How do use your FreeNas system?

[johnblanker]

I am about to take the plunge here, I was just thinking about how to "use" my system. Currently, I have my pc and the wife's pc. The home for our files live on our pc's. I keep a backup on an external HDD. Every couple weeks I sync the data from the pc to the external.

With FreeNAS, it seems like I would want to do the opposite? The freenas would be the home for all out files with the backups of the freenas data on one of our pcs.

What do you guys do?

 

[Mirfster]

I use mine as a base to crack and eat pistachios... That way I don't have to worry about my "bits" having rot... /#GetCrackin

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

What do you guys do?

In the context of backups, ours is an always-on network backup destination to replace attached hard drives.

 

[diedrichg]

We use ours as a always-on file server. It holds all our photos, music and documents that are irreplaceable. It also runs BTSync to sync photos from cell phones and documents from the laptop and desktop clients. I have a Transmission instance running to help seed a few Linux ISOs. I then have two datasets acting as Time Machine backups for my wife's two MacBooks.

I have considered running it also as a media server for movie and TV but being anal, I prefer to have a separate HTPC for that job.

I keep it backed up to an external HD in a USB enclosure that I periodically connect to my desktop to sync over CIFS.

 

[johnblanker]

I don't know if I am overthinking it. Let's say I keep my files on my pc and send backups to the freenas system. Let's say a file goes bad on my pc. When I sync my pc data to the freenas system, isn't it just going to copy over the good file with the bad file (perhaps the sync program will think it's a "new" version and overwrite the good version), thus defeating the whole purpose having a freenas box. Does this make sense?

This is why I was thinking of having the home for my files be on the freenas box and send my backups to a pc on the network. I am just thinking of the speed bottleneck working with my files over the network share as opposed to having them right on the computer.

 

[diedrichg]

I don't know if I am overthinking it. Let's say I keep my files on my pc and send backups to the freenas system. Let's say a file goes bad on my pc. When I sync my pc data to the freenas system, isn't it just going to copy over the good file with the bad file (perhaps the sync program will think it's a "new" version and overwrite the good version), thus defeating the whole purpose having a freenas box. Does this make sense?

This is why I was thinking of having the home for my files be on the freenas box and send my backups to a pc on the network. I am just thinking of the speed bottleneck working with my files over the network share as opposed to having them right on the computer.

1. Correct. That's just the nature of sync and it's unavoidable. Fortunately there is the ability in FreeNAS to clone a previous snapshot of a dataset to recover the good file. This is also why external backups are helpful.

2. I work with my files directly over the LAN all the time on a gigabit connection. Documents are instantaneous and large video editing files take only a few seconds to load.

 

[pirateghost]

I don't know if I am overthinking it. Let's say I keep my files on my pc and send backups to the freenas system. Let's say a file goes bad on my pc. When I sync my pc data to the freenas system, isn't it just going to copy over the good file with the bad file (perhaps the sync program will think it's a "new" version and overwrite the good version), thus defeating the whole purpose having a freenas box. Does this make sense?

This is why I was thinking of having the home for my files be on the freenas box and send my backups to a pc on the network. I am just thinking of the speed bottleneck working with my files over the network share as opposed to having them right on the computer.

1. Use snapshots. If you are on a windows client on the network you can even use previous versions from windows. This is covered in the documentation. Quite simple and you can set a schedule for how long to keep your data in a snapshot.

2. I don't see any benefit of trying to work with ALL your files on the freenas. Just use regular backups, syncing and snapshots.

 

[mattbbpl]

2. I don't see any benefit of trying to work with ALL your files on the freenas. Just use regular backups, syncing and snapshots.

This is probably a combination of miscommunication/simplicity. He probably means all of his important/archived files (as opposed to all the fluff on a workstation OS), and it's pretty simple to work with most files directly from the NAS. This is what I do with the files on there as I have no need for workstation backups, and I just treat the NAS as a Master Data repository. It's my source of truth.

 

[pirateghost]

This is probably a combination of miscommunication/simplicity. He probably means all of his important/archived files (as opposed to all the fluff on a workstation OS), and it's pretty simple to work with most files directly from the NAS. This is what I do with the files on there as I have no need for workstation backups, and I just treat the NAS as a Master Data repository. It's my source of truth.

There are a few problems with this approach (if you are not the only user) in my experience.

1. Training your users how to use the NAS in this intended usage scenario.
My wife and son both use my NAS as well. I would have to teach them how to work with and save files to the NAS. Both of them are heavy users of their 'desktop' directory on windows. Alternatively, I could redirect their profiles to NAS shares and have them work directly on the NAS without any training, which brings me to problem 2.

