FreeNAS

FreeNAS is an operating system that can be installed on virtually any hardware platform to share data over a network. The app is the simplest way to create a centralized and easily accessible place for your data. Use FreeNAS with ZFS to protect, store, and back up all of your data. It is used everywhere, for the home, small business, and the enterprise.

ZFS is an enterprise-ready open source file system, RAID controller, and volume manager with unprecedented flexibility and an uncompromising commitment to data integrity. It eliminates most, if not all of the shortcomings found in legacy file systems and hardware RAID devices. Once you go ZFS, you will never want to go back.

The Web Interface simplifies administrative tasks. Every aspect of a FreeNAS system can be managed from a Web Interface. SMB/CIFS (Windows File shares), NFS (Unix File shares) and AFP (Apple File Shares), FTP, iSCSI (block sharing), and more. Snapshots of the entire filesystem can be made and saved at any time. Access files as they were when the snapshot was made. Employ the Replication feature to send Snapshots over the network to another system for true offsite disaster recovery.

Features and Highlights

File Sharing
File sharing is what the app does best. Every major operating system is supported with SMB/CIFS (Windows file shares), NFS (Unix file shares), and AFP (Apple File Shares) as well as FTP, iSCSI (block sharing), WebDAV and other methods of sharing data over the network are available. iSCSI also supports VMware VAAI, Microsoft ODX, and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and 2012 R2 Clustering.

Web Interface
If Free NAS has one goal, it’s simplifying complex administrative tasks for as wide a user base as possible. Every aspect of the system can be managed from a Web User Interface. A setup Wizard further simplifies configuration at installation time or later in the setup process. Volume creation, or the setting of permissions on individual shares or performing software updates, can be done without missing a critical step or encountering a silent failure.

Data Protection
ZFS is designed for data integrity from top to bottom. RAID-Z, the software RAID that is part of ZFS, offers single parity protection like RAID 5, but without the “write hole” vulnerability thanks to the copy-on-write architecture of ZFS. The additional levels RAID-Z2 and RAID-Z3 offer double and triple parity protection, respectively. A software mirror option is also available. The Free NAS Volumes screen lists each possible parity arrangement based on the number of disks you select when creating a new volume.

Snapshots
Snapshots can be made on a one-off basis or scheduled as a cron job from the web interface. At any time, the entire filesystem can be rolled back to the most recent snapshot. Older snapshots can be cloned and accessed to recover data from that version of the filesystem. From the web interface, users can see how much space a particular snapshot is occupying on the volume and delete, clone, or roll back to individual snapshots as needed.

Replication
ZFS Snapshots are more than just local backups – they can be used to create remote backups as well. Replicating snapshots of the filesystem to a remote ZFS filesystem creates a complete duplicate there. Furthermore, additional snapshots of the same filesystem can be sent incrementally, reducing the size of each backup to the changes that were made between snapshots. In case of catastrophic damage to a local ZFS filesystem (such as disk failure in excess of parity protection or irrecoverable log device failure), any backed-up snapshot can be sent to a new ZFS filesystem, recovering all data up to that backup.

Encryption
FreeNAS is the first and only open source project to offer encryption on ZFS volumes! A full-volume encryption option is available during volume creation, providing industry-standard AES-XTS encryption which can be hardware-accelerated (when the processor has AES-NI capability).

Plugins
FreeNAS supports the core features of a NAS appliance out of the box. However, many users like to enhance their NAS appliance with third party software for media streaming, alternative protocols, or web applications.