Is Freenas worth the trouble?

[atakacs]

Hi

I am trying to put Freenas to some use.. Here is my experience so far.

Installed latest version (both stable then 8.2 beta 3 out of despair) on a dedicated beige box - install by itself was very smooth and trouble free.

My goal is to provide NAS storage to a windows 2008 server.

I have tried to join my 2008 domain to no avail - the dialog simply vanishes with no error / warning - simply doesn't work at all. Nothing obvious in the logs either.
I have tried to publish a CIFS share but without AD integration it's pretty useless (although I can manage to access it).
I have tried to export a NFS share and mount it under Windows 2008 but there are many errors reported as soon as I try to use it in any shape of form (things like creating a folder report an "item already in use" with the actual folder appearing in the explorer after 30-45s)
I have tried to create an iSCSI targert out of my FreeNAS and although the server is actually recognized as such no Target is available from the Windows client discovery.

So after having spent a frustrating day without achieving anything useful I'd like to hear from others before I put more efforts into this project. Is Freenas worth the trouble & effort ? Can I trust it with production data in a Windows environment ?

Any feedback most welcome.

 

[louisk]

I haven't ever tried joining to a domain, or use NFS on windows, or iSCSI. I have used CIFS w/o any issues for many years, on different hardware and different versions of FreeNAS.

I would suggest that you tackle your issues one at a time in the forums. I expect you'll get reasonably quick answers to your questions and/or clarification on the proper process for doing these things.

FWIW, I do run FreeNAS in production with about 70T serving up CIFS and NFS to Windows, Linux, and ESXi and don't have any issues (been running for about 1yr now).

 

[TehTux]

IMHO:

If your company is cash strapped but needs a NAS solution and FreeNAS is able to provide the functionliaty then yes. Roll up your sleeves and get it done.

If your company can afford a proper enterprise NAS solution then for the love of all that is binary DO NOT use FreeNAS. Go speak to EMC.

 

[StephenFry]

If your company is cash strapped but needs a NAS solution

I suspect the majority of FreeNAS users are private users/geeks/hoarders/etc. Of the people I know personally who use FreeNAS, it's either for training/experimentation for their job (ESXi, virtualization) or simply, like I do myself, for storage.
Most who are really serious about their ESXi quickly move to pure FreeBSD, OpenIndiana and other OSes with ZFS.

Small businesses might also benefit from FreeNAS, although for the same (hardware-)price or less you have a 2- or 4-drive out-of-the-box solution, which is often sufficient.

 

[atakacs]

Thanks for the feedback - will definitely get dirty and insist on having the b** thing working :)

 

[BobCochran]

I use it for a personal friend and one other person, and have plans to implement it for a third party. My experience is that as long as the hardware is put together correctly (including the network) it is rock solid. I am lucky that Louis provided crucial help when needed. Thinking through what he has to say to me plus my own stubborn determination to get a FreeNAS server working made a big difference. Now I just need a tape drive for my friend.

Bob

 

[louisk]

IMHO:

If your company is cash strapped but needs a NAS solution and FreeNAS is able to provide the functionliaty then yes. Roll up your sleeves and get it done.

If your company can afford a proper enterprise NAS solution then for the love of all that is binary DO NOT use FreeNAS. Go speak to EMC.

I think you should probably define what a *proper enterprise NAS solution* is. iX offers a supported NAS that should serve any enterprise NAS environment. I think you may be confusing NAS and SAN. They are very different environments.

 

[BobCochran]

Storage Area Networks for Dummies, 2nd Edition, by Poelker and Nikitin will show you there is a vast difference betwen a SAN and an NAS.

Bob