FreeNAS
ZFS is an excellent choice for a high end NAS solution. In this tutorial I walk you through building a ZFS based NAS using FreeNAS 8. You’ll learn how to create a ZFS volume and datasets within it. The article will also examine the advantages of using snapshots.
Read the full tutorial here: Building ZFS Based Network Attached Storage Using FreeNAS 8
Train Signal has published a new tutorial which guides you through an installation of FreeNAS 8 on a simple system using two hard drives for a fully functional network attached storage solution. The tutorial goes through the steps needed to boot and install FreeNAS 8 on a modest system with two hard drives. The first hard drive is a small 2GB drive to hold the FreeNAS operating system and the second a 2TB drive for serving data to the network.
The sections included are:
The latest update to the FreeBSD-based Network-Attached Storage (NAS) solution has been released. FreeNAS 8.0.3 is a mainatinace release which includes the following changes:
FreeNAS 8.0.2 has been released to fix that email subsystem which got broken for 8.0.1. It resulted in the system not being able to send mail, as well as breaking the alert system in the GUI.
Other changes since 8.0.1
FreeNAS 8.0.1 has been released and is now available to download from https://sourceforge.net/projects/freenas/files/FreeNAS-8.0.1/.
8.0.1 is an important update for all FreeNAS 8.0 users and contains the following fixes and improvements:
iXsystems are preparing to release FreeNAS 8.0.1 and have released the planned final beta. Beta 4 addresses several fairly significant bugs in Beta 3, adds OS X 10.7 compatibility and ups the minimum installation device size to 2 GB.
Changes since 8.0.1-BETA3:
FreeNAS 8 has been released. For those who don’t want to read the rest of the announcement you can download it from: https://sourceforge.net/projects/freenas/files/FreeNAS-8/
FreeNAS 8 should be installed to a USB stick or Compact Flash device. It requires a device of at least 1 GB in size. Unlike FreeNAS 0.7, the OS drive can not be used as a component for a volume, nor can it be partitioned for sharing.
The FreeNAS team and iXsystems have surprised themselves by shipping FreeNAS 8.0 RC5.
It wasn’t planned but since they fixed so many issues in RC4 it was clear that an RC5 would be beneficial.
There are two new major features in RC5:
iXsystems, the new custodian and developer of FreeNAS, has released RC3 of the FreeNAS 8.0 series and it is clear that it has been hard at work!!!
The highlights of this release include:
- A volume importer
- Better AFP and CIFS configuration
- Reworked and improved iSCSI support.
- Support for 6gbps 3Ware RAID controllers (and the command line utility tw_cli for managing them)
- HTTPS access for the GUI
Notable bug fixes include:
Since iXsystems released the first FreeNAS 8 beta in November there has been lots of activity including several betas and a release candiate. They have now released RC2 (release candiate 2) which means that the final version should be coming out soon.
The astute among you will also notice that the version number has changed. This is no longer FreeNAS 0.8 (which followed the tradition set by previous versions of FreeNAS - remember 0.69? 0.72?).
I have over fifteen years experience in systems and network configuration and support. For most of that time I have been working with Open Source Software, and believe that Open Source software provides the best solutions for business, educational and personal use.
