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FreeNAS

FreeNAS

Overview

What is FreeNAS?

FreeNAS is an open source operating system that allows nearly any hardware serve as a network-attached storage device. It was developed by iXsystems.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

TrueNAS, formerly known as FreeNAS, has been widely adopted by organizations to support their legacy systems within their on-premises …
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Pricing

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What is FreeNAS?

FreeNAS is an open source operating system that allows nearly any hardware serve as a network-attached storage device. It was developed by iXsystems.

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  • No setup fee

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  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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What is Wasabi Object Storage?

Wasabi Technologies headquartered in Boston offers "hot cloud storage," object storage available pay-as-you-go as well as reserved capacity storage which they describe as tier free, and easily manageable. Additionally, Wasabi offers a Cloud NAS option, designed to be "hands free" and require…

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Product Demos

9 demo backup storage FreeNAS

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Demo Đồ Án Linux - FreeNAS

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10 demo extend storage FreeNAS

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8 Demo NextCloud cek sinkronasi penyimpanan data di FreeNAS

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FreeNAS Demo: Double Failure 2xRAID-Z1

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USBKill for Freenas Demo

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Product Details

FreeNAS Technical Details

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Mobile ApplicationNo
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(24)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

TrueNAS, formerly known as FreeNAS, has been widely adopted by organizations to support their legacy systems within their on-premises networks. Users have praised the product for offering all the functionalities of FreeBSD and seamlessly operating on their legacy systems with minimal tolerance. The porting process from FreeNAS to TrueNAS is straightforward, providing users with a significant advantage.

One of the primary use cases for TrueNAS Core is its role as a file server, supporting SMB/WebDAV protocols, and block storage for hypervisors using iSCSI. This allows organizations to efficiently manage and share files across their network while providing reliable block storage for virtualization environments. Additionally, FreeNAS is commonly used as a central depot, supporting services like UrBackup and NextCloud, enabling organizations to securely store and access important data.

The stability, reliability, and speed of ZFS running over FreeBSD have garnered praise from users. This makes TrueNAS an ideal solution for storing archived backups and operating as an office file server within organizations. The support for protocols like SMB, NFS, and iSCSI further enhances its versatility and usability.

Furthermore, FreeNAS has found popularity in testing departments as it provides a centralized location for up-to-date files and software. Its open-source nature based on FreeBSD enables any machine to be transformed into a NAS, making it accessible for departments looking to expand their network storage capabilities for employees.

Overall, TrueNAS Core offers organizations a cost-effective and rock-solid storage solution that seamlessly integrates with their existing infrastructure. Whether it's supporting legacy systems or serving as a centralized file server or test environment, TrueNAS proves to be a reliable choice for managing data and facilitating collaboration within networks.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-5 of 5)
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Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our organisation uses FreeNAS (now known as TrueNAS CORE) in a number of ways. We have an instance that operates as an office file server, an instance that provides network storage to our VMs, and another instance that we use for storing archived backups. In all three scenarios, FreeNAS works flawlessly, providing rock-solid storage using ZFS along with SMB, NFS, and iSCSI protocol support for all our networked devices. Also, it does all of this for free!

We've used this for many years, having previously put together our own file servers based on Linux and FreeBSD that worked well but required a lot of admin. The switch to FreeNAS was painless, ultra-reliable, and almost maintenance-free. No complaints here!
  • ZFS storage for top-class data integrity.
  • Wide range of protocol support for networked devices to connect with.
  • Excellent web interface for managing storage, users and general administration.
  • 2 factor authentication for increased security.
  • Driver support is generally very good but could be improved for some more 'exotic' network and storage interfaces (currently limited by what FreeBSD supports, which is slightly more restrictive than Linux).
  • I'd like to see Arm CPU support in the future. This isn't much of an issue at the moment because today's typical Arm devices do not support lots of memory, storage, etc. However, the tide is turning, and Arm devices are only going to increase in popularity, availability, and performance over the coming years.
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.
  • Open-source.
  • Support for a wide range of network protocols.
  • ZFS storage for top-class data integrity.
  • Requires very little maintenance, allowing us to focus resources on other areas of the business.
  • Being free of charge (for TrueNAS CORE versions), it saves us money and allows us to scale up to multiple machines without cost concerns.
  • The ZFS storage provides us with peace of mind that our data is safe, which in turn, keeps our customers happy.
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.
eldhose k shibu | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our company uses FreeNAS to support our legacy systems, which were implemented long before, although FreeNAS is now officially TrueNAS, We still use FreeNAS in our on-premises system (legacy). Since it is based on BSD it has all the functionalities that FreeBSD has to offer. The performance capability of FreeNAS is really amazing it still continues to operate on our legacy systems with minimum tolerance. Also since the porting of FreeNAS to TrueNAS is really easy, it also gave us an advantage for us.
  • Highly Flexible.
  • Simplified UI and ease of usage in volumes.
  • Efficient storage management.
  • Secure and reliable in legacy systems.
  • Initial installation is a hassle.
  • Really difficult in switching between RAID storages.
  • Support for free version is very limited.
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.
  • Backing up of data.
  • Secure storage of files.
  • Effective utilization of network resources.
  • As it is free and open-source, we need not spend much except when we require support.
  • Really works well still, so we have infinite ROI.
  • handled all the network resources effectively.
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.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
First of all, FreeNAS is now rebranded as TrueNAS core. We are using it for our legacy applications which are running on-prem in a local network. TrueNAS is based on FreeBSD and it's free to use with all the core features. The best part is we can switch to TruNAS enterprise in just one click which we did for some of our installations.
  • OpenSource and Free to use.
  • Supports multiple redundancy configurations.
  • Great UI with 360 degree view of the system.
  • 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.
I would recommend FreeNAS if you looking for self-managed NAS service in your local environment or in on-prem data centers. One thing to keep in mind this requires a basic understanding of networking and storage so it's recommended only if you have a deep understanding or are willing to learn.
  • Open Source Software.
  • Can be used with Old system as it's based on Linux.
  • It's free to use so ROI is infinite.
  • Great learning experience for team.
OpenMediaVault, XigmaNAS
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I needed a cost effective NAS in order to store and share files within the network. FreeNAS fit the bill as the name implied it was 'FREE'. FreeNAS was used primarily by the testing department and solved the issue of keeping a 'golden' set of files that should be the most up to date all in one location. If anyone needed a specific file or software, they would be able to look to this location and know that it is current.
  • Cost effective
  • Many options and features
  • Not beginner friendly
  • Buggy
If the user has system administrative experience and is willing to spend time learning FreeNAS, then FreeNAS is well worth it. If the user does not have much experience or does not have the time to learn FreeNAS, then using a COTs product that is more intuitive and easy to use might be beneficial.
FreeNAS is very powerful and can do basically anything you want it to do. The user just needs to spend the time to learn it as it may not be clearly intuitive how to implement the features that are needed for the user's organization.
  • Infinite ROI as it is free
  • The negatives is the time it takes to implement FreeNAS into the architecture
We were recommended to use FreeNAS by our peers because of its cost effectiveness and better GUI. We later moved on from it as the scope of the server changed from being a simple file server to a Configuration Management repository. As far as issues, there were issues with maintaining FreeNAS as services stalled and implementing active directory was not very simple and sometimes broke.
There were some things that can be found by other users on forums and Google and some things that were not.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
FreeNAS is opensource software that is based on FreeBSD OS. It provides bootable software to run Network Attached Storage for your organization and provides many features, some of which are enterprise level. It can be loaded on virtually any machine, new or old to turn it into a NAS. We use it within departments to provide additional network storage for employees. It supports multiple drives, custom encryption keys, and separation of OS and NAS.
  • Portable configuration provides separation of bootable NAS and the drives. This makes it easy to move drives to a different NAS or replace failed hardware.
  • Supports many drive redundancy configurations such as Raid 0, 1, 5, 10.
  • Provides a full bootable, portable package that installs on old or new hardware to enable drives to be configured as a NAS using a Web UI.
  • Supports default or customer encryption keys to secure your data.
  • FreeNAS installs on a USB drive for performance
  • The NAS User Interface could be made more user-friendly and easier to configure, but in the most recent version improvements have been made.
  • It could be easier to back up the encryption key and configuration so they can be easily restored.
  • We have seen isolated issues when streaming large files (8GB+) across the network, specifically video files. Uploading and Downloading is fine, when but streaming live sometimes we see an issue.
FreeNAS