Recommend a NAS

How so? I just recommended it, did I miss something?

And still, I do not get how adding a layer of virtualization does anything good for performance? Needing nginx would be because of Apache being slower with same workload.

Aside from being utterly irrelevant to this thread, what is this nonsense? Is this another “I don’t like the new UI, so the OS sucks”?

Hey, sorry for being off-topic but: @Jclendineng @danb35 @planet_jeroen, you are using freenas? Maybe you can help connecting FreeNAS to NethServer, I think we just need some certs but I couldn’t manage it:

It doesnt do anything good for performance, my point was that for nginx thats the only way on nethserver :smile: Instead of looking at apache, tune your performance by other means. mysql server can be tuned, start there and your file system also is very important. FreeNAS has been my nas system for a while, but the forums are terrible. IX systems sells freenas/truenas on enterprise systems, but I would not recommend. I have had so many issues, and the forums tell you to create a bug report. After bug report is filed, it sits for months and support is awful. I like BSD for nas (It is the best IMO simply because of ZFS support, ZFS is the best nas file system hands down, if you know of a better one I welcome debate :slight_smile: ), but the way freenas handles the base bsd system is not good. I have a long list of reasons why I want to migrate away. Anyways I was looking at NAS4FREE (https://www.nas4free.org/) looks awesome. BSD, so I can use jails, its a lot more of a nas distro and less of a gateway/nas/do it all type of thing that freenas TRIES to be. I installed in a vm and am playing with it but it looks awesome. Jails will be much easier to manage, I can use command line and not worry about freenas messing up something. My latest issue is that fdatasync is a call related to mysql and freenas broke it in the last couple updates. No one even mentioned it. So all my databases failed to work. That was it, I started looking into alternatives. The only issue I can see with nas4free is weather I can migrate my ZFS pools over (I think I can). Sorry, long answer.

Oh yea!! Second reason Im ditching freenas…This issue!!! Its a known issue, no they are not fixing it anytime soon, and its super annoying. Trust me Ive been trying to do that for over a year. I got it to connect once, then it broke and I couldn’t manage it. The issue is that it requires auth, and I read your post but in my opinion turning off auth defeats the purpose of trying to be secure :joy: Basically to work with auth you need to create a CA and cert in freenas, and import that CA into whatever gateway/samba/AD server yoiu are running. Freenas only respects self-signed certs that are signed by it, it needs to control the entire chain. I wish I could use my nethserver cert but I can’t, just another thing that freenas does that is not NAS related at all.

As one of the, IIRC, top 5 forum posters there, I’d have to disagree. But we do expect users to do their homework.

Some do, some don’t.

Ah yes, the NAS formerly known as FreeNAS.

How does FreeNAS try to be a gateway? Or a do-it-all type of thing? It’s a NAS. It exposes jails (and now VMs) to the user, so the user can add tons of other stuff (just as they can with NAS4Free).

I’ve seen a thread or two about that; it’s far from clear that it’s a FreeNAS issue vs. a FreeBSD issue.

When you have 9.x, corral, 11.x etc, all with different bugs and quirks, with not a lot of documentation, I feel I could not recommend IX products. I know many users with similar experience. I love BSD, there are some of us that feel that freenas has gotten to large, which is why the corral fiasco was able to happen. Ive set up probably hundreds of freenas instances, ive done my homework. I just want the ability to freebsd-update fetch 11.x.x and update jails as I see fit. Nas4free seems to allow for a more complete jail system. Also for a new user, sure they can do homework, but you have 2 GUI’s, multiple stable channels (9, 11) a whole lot of options, I feel like its an advanced solution, trying to go mainstream. So Id also say that plugins are a bit weird, they are hardly ever updated (security risk) and it makes more sense to use jails. For a NAS, simple is always better for the end user who may not know what ZFS is but just wants a backup system. Just all my opinion as a long time freenas enthusiast :wink:

Edit: My apologies, I do not mean to offend, just my opinion, I love discussing this because there are 2 sides to everything.

Edit 2: I did look into unRaid a while back but I did not need something like that, though you could run docker and use that for “jails”. Nas4free does storage really well, I mean its a fork of freenas. I just think freenas has gotten to bloated for the development, which is why its a bit of a mess. Everyone knows that you do not use even a stable version of freenas until it has been out a while and had the “bugs” fixed. And since all I need in a nas is, well, a nas, nas4free might suit me better. So just an opinion supported by most of the people Ive discussed it with.

I really enjoy your discussion, I am searching for a nice NAS solution and both products seem to have it’s advantages, maybe this is worth an own thread…

Maybe this describes it in a diplomatic way:

FreeNAS - Comprehensive solution that’ll appeal to enterprise users.
NAS4Free - If FreeNAS doesn’t work for you, this just might.

Source:
https://www.linuxvoice.com/group-test-nas-distros/

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I like that diplomatic way :smiley: Both have pros and cons, I want to try nas4free and see if I can get some decent uptime.

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Thanks for confirming that. I got crazy when trying to join it to Nethserver. If I remember correctly I also tried FreeNAS as CA and imported the cert to NS but it didn’t work so I gave up but maybe I was missing something.

