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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    FreeNAS

    Score5.4 out of 10
    N/AFreeNAS is an open source operating system that allows nearly any hardware serve as a network-attached storage device. It was developed by iXsystems.N/A

    Microsoft IIS

    Score7.4 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft IIS is an application server and infrastructure.N/A
    Pricing
    FreeNASMicrosoft IIS
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    FreeNASMicrosoft IIS
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    FreeNASMicrosoft IIS
    Considered Both Products
    iXsystems
    No answer on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    92%
    Would buy again
    11 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    10 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    12 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    8 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    91%
    Implementation went as expected
    10 Answers
    Features
    FreeNASMicrosoft IIS
    Application Servers
    Comparison of Application Servers features of FreeNAS and Microsoft IIS
    Feature
    FreeNAS
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft IIS
    8.2
    29 Ratings
    3% above category average
    IDE support00 Ratings8.020 Ratings
    Security management00 Ratings8.029 Ratings
    Administration and management00 Ratings7.029 Ratings
    Application server performance00 Ratings9.029 Ratings
    Installation00 Ratings10.029 Ratings
    Open-source standards compliance00 Ratings7.018 Ratings
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    FreeNASMicrosoft IIS
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    User Ratings
    FreeNASMicrosoft IIS
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (7 ratings)
    6.0
    (29 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.0
    (10 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.8
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.4
    (6 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (2 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    FreeNASMicrosoft IIS
    Likelihood to Recommend
    iXsystems
    FreeNAS is well suited for most storage serving scenarios, whether it be for an office file server, backup destinations, data replication across the internet, or as backend storage for virtual machines. It can serve various types of clients via a plethora of standard protocols and can easily integrate with existing infrastructure using LDAP authentication and so on. It's pretty simple to use (it helps to have at least a basic understanding of the underlying technologies) and almost maintenance-free. One scenario that springs to mind that it may not be appropriate for (yet) is as S3 storage. However, S3 functionality was added in a recent release and may have improved greatly since then. I'm sure it will eventually work very well for this.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    Publishing applications or websites is easy with Microsoft IIS. You don't need external software or complicated tutorials involving command lines and editing configuration files. On other hand, sometimes the troubleshooter needs a high knowledge of Windows Server, Registry, and tools to debug the application. If you need to host non-Microsoft technology as PHP pages or have a low budget, I recommend IIS equivalent software as Apache.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    iXsystems
    • The FreeNAS web interface is modern looking. It makes tasks like provisioning drives into raid volumes easy.
    • The ZFS raid option allows you to add in an SSD as a cache drive to increase performance.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    • A big advantage that we use all the time is reviewing the logs that automatically get generated in IIS. It has helped us troubleshoot various problems in our applications over the years.
    • IIS integrates really well with Visual Studio and TFS. We are able to quickly deploy new applications and changes to applications when requested by the business.
    • IIS has proven that it is easy to configure and maintain with minimal effort.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    iXsystems
    • Not good for beginners as it requires deep understanding of networking and storage.
    • Most of the good and required features are not available in free version.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Angular/node apps don't run on IIS, or at least we never figured out how. Rather we ended up using nginx.
    • There are still occasional memory leaks - check your recycle settings!
    • If you have very heavy usage for web APIs, IIS requires regular restarts for reasons unknown.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    iXsystems
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    We have no intention to replace all applications running on top of the IIS platform. Not all applications support other platforms and not all support staff are skilled in Linux/Apache platform support. Whereas IIS may not be the best performing or most secure web platform available, for the aforementioned reasons, it is impossible not to continue use of this product.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    iXsystems
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    As I've mentioned earlier, Microsoft IIS is very simple and easy to use. The user interface is a little bit overloaded with a huge number of different options, but once you have a little clue of what you are doing and what you need - no issues at all.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    iXsystems
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    ARR (application request routing) in Microsoft IIS Server enables the web-admins to increase the web app reliability and availability through the rule based routing and load balancing of HTTP requests which in turn provides highly available server. IIS 7.0 Manager also provides kernel as well as user mode caching for faster performance and in case if the server fails, the IIS server has good amount of details logged in its log files which help understand and debug the cause quickly. Load balancing facilitates IIS server to fight against availability issues.
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    iXsystems
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    In my experience, I have never had significant issues with IIS performance. Sometimes I've experienced issues with loading time, but it is mostly related to the web site code. However Amazon, Microsoft and Google providing free cloud services with very limited resources, and in that scenario, "heavy" websites on IIS could be the issue. In other situations - performance is good.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    iXsystems
    There were some things that can be found by other users on forums and Google and some things that were not.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    As mentioned earlier there is so much documentation or guides or stack overflow questions out there that someone will have faced the same or very similar scenario to what you are going through that you will almost certainly find a solution to what you are after.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    iXsystems
    FreeNAS effectively uses all resources really well and it is highly recommended for in premises NAS. It has unlimited ROI as it is really free and open-source. The only payment we need to pay is when we need any support from those guys. FreeNAS helps us to effectively do our work with the legacy systems as it manages all the components really well. FreeNAS although rebranded to TrueNAS will still be there until our legacy systems run.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    Apache is java. Java is unnecessary complex. No developer wants to invest in learning all the hundreds of text based configuration files to get something done. Also, apache gives you the most evil and un-usable user interface possible. [Microsoft] IIS makes [life] after development easy, which is already complex enough to be bothered by something as mundane as exposing your work over the internet.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    iXsystems
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    Microsoft IIS Server is scalable if the underlying server configuration is done correctly. Use x64 edition v/s 32bit and using 32bit mode application pools are some of the tweaks to be done to make the IIS server scalable. There are too many small configurations need to be carried out in order to make a highly scalable IIS server hence not giving full score in this area.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    iXsystems
    • Low-Cost Network Attached Storage
    • Provides additional network storage to support client & business operations
    • FreeNAS secures our data using custom encryption keys
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Allowing us to internally host our monitoring websites allows quick access to data that can be quite hidden, saving developer time.
    • It was inexpensive compared to more bulky solutions saving upfront cost.
    • It’s easy to install and enable allowing more developer savings.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots