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 Oracle Solaris is great due to the fact that it actually is meant for high-end servers. Supports a wide range of hardware. The Stability of the solution is great. The documentation does not support some solutions, and there are no other options. Most of the product is still command-line, despite the fact that they've got a graphical user interface in some areas. For some reason, core administration is still done via command-line.
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 Live update for patching in conjunction with the package management functions. This ability to rollback is very convenient. dTrace Built in compliance testing. 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 Takes time to learn. Integration into Microsoft's Active Directory. Read full review Usability You need to take the time to learn it. It is a massive product.
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 The support teams are well trained and responsive. Patches are rolled out regularly and are easy to deploy and backout.
Read full review Implementation Rating Stress testing and timing is key. You need test systems that mirror the live environments. User testing must be reflected in peak loads.
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 Oracle Solaris is Scalable, have a good patching capability and secure by default. You want to have something that's up and running and stable, something that's not going to crash. But if we do have an issue, we can get somebody for technical support who can help us work through the problems.
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 just runs like a top, this mean TCO is low We've not had issues with Solaris running on Sparc. Reliability is above reproach. Read full review ScreenShots