I have been using FreeNAS 8 for about 6 months, and I like it a great deal. I have it running backups and rsync from multiple OS and I can verify that the current version with updated Netatalk packages runs time machine for Lion machines without issue. I also have it sharing out an itunes library and running multiple automated snapshots. My primary attraction was OS interoperability as a backup solution. For the data that is backed up from this device I map the volume using a separate pc and burn multiple BD-Rs. <br>
<br>At first I used it with a 3ware 9650SE which will worked well, but I discovered that RAIDZ using the regular SATA II plugs on the board gave me more than enough performance. I am using a Core 2 Quad Q9550 and a SuperMicro MBD-X7SBL-LN1-O with 8Gb memory. When you use ZFS and if you read the details on FreeNAS.org you will see that you need a lot of memory even though the processor usage is fairly low. My system stays with at least 6GB allocated at all times. Thus far I have had to add/remove physical drives once, and it was fairly easy. I like the idea that I'm not dependent on a 3ware card to recover if for some reason the card fails rather than drives. Also I did put the FreeNAS OS on a microcenter 2GB thumbdrive. The beauty of this is you can completely reinstall, and reconnect to your volumes without having to touch the main disks. I've done this 3 times (due to starting out with a beta version and updating) and every time was easy.<br>
<br>FreeNAS will let you either set the card to JBOD and use all the drives in RAIDZ or you can present the whole raid volume to it and have it run on that. I use it only for data storage and FTP. You can also create a vmware datastore or iscsi target, or simply map a volume to a linux box, but I did not use these features.<br>
<br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<br>
<br>
------------------------------<br>
<br>
Message: 3<br>
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2012 10:40:19 -0800<br>
From: Yaverot <<a href="mailto:Yaverot@computermail.net">Yaverot@computermail.net</a>><br>
Subject: Re: [clue] File Server - URAID or FREENAS<br>
To: "Tom Martin" <<a href="mailto:toms_jeep@yahoo.com">toms_jeep@yahoo.com</a>>, "CLUE's mailing list"<br>
<<a href="mailto:clue@cluedenver.org">clue@cluedenver.org</a>><br>
Message-ID: <<a href="mailto:20120301104019.A88039E6@m0005297.ppops.net">20120301104019.A88039E6@m0005297.ppops.net</a>><br>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"<br>
<br>
<br>
--- <a href="mailto:toms_jeep@yahoo.com">toms_jeep@yahoo.com</a> wrote:<br>
<br>
I am looking to set up a file server at home, I have narrowed my search down to UNRAID or FREENAS. I have tryed UNRAID but it did not work with the 3WARE raid card that is installed in the server.<br>
Server Details;<br>
Intel MB- Xeon quad core, 3WARE 12 port card, 12 500GB SATA drives currently set at Raid 50. I would like to set one up with UNRAID and one with FREENAS but did not want to spend the $$$ on a new Raid card if it would not be worth it.<br>
<br>
--- yaverot replies:<br>
In trying to figure out which questions to ask you, I'm trying to figure out which issues you have. So my questions will be more disjointed than normal.<br>
<br>
unRAID (<a href="http://lime-technology.com" target="_blank">lime-technology.com</a>) or FreeNAS -> What features attracted you to these options, which options have you ruled out?<br>
<br>
didn't work with current RAID card -> Does the card provide _any_ drives to the OS? (Driver issue) Is it set as JBOD for the OS to do RAIDing (each drive seen separately), or is it hardware/firmware RAID (OS sees one drive that is actually all disks)? Which do you want?<br>
<br>
set up one with ... and one with -> Do you have multiple servers, or intend multiple servers, or am I misinterpreting this?<br>
<br>
Is/will it only be a file server, or will it be doing other things (bittorrent, email)?<br>
How much RAM does/will it have?<br>
<br>
And a question I'm failing myself: Once consolidated to the main server, how will you be backing that up? (Actually I do have an answer with how, I don't have a target system or a physical where for it.)<br>
<br>
<br>
------------------------------<br>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
clue mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:clue@cluedenver.org">clue@cluedenver.org</a><br>
<a href="http://cluedenver.org/mailman/listinfo/clue" target="_blank">http://cluedenver.org/mailman/listinfo/clue</a><br>
<br>
End of clue Digest, Vol 14, Issue 5<br>
***********************************<br>
</blockquote></div><br>