Is freenas for me?

[stewpot]

I have a single PC, with plenty of storage over 4 drives (5.5TB).

I want to be able to back up the really important stuff (photos, docs etc) and some way of making these files accessible anywhere (most likely via Android phone, iPad, other PC) and to dump stuff from phone and iPad to 'cloud' storage. I am also keen to see what else it can offer - media streaming etc. I have a Rasperry Pi running Kodi, and wondered if this could be replaced/incorporated.

For this, I started to look into solutions and freenas kept coming up - but I was also aware of the off the shelf boxes that you can plug and play.

I am not afraid of having a go at most things techy, and thought Id give freenas a go.

Now, I know about the recommended hardware etc, but I wanted to dip my toes in without spending a fortune first and see if it would really do what I want.

I picked up a box off eBay, about 4 years old, for what I thought was a good price, if only for the included 4 x 3TB hard drives. It was listed as running freenas.

It arrived, with nothing included, so I dug out an old power lead and an Ethernet cable and connected it to my monitor, kb and mouse and powered up. It ran through a whole load of commands and eventually spat out an IP address. I reconnected my monitor to my PC and typed the IP into a browser - and up popped the GUI......but asking for username and password! After a bit of Googling, I got past that and was in to the GUI.....but noticed the red alert top right......something about one of the drives. After some reading, I decided that this was probably because freenas was running off one of the drives....no CD drive included and there was no USB stick in.

I spent the next couple of days trying to install freenas via a USB.....eventually got 9.3 STABLE to work.....and the red alert disappeared. So, I started by going through the wizard and re-configuring the drives, adding a user and a group. I then tried to set up a Windows share, which appears to have worked.....but not quite. While I can see the share in windows, when I try and put something in it, I get destination access folder denied.

I have read loads of different ways of setting up a share, but none seem to work.......some appear to say that the user needs to match the Windows user you log in to Windows with, others don't mention that. I have no idea if this needs to be synchronised with Active Directory...or if this is a red herring.

I also set up a WebDAV share to try and access the share with my Android phone, but don't appear to be able to access it using any apps on my phone. The main issue I see here is that the guides I have read appear to imply that you create a WebDAV dataset to access via Android....but I want a volume that can be accessed anywhere....by Windows, Android, Apple....not separate storage for separate device.

If I can figure out how to get the basic storage and sharing working, I can then move on to the full potential of freenas, but if I cant get the basics working, I might as well get an off the shelf device!

Right, this is where I'm probably going to get trolled....my hardware. It is a 2011 Armari 4TE (http://armari.com/custom.asp?SysID=1195), which has had freenas installed by the previous owner who said it worked fine. It is definitely not up to the standards of the required hardware as stated by freenas.......it has a low end mini-ITX mobo (Tyan s3115gm2b) with onboard Intel Atom CPU and 2GB of RAM limit.

However, I don't think that the hardware is causing the issues in what I am trying to do, and if I can get it to work, I am more than willing to invest in a suitable mobo and RAM.

So, my questions are....

1. Does freenas suit my requirements?
2. Is it really that hard to configure storage that can be configured as 'cloud' type storage that can be accessed and written to by any number of different device types. Understand that to answer this question, I will probs have to give a load more detail as to what I have already done and what issues I am encountering.

Cheers (in advance and anticipation of any help).

 

[jkh]

This one's going to be interesting to answer. :)

It's hard to say whether FreeNAS is "for you" without knowing more about how much time and energy you're willing to invest in it. Yeah, others are going to point out that 2GB of memory is positively anemic and you're going to have a hard time keeping everything working reliably in such a small system footprint (the GUI's web infrastructure, Python middleware and system services account for a fair bit of that memory all on their own) but before you rush out to upgrade your motherboard and memory, you have to ask yourself at least two more fundamental questions first:

1. How much am I prepared to learn about file storage, network file system protocols, and support for all of the various devices I want to use?
2. Am I prepared to support myself without a lot of help?

I don't mean to scare you off right out of the gate, but if the answers are "not much" and "no", respectively, then save your money and try to figure something else out, preferably with a canned solution you can buy at the local compu-hut.

If the answers are "lots!" and "sure!" on the other hand, then the first thing I would do, if I were you, is make sure you get a pool configured properly (RAIDZ1 is probably just fine for you and your 4 drives) and then install the OwnCloud plugin and hand it all of your pool storage (yeah, you're going to have to learn how to do storage management for plugins - see the built-in documentation). Now you can install the various mobile clients on your various devices and use OwnCloud for all your storage management needs.

Good luck!

 

[Jailer]

There is no way you are going to get that hardware to work with FreeNAS in any acceptable manner.

 

[stewpot]

Thanks jkh.

