FreeNAS vs. macOS

FreeNAS suited really well in managing our legacy systems and it handled all our network flows really well, less maintenance is required on our part. FreeNAS also gave the option to switch to TrueNAS for free as now its support is limited. The major issue that we faced was with the installation as it is really complex and required lots of time. Rest all is good and FreeNAS still works well on our systems.

Incentivized

It's generally great all round. IT will love it for the easy management and patching. Enforcing updates is straightforward. As a developer it has all the tools and software you could need, apart from windows apps development.

Incentivized

• 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

• Integrates with other apple devices seamlessly
• Information passed between those devices is encrypted end to end (understanding that apple has the keys in some cases)
• Compact design
• Aesthetically pleasing

Incentivized

• 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

• Intrusiveness of security features is sometimes detrimental.
• "Apple tax" (premium pricing).
• Integration with open source and public domain development.
• Strictly limited to Apple hardware.

Incentivized

Its simply the best operating system

Incentivized

I'm sure I'm biased. I've been using a Mac for 30+ yrs. I am significantly more productive on a Mac than on any other platform. It comes down to some personal preference and familiarity, but I just think the interface is more intuitive and streamlined

macOS tends to be very reliable, and Apple distributes updates as needed to patch known vulnerabilities or issues. It is very seldom that a macOS-based system is unavailable, and if that happens, the cloud-based storage and identity management support make it very easy to slot in a loaner machine while the user's primary machine is repaired.

Incentivized

The Apple Silicon hardware allows macOS to perform very well, with rapid response. Local processing for Apple Intelligence-related items is quite fast, and the response is impressively complete. Our experience with integrations to other enterprise systems is that the other system is usually the bottleneck in the process, rather than macOS.

Incentivized

There were some things that can be found by other users on forums and Google and some things that were not.

Incentivized

Before swapping to FreeNAS, we'd been using plan old Linux servers running Samba and NFS with ZFS storage underneath. This worked really well for our requirements at the time but required a lot of administration when new versions came along, or new users had to be added or drives needed replacing, and so on. FreeNAS did away with 95% of that work and does a much better job too.

Incentivized

macOS is much more user-friendly and designed for the novice user. Linux, while providing excellent performance, is not a system that regular non-expert users feel comfortable with out of the box. Windows is more complicated to support because it must accommodate a wide variety of manufacturers' hardware, down to motherboards. macOS has a very well-defined set of hardware to support, and it is very well integrated. It is just simpler to use and simpler to support than the alternatives.

Incentivized

macOS is very easily deployed with central MDM/DDM management systems. There are several of these available to select, depending on the amount and type of deployment needed. We use Jamf Pro to support a "zero touch" deployment model, which makes it almost as easy to deploy 100 endpoints as 10 (other than delivery and unboxing).

Incentivized

• Low-Cost Network Attached Storage
• Provides additional network storage to support client & business operations
• FreeNAS secures our data using custom encryption keys

Incentivized

• DLP and overall security on macOS is just far superior than Windows OS
• Updates are easier to push out on macOS so security has been further improved

Incentivized