
FreeNAS - basicplus2
https://www.freenas.org/
======
dang
Previous threads for the curious:

2017:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14554232](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14554232)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14107563](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14107563)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13878283](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13878283)

2016:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12360478](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12360478)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11367690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11367690)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10906427](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10906427)

2013:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6954397](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6954397)

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anon9001
I looked at running FreeNAS, but it didn't make any sense to me. I can put as
many hard drives as I want in a cheap PC with a ryzen cpu and run samba. It
takes maybe 5 minutes to set up, and then you also have a distro of your
choosing to use as a server.

FreeNAS probably makes sense if you're an industry IT person and you want to
make sure anyone in the future can figure out how to admin the thing. That's
probably got a lot more value than I'm willing to admit, and I'm sure that's
why it's popular, but I see a lot of posts about people trying to set up
FreeNAS at home and it seems silly.

~~~
gregmac
I also looked at it a few years ago when I last rebuilt my media server, and
ultimately decided the same.

I now run SnapRAID [1] with mergerfs [2] and for my use, it's got many
benefits over zfs and normal raid setups:

I could start from my existing volumes, without having to move any files.

I can use my random bunch of varying size disks purchased over several years,
and add as needed. I tend to buy a new drive every couple years at whatever
cheapest $/GB is, which means usually each drive is 2x the size of the last
one I bought.

If something catastrophic fails like the system itself, the disks are just
normal independent ext4 volumes - I can read them from basically anything.
I've had to recover a RAID5 array using replacement hardware before, it's not
fun and not something I want to ever have to do at home.

[1] [https://www.snapraid.it/](https://www.snapraid.it/)

[2]
[https://github.com/trapexit/mergerfs](https://github.com/trapexit/mergerfs)

~~~
anon9001
I actually use RAID6 with mdadm, and it's also portable to different machines.
I was kind of surprised the first time I moved the array to a new machine and
it all just worked.

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sircastor
I ran FreeNAS for a while. After spending a fair bit time learning about it
and asking questions, it was explained to me that ZFS required a lot of
regular maintenance, care and feeding.

It was about this time that I decided to move over to a more consumer solution
and bought a Synology. I liked the ideal of open source, self managed systems,
but I got tired of being my own network admin, and IT.

~~~
dijit
Wait, ZFS requires maintenance?

I’ve been running freenas for years and have deployed/ran ZFS solutions as
part of my job for a decade- this is the first I’m learning about that, it’s
usually set and forget.

Am I just a bad admin?

~~~
Godel_unicode
Somewhat depends. Scrubbing is about detecting bit rot. You need to make sure
that all of your data is periodically accessed so that zfs can check for
errors. You can accomplish this either by having a workload which touches all
of your data on a regular basis or by scrubbing. Depends on your setup.

~~~
radiowave
Scrubbing is still preferable though, as normal reads won't cause every copy
of the metadata to be read. Likewise, on a mirrored pair of disks, a given
block of file content will only be read from one disk. (That is, since the
file content is verified using checksums contained in the metadata, we don't
need to read the file data back from both disks, so they can be used to
service read requests independently of one another.)

~~~
Godel_unicode
All good points, especially about mirrors.

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tczer
For those looking for a linux based NAS distribution, you should also take a
look at openmediavault here
[https://www.openmediavault.org/](https://www.openmediavault.org/)

It has been running on my home server for 5+ years now and it's a delight. It
also supports ZFS through a plugin.

------
dev-il
quotes From the "Hardware Requirements" page on that linked FreeNAS site:

• "64-bit hardware is required for current FreeNAS releases. Intel processors
are strongly recommended."

• "8 GB of RAM is the absolute minimum requirement. 1 GB per terabyte of
storage is a standard starting point for calculating additional RAM needs,
although actual needs vary. ECC RAM is strongly recommended."

The example configuration for a "Home Media Server or Small Office File Share"
even suggests "16 GB RAM".

I've heard that ZFS is quite RAM hungry, but c'mon, 16GB for a home media
server?

~~~
Namidairo
With drive capacities topping 10TB and dedup being what it is, it's not too
far of a stretch?

~~~
pushpop
Those specs would be without dedup enabled (which generally isn’t in ZFS
because it’s quite an expensive feature).

------
tdons
Is there anyone here who prefers FreeNAS over vanilla FreeBSD+zfs and would
like to share their experience?

I've been running FreeBSD with zfs for many years. I'm unsure if it was the
right decision, but I did learn a lot and it's been extremely stable after the
initial setup :-)

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spants
If you are looking for something like this, try unraid.net. you can run docker
templates and plugins, easily add storage and has a friendly community.

~~~
throwaway77384
not the same, as it isn't free :)

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hestefisk
Why is this a news story?

~~~
tczer
certainly because of recent Linus comments on ZFS

~~~
cpach
Link for the curious:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22005181](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22005181)

~~~
hestefisk
Linus’ comment on ZFS lacking new development / maintenance is really
misleading. OpenZFS is doing both and there is a very large, vibrant
development community.