The easy answer is......"lots" and "sure".......I think I've done fairly good so far getting a 2nd hand box up and running and presenting a share to my networked PC.

I know all about the hardware issues......and that's something I'm willing to address.....but not until I'm sure that freenas is going to do what I want.

OwnCloud is something I've heard nothing about.....so I'll do some reading on that.

 

[stewpot]

There is no way you are going to get that hardware to work with FreeNAS in any acceptable manner.

In what way do you mean "There is no way you are going to get that hardware to work with FreeNAS in any acceptable manner"......because it does appear to be working........I just cant get it to do what I want.

I can understand if the hardware is going to make it slow, or keep crashing, but that is not the case.

I'm trying to find out if it will do what I want....then I'll spend the money on the hardware.

 

[Jailer]

I would use it as a learning tool to set up and learn FreeNAS with but would NEVER trust any important data with it. It's FAR below the minimum spec for what is needed for safe data storage and the performance will be lousy with such a weak CPU and limited memory for what you intend to use it for.

 

[BigDave]

@stewpot
Work on setting up shares and permissions, if you can do that, everything else will come with time
and study. Will FreeNAS do what you want, YES it will. However. messin' around with jails and
plug-ins will be an exercise in futility with only 2GB of RAM.

 

[stewpot]

That's exactly what I'm trying to do......learn with it and then spend the money when I know if it'll do what I want

So, from what I said that I want to do, do you think it's suitable or more than what I need?

 

[stewpot]

BigDave & jailer.......thanks.....

The key answer appears to be.....Yes, freenas will do what I want, but get your stupid hardware sorted out

So, Any ideas why I'm getting the "Destination Folder Access Denied" when trying to put anything into the share from my Windows PC???

I know I've given very little detail about my setup......let me know what you need to know and I'll tell you.

I basically followed the guides on the freenas.org site.....set up my volume.....created a user and group....setup a dataset...set up a windows share and then tried to use it.

 

[jkh]

I know all about the hardware issues......and that's something I'm willing to address.....but not until I'm sure that freenas is going to do what I want.

OwnCloud is something I've heard nothing about.....so I'll do some reading on that.

OK, so ignore the haters for now and just give it a try. By being very careful and selective about what you do, it's possible to get FreeNAS up and running in just 2GB of memory, and since you're doing a "try before you buy" exercise who cares if it's fast or 100% robust anyway - do your POC first and then invest in the HW upgrades.

 

[jkh]

Maybe you should watch the Samba permissions video that just popped up: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-to-freenas-and-samba-cifs-permissions-video.41210/
:)

 

[BigDave]

So, from what I said that I want to do, do you think it's suitable or more than what I need?

100% suitable, it puts the off the shelf boxes to shame. It will do more as well.
The file system is robust and secure, and the jail system will allow many ways to share and organize media files.

 

[stewpot]

Maybe you should watch the Samba permissions video that just popped up: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-to-freenas-and-samba-cifs-permissions-video.41210/
:)

Big thanks to jkh........watched the video and have resolved my permissions problem.

 

[Chris Dawalt]

I created my FreeNAS system from sub-par hardware as a backup storage system around two years ago, and it performs flawlessly. But I keep all my data on the FreeNAS duplicated on a separate set of hard drives. You may catch some flak on this forum for your hardware (been there, done that), but they all mean well and don't want to see you lose your data.

 

[Bhoot]

I really think what you are looking for is backup and not accessing data on the fly or multiple users accessing random bits of data. You also say you have already bought the hardware.
A few things to consider.

• Freenas is open source so you might not get get any "professional" help. You will be asking things on forums and mostly everyone tries to help. They can't assure everything will be OK everytime. Also when you start messing freenas hte warnings and checks provided are really very small. You might think you are doing the right thing till you realize your entire data is gone.
• 2gb ram is less as pointed out by someone. I am no expert but when the documents say minimum 8gb I would think 16gb. Just my thought. It could be true the seller was running freenas on it. probably a very very old version or maybe he "tried" to run freenas on it. It failed to do what he wanted it to do and decided to sell it. Also when you buy an assembled machine you should also find out which screws are installed, lest you want to end up in a situation that you are in right now. Ask the sellet 100 question and for photo, more photos and more photos. Nobody is going to sell you anything for any less than its worth. A seller always assumes the stuff is worth more than what it really is
  
• ECC ram is a must. If you dont have ECC onboard or if your board doesn't support it. People might suggest otherwise but again I am a believer of the "experts"
• I haven't setup webdav for my android phone but I use an pp called "ES File explorer". It gives you the ability to access network locations and doesn't need root permissions on the phone/tablet. Once I got that running I never bothered with webday.

I am sorry if I appeared very negative on the post above but I have realized one thing. It's better I am bad to you than your data ditching you. Cheers :)