FreeNAS vs. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

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

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is very good at simple server and desktop workloads if much isn't expected out of the functionality provided out of the box, but relying just purely on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) does not provide enough for broader use. It's common to rely on EPEL for this, but Red Hat doesn't offer support for EPEL.

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

• Virtualization, like the operating system level task. I see this product is very good and it blends very well with the middleware components like all the JBoss and other things. And other than that, either you install it or a virtual machine or physical servers, it works seamlessly anywhere. And if you want to go further, like Red Hat OpenShift or those things also work very nice with it.

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

• Price. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be cheaper for us to use. We pay a lot for these software packages.
• Perpetual licensing. Buy it and forget it would be great, with support as an option. this would be a great option for products that can ship with the OS and will see little internet use.

Incentivized

We find RHEL to be a superior OS with stable operations and long life. It is also easier to use and fix then most other OS's.

Incentivized

In order to securely deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) it has to be installed without a user interface. Administrative tasks through a command line interface can be challenging. Looking up commands and testing them, documentation is often required in order to run the same commands in the future if the changes are infrequent and not practiced often by an administrator.

Incentivized

Product support and regular patches.

Incentivized

As with any OS enhanced testing will need to be done prior to application integration.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

Red Hat support has really come a long way in the last 10 years, The general support is great, and the specialized product support teams are extremely knowledgeable about their specific products. Response time is good and you never need to escalate.

Incentivized

Don't be afraid of it, its easy to install and configure for the tasks needed.

Incentivized

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

It's superior. I mean they're all Linux so it's all that code, but I find that the intangibles that you get with Red Hat, meaning the enterprise support, the lifecycle, that's what clearly makes it better than the rest of them.

Incentivized

Operational ease of use backed by support

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• RHEL provides a good base OS and additional tool sets for various deployments.
• We are able to use Satellite to manage hundreds of OS's behind our corporate firewall. No other OS provides the level that RHEL does.
• It is a known good quantity. Their support for the OS is amazing.

Incentivized