What do YOU like about FreeNAS?

[ben]

Hey FreeNAS community! We want to hear about what you like about FreeNAS, so we can tell visitors on our site what FreeNAS can do for them. To sweeten the deal, if you're one of the first five submissions we select to spotlight, we'll send you this FreeNAS prize bag, including a t-shirt! To let us know what you think, just email freenas-reviews@ixsystems.com with your comment and name. We may use anything you send to that address, but only the first five selections will receive a prize bag!

 

[tingo]

I like the obvious things: it is easy to set up, troublefree in operation, and if something goes bad, I know how to fix it, or where to ask.
Note: I use my FreeNAS boxes as NAS storage only, I haven't used any other functionality (yet).

 

[pirateghost]

I find FreeNAS easy to implement, easy to manage with its beautiful web interface, and an overall feature-set that cannot be beat by an off-the-shelf unit. Ease of expansion in DIY projects is a must and I don't know if I have seen the limit to what FreeNAS can provide thus far. The team has provided extensive documentation and any questions beyond the documentation have probably already been answered by the community in the forums. ZFS is integral and you are hard-pressed to find another product that can perform like FreeNAS given its featureset. I have tried all the options available out there for a home-built NAS device and to me, FreeNAS is the most polished and easy to use system available. It will take a lot to get me to look at anything else ever again.

 

[R.G.]

My path to FreeNAS was set up in that I was looking for a file server technology that would be less prone to data corruption. Some research led me to ZFS. That in turn led me to FreeNAS, after a few false starts.

I knew from my reading that ZFS was good for my purposes, but this was massively reinforced by an infant mortality disk failure in the middle one of my first large transfers to the new FreeNAS system. The system off-lined the failing drive, sent me a notice, and never missed a beat; the file transfer continued with no errors.

Sure, it's supposed to work that way, but this chance event underscored how well FreeNAS did what I wanted: taking care of my data. I've worked in the computer industry for 35 years, and seen the growing pains of both large and small systems and servers. Quiet, smooth handling of failures is impressive.

 

[nor_cal]

I am very impressed by jails. You can extend your FreeNAS system and tinker with additional features while keeping your main system clean.

 

[norskman]

+ves:
Features
It works
Its sort of homebrew - but professional as well
Jail

-ve's:
Sharing is not at all clear cut. needs more transparency
More software to work inside jails

 

[Sir.Robin]

It gives me safe, stable and feature rich "enterprise class" storage at home for lesser money and lets me replicate to second site across internet. Beat that! :)

 

[tbarnett]

Easy. Volume aggregation - I can add all my multi-sized old drives into a single volume.