Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review Linux Mint is a great, stable product when you need an OS and software to "just work". I use it for file servers, docker, scripting, air-gapped backups, email notifications and more. Simple, inexpensive and stable. That's how software should be, and that's what Mint delivers on. The main thing holding Mint and other Linux distros back is the corporate walls that have been built shutting everything out except Microsoft. If companies would start supporting Linux better with their hardware and software we could and would ditch Microsoft in a heartbeat. but, alas, Microsoft has a stranglehold on businesses.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review terminal file management OS and software updates Read full review Cons 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. Read full review some more User Interfaces - like for services Read full review Support Rating There were some things that can be found by other users on forums and Google and some things that were not.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review Pure
Debian OS , freshly installed, is missing some Quality Of Life tools that need to be installed to make it usable.
Ubuntu has not a great user interface for work purpose, seems more like a toy than an OS. Both Mint and
Ubuntu are derived from Debian, so same great package manager, but for work purpose I think Mint is a great OS.
Read full review Return on Investment Low-Cost Network Attached Storage Provides additional network storage to support client & business operations FreeNAS secures our data using custom encryption keys Read full review It has saved tens of thousands of dollars just for being our air-gapped backup solution. other software would have been very expensive, and harder to manage Providing simple, easy to use applications (docker, for example) that can quickly, easily, and inexpensively deployed saves many, many hours and dollars Read full review ScreenShots