I know, we rock a z20 and 2 freenas units build by them. I would recommend both their service and products. But yeah, you need to know what you are doing if you want good performance. I don’t mind that requirement in server installations.

Also, why would I want my NAS to run jails ? Or do anything else besides store data reliably ? It’s a a NAS…?!

What do you mean here, use nethserver ad users on your nas ? I have the nas as storage next to proxmox. Not sure if I even bothered to get ad working… I’ll check and report back

It really depends on how you use a nas I think. You seem to use it more low level (which doesn’t mean bad) just providing a lun or something like that. The “higher level logic” is done by Proxmox or some VM. Others use it for having their smb shares and rights on it. For that approach it makes sense to have the NAS joined to the AD. NetApp storages for instance also provide the AD member feature.
I just wanted to close this FreeNAS thread and hoped that some experienced FreeNAS users can help. FreeNAS wants correct certs when joining and I was not able to manage it. Disabling TLS works but it’s not the best solution as regards security.

Thank you very much.

I think you are correct: to me, a NAS is a box with disks, and only a resource to my virtual environment. No user will ever have direct access to it unless it is an IT admin with a specific configuration task. I sleep better that way :stuck_out_tongue:

I have been looking at the features that True/Free nas offer aside from being a NAS an have been wondering why someone would ever want to use a NAS for that, and not a virtual machine on it, if only for security reasons.

I just checked; I never even bothered to tie the AD into the NAS, or failed as well when setting up the certificates. There is a partial config there and it has TLS off. Crap … now I need to solve this to sleep again :frowning:

Edit: seems straight forward enough, but indeed requires valid certs, not self signed ones. To get AD running with proper certs, you could follow my example and add the FQDN for the samba container (nsdc-server.domain.tld) to the let’s encrypt cert for the Netserver host running the samba container. Then copy the letsencrypt cert to the container, replacing the self-signed one.

This works afaik and checked. Havent tried to add a True- of FreeNAS yet, will investigate monday … have some testing to do now :slight_smile:

Use case. Downloading torrents and .nzbs isn’t directly relevant to a NAS, but the NAS is where the stuff would be stored anyway, so why not do it there? Playing media has nothing to do at all with a NAS, but the NAS is where the media is stored, so running that on the NAS as well can make sense. Of the ~ 30 TB stored on my home NAS, video accounts for most of it. Or a backup server? Makes a lot of sense to run that on the NAS, since that’s where the backups would be stored. Obviously it doesn’t have to be this way, but there is some logic to it.

Separate from that, as @mrmarkuz notes, if you’re using the NAS for file storage, which is entirely in the scope of what a NAS might reasonably be used for, being able to tie it in to your network-wide authentication mechanism would be helpful (if not essential). I haven’t bothered so far; I have four users on my home network, so managing credentials isn’t much of an issue.

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I can see how for home users, a NAS could be used that way. I have actually even seen companies do it like that. If your use is semi-personal or very small business, you can get away with this. If you have 20 or more users abusing the CPU and memory of the NAS like that, your primary reason to have it will suffer and access times will rise.

I would probably agree that FreeNAS is not the best choice if you are looking to get a NAS running as a home user. Most of it’s features are completely useless is that scenario and your average Synology will do just fine then … but meh … that’s more a all-in-one sollution than a NAS. If FreeNAS is attempting to be attractive to home use and these kind of uses, I would have to agree it is lacking as it requires way to much in-depth knowledge for an average user.

From my perspective, I only care about IOPS :slight_smile:

Hello here,

When I look for a NAS
https://www.distrowatch.com/search.php?ostype=All&category=NAS&origin=All&basedon=All&notbasedon=None&desktop=All&architecture=All&package=All&rolling=All&isosize=All&netinstall=All&language=All&defaultinit=All&status=Active#simple

I’m looking in general, what to do with what king of hardware.

The hardware will determine what type of OS ( an exemple, with a Microserver Gen8, I can be preferable to avoid a Debian base NAS, for a noisy ventilation problem)

So basically there three choice: BSD based, CentOS based or Debian Based.

After, the technology, someone will prefer ZFS, other people will prefer other filesystem.

After there the possibility to add software, like Owncloud, like Plex…

So I don’t really understand what is this discussion for? Or I misunderstood something?

@Jclendineng doesn’t like FreeNAS anymore and @planet_jeroen and @danb35 are satisfied FreeNAS users so a discussion started that I liked because I am searching for a NAS solution, but there are several approaches from “a NAS is just a storage provider” to “a NAS has to be AD member and bittorent client and a webserver etc”.

You have a pragmatic point of view saying “What do I want? What do I need?” and splitting it to hardware and OS which I also like. And you are right, there is not one perfect NAS solution, so it’s hard to discuss but maybe just share some experiences and opinions.

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10 berichten zijn gesplitst naar een nieuw topic: ZFS and other FS’s as Filesystem

There is a difference between production ready and bleeding edge. And afaik, btrfs is not yet there. I am no expert at all, but haven’t heard of a single production environment adopting it.

Is this changing and are we at the turning point where it is ready for production ?