FreeNAS vs. Red Hat Virtualization

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
FreeNAS
Score 6.2 out of 10
N/A
FreeNAS 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
Red Hat Virtualization (RHV)
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Red Hat Virtualization (formerly Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, broadly known as RHEV) is an enterprise level server and desktop virtualization solution. Red Hat Virtualization also contains the functionality of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktop in later editions of the platform.
$999
Per Year Per Hypervisor
Pricing
FreeNASRed Hat Virtualization
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Standard
$999.00
Per Year Per Hypervisor
Premium
$1,499.00
Per Year Per Hypervisor
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FreeNASRed Hat Virtualization (RHV)
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
Features
FreeNASRed Hat Virtualization
Server Virtualization
Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Product A and Product B
FreeNAS
-
Ratings
Red Hat Virtualization
7.7
10 Ratings
7% below category average
Virtual machine automated provisioning00 Ratings7.910 Ratings
Management console00 Ratings7.310 Ratings
Live virtual machine backup00 Ratings7.29 Ratings
Live virtual machine migration00 Ratings6.910 Ratings
Hypervisor-level security00 Ratings8.99 Ratings
Best Alternatives
FreeNASRed Hat Virtualization
Small Businesses
DiskStation
DiskStation
Score 8.8 out of 10
Oracle VM VirtualBox
Oracle VM VirtualBox
Score 9.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
Score 9.9 out of 10
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
Dell Unity XT Unified Storage
Score 9.9 out of 10
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
FreeNASRed Hat Virtualization
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(7 ratings)
6.6
(11 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
FreeNASRed Hat Virtualization
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.
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Red Hat
RHEV is well suited for organizations that need a cost-effective and flexible solution for their environment. As its vendor-independent software, easily install on any type of hardware. RHEV provides a GUI interface to manage the software, which makes the management of the software easier for the end-user. RHEV is best for non-production or less critical applications. RHEV can be easily integrated with other REDHAT software.
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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.
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Red Hat
  • RHV issues/bugs can be reported via Bugzilla to RH support. The service is great and typically responds soon.
  • Red Hat distribution integration is seamless as it is integrated into the kernel.
  • OpenStack support enables more customized VM templates and network configuration control.
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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.
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Red Hat
  • 1- RHVM API is pretty slow, especially after creating a VM it is not possible to retrieve the VM details (i.e VM's MAC Address) fast enough, where we need to place a pause in our Ansible Playbook, make the automation process slow.
  • 2- RHV is still using collected to monitor the hypervisors which is deviating from Red Hat policy for other RHEL based applications to use PCP to monitor, which is richer in features.
  • 3- It will be great if it is possible to patch the hypervisors using other tools such as satellite and not only via RHVM.
  • 4- In the past Red Hat used to present patches in the z release (i.e. 4.3.z), and features in the y release (i.e 4. y), but starting from 4.4 that is mixed together wherein the Z release you get both patches and features, that is not good because that requires a lot of time to test when we patch as it includes features as well.
  • 5- Engineering team has to be more reactive when new feature is requested.
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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.
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Red Hat
No answers on this topic
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.
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Red Hat
RHEV is an excellent product, includes more features, is less expensive, and has rock solid reliability and is backed with the best Red Hat Support in the industry. RHEV uses KVM under the hood which is used by all the big players in the industry (AWS, Rackspace, etc) to lower their overall costs and improve efficiency and profits and that's why RHEV is an excellent solution!
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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
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Red Hat
  • RHEV has provided a positive ROI as our customers are not experiencing as many outages during maintenances.
  • We have not experienced any catastrophic failures as a result of vsphere losing connection to the ntp.
  • There has been a level of stability in our environment that was not previously experienced with our previous vendor.
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