2. If, for whatever reason, your NAS is not up (maintenance, updates, upgrades, etc), logging into client machines becomes painfully slow as the system tries to locate the profile that is currently disconnected. This can cause issues with loading desktops, images, etc. Sometimes even reverting to a default empty profile, causing even more confusion.

3. If you redirect, there are certain applications that look for a hard C:\users\username profile. So then things magically appear in the C: drive when you meant for them to go directly to the NAS. This was something I ran into on windows 7 a few years ago when trying to do this.

I have found the easier option for my wife and son is to have backups automated for them to their own user shares, and utilize snapshots so they can revert any file for the last 2 weeks. If there is a file that is older that they need, its available for me to restore from crashplan.

At least with this configuration, they can work completely disconnected from the NAS and I don't have to troubleshoot slow logins or misclicks when they should have saved a file on the NAS but instead saved it to their C drive and messed something up. Backups are done with rsync and delta copy so they just resume when the client can talk to the server again.

Really it all boils down to the complexity of your network and who your target audience is.

 

[Mlovelace]

What do you guys do?

Backup target for our vmware cluster (veeam), backup target for 6 sql databases and their transaction logs, afp shares for 40 apple clients, cifs shares for 233 windows clients, sftp share for website backup, nfs volume for vCenter ISOs (the vm's and sql databases live on our SANs), zfs snapshot replication for offsite disaster recovery, and rsync target for 20 linux clients.

 

[johnblanker]

Thanks guys. For my household, It's just my wife and me. I am storing about 300GB of data. Not much. Music, docs, and home movies. I would be the only one using the NAS. I have never had a NAS before and am a "desktop" user so the approach of using the NAS as my "main data repository" is new to me.

There are just a couple scenarios that might be problematic. 1. waiting for the share to open. It seems to take a bit to open a share.
2. Video editing. I guess I can just copy files over to the workstation to edit then move them back. I can use the workstation desktop as a temporary location before moving them to their final archival location on the NAS. Does this make sense?

 

[pirateghost]

You say it takes a bit to open up a share. Are you setting the drives to sleep when not in use?

 

[mattbbpl]

There are a few problems with this approach (if you are not the only user) in my experience.

1. Training your users how to use the NAS in this intended usage scenario.
My wife and son both use my NAS as well. I would have to teach them how to work with and save files to the NAS. Both of them are heavy users of their 'desktop' directory on windows. Alternatively, I could redirect their profiles to NAS shares and have them work directly on the NAS without any training, which brings me to problem 2.

2. If, for whatever reason, your NAS is not up (maintenance, updates, upgrades, etc), logging into client machines becomes painfully slow as the system tries to locate the profile that is currently disconnected. This can cause issues with loading desktops, images, etc. Sometimes even reverting to a default empty profile, causing even more confusion.

3. If you redirect, there are certain applications that look for a hard C:\users\username profile. So then things magically appear in the C: drive when you meant for them to go directly to the NAS. This was something I ran into on windows 7 a few years ago when trying to do this.

I have found the easier option for my wife and son is to have backups automated for them to their own user shares, and utilize snapshots so they can revert any file for the last 2 weeks. If there is a file that is older that they need, its available for me to restore from crashplan.

At least with this configuration, they can work completely disconnected from the NAS and I don't have to troubleshoot slow logins or misclicks when they should have saved a file on the NAS but instead saved it to their C drive and messed something up. Backups are done with rsync and delta copy so they just resume when the client can talk to the server again.

Really it all boils down to the complexity of your network and who your target audience is.

"Really it all boils down to the complexity of your network and who your target audience is."

Yep. To be honest, I think you and I are thinking of two entirely different scenarios. My NAS (outside of the base OS and jails) houses flat files only. The closest thing I get to housing an OS file is housing an ISO image that I occasionally load into a virtual drive. But upon an OS restart, this image is simply not loaded again.

It sounds like you're envisioning a scenario where the NAS holds your Windows profile or something similar, which is definitely an interesting use case. I'm not sure if that came across to the OP clearly, so it's probably worth confirming and raising these as potential pitfalls of that approach.

 

[pirateghost]

"Really it all boils down to the complexity of your network and who your target audience is."

Yep. To be honest, I think you and I are thinking of two entirely different scenarios. My NAS (outside of the base OS and jails) houses flat files only. The closest thing I get to housing an OS file is housing an ISO image that I occasionally load into a virtual drive. But upon an OS restart, this image is simply not loaded again.

It sounds like you're envisioning a scenario where the NAS holds your Windows profile or something similar, which is definitely an interesting use case. I'm not sure if that came across to the OP clearly, so it's probably worth confirming and raising these as potential pitfalls of that approach.

I don't envision that at all. Not the entire profile. I'm also not suggesting that anyone should house OS files. Quite the opposite.

Redirection of folders is quite easy in windows for things like desktop, documents, music, etc. This is not a profile being stored on the NAS but a folder redirection to redirect 'my documents' from a C: drive location to a network share. Doing this is quite common actually, in a business environment. We redirect certain folders for our users so that if their harddrive dies on them all their documents are stored on a network share that they 'own'. I'm not referring to roaming profiles.

My point was that I was not going to be able to change my wife and son's habits. Therefore the easier option is using freenas as a backup location for their data rather than teaching them how to use the freenas as their 'workspace'.

My wife takes lots of photos and does lots of Photoshop, illustrator and lightroom. If I didn't back those things up, there would be hell to pay when her hard drive dies.

My freenas is flat file storage. It stores backups, houses shared files and media. I use Plex to serve that media to everyone and to the Plex clients running on raspberry pi2's scattered around the house. I don't actively change files on the server. I let it do it's thing.

 

[mattbbpl]

I don't envision that at all. Not the entire profile. I'm also not suggesting that anyone should house OS files. Quite the opposite.

Redirection of folders is quite easy in windows for things like desktop, documents, music, etc. This is not a profile being stored on the NAS but a folder redirection to redirect 'my documents' from a C: drive location to a network share. Doing this is quite common actually, in a business environment. We redirect certain folders for our users so that if their harddrive dies on them all their documents are stored on a network share that they 'own'. I'm not referring to roaming profiles.

My point was that I was not going to be able to change my wife and son's habits. Therefore the easier option is using freenas as a backup location for their data rather than teaching them how to use the freenas as their 'workspace'.

My wife takes lots of photos and does lots of Photoshop, illustrator and lightroom. If I didn't back those things up, there would be hell to pay when her hard drive dies.

My freenas is flat file storage. It stores backups, houses shared files and media. I use Plex to serve that media to everyone and to the Plex clients running on raspberry pi2's scattered around the house. I don't actively change files on the server. I let it do it's thing.

Ah, I thought your redirection reference was a separate case. It's all making sense now.

 

[Mlovelace]

Just don't redirect the AppData folder it can cause issues.

 

[icsy7867]

Pretty new hear, so I am still getting my system up to speed.

Originally I had a windows 7 computer setup, with two ubuntu VM's (And no raid or parity!) running all my services which include:
FTPs Server
2x Deluge instances
Plex Media Server
Owncloud server
Openvpn Server

Now I have all this running on my freenas system via Jails, using Raidz1 (Which now I am regretting. If i didn't have to rebuilt all of those jails, I would probably convert the sucker to a RaidZ2). I also have Crashplan running with a crashplan server plan that backs up my entire raid currently (Which is great for only a few bucks a month!)

I finally got my scrubs and Smart tests scheduled and reporting via email, and my configuration backup backing up directly to my google drive bi weekly. I am quite pleased with my setup and what freenas has done for me!

I also have a VPN service that my router connects to. And by using some clever (If I do say so myself!) policy based routing using iptables, I currently have it set so certain segments of my subnet gets routed through the vpn, while others do not. So I can also change how my jails access the outside world by simply assigning it a correct corresponding IP address.

 

[Yatti420]

SSH/SFTP/Storage for specific friends/family..
Transmission
UPNP Server (Use to be now broken)
Locally for SMB/NFS..
Backups..

Stores everything I have.. The primary point.. Doesnt matter what happens to my desktops really anymore..

 

[Glorious1]

What do you guys do?

1. Hourly backups of 2 Macs via Time Machine to FreeNAS. I do snapshots of the Time Machine backups in case Time Machine goes fubar.
2. Serving movies and TV shows to another headless computer running Kodi for putting into the home theater.
3. Storing various files for access/sharing.
   
4. Transmission torrenting.
5. On another jail, I have ffmpeg installed for transcoding videos. Using high-quality settings on a HD movie it can take days, and it's nice not to tie up my laptop with that.

 

[adrianwi]

Primarily as a file server, and for backing up 3 Macs via TimeMachine, but it's great that FreeNAS lets you do so much more:

1. ownCloud for syncing flies across several devices and accessing externally
2. Plex for cataloging and streaming movies, music and photos around the house and with family and friends
3. openVPN for secure access back to my network whilst working away
4. VirtualBox for running various VMs, including a Windows 10/Glassfish/SQL spend analysis tool I can demonstrate to clients anywhere
5. Calibre for accessing my books on a Kindle from anywhere
6. unbound for (slightly) speeding up my internet experience
7. web server for playing around with stuff I very rarely have time to finish

It's been one of the best decisions I made since starting to play around with computers in the '80's :D