.
* Flexible because it runs Unix so you can execute Unix commands and even run other Unix apps for additional capabilities.
* Very high performance due to the low OS overheads.
* Supports multiple network card bonding for increased performance with load balancing.
* Its also easily scalable.
The few cons are.
* It’s Unix which means it’s not user friendly with out web-interface, poorly documented apart from other tech users, and compatible with some hardware cant be assured.
* Its also going to take a large footprint and possibly greater power consumption in relation to a small NAS box.
But me and others like me we tend to care less about looks or ease and look to the challenge and finding a use for our spare parts. Failing that, install onto a virtual environment, VMWare, parallels, and without testing i assume Hyper-V and test away.
Source information:
blog.patyuen.com
freenas.org
learnfreenas.com
forums.whirlpool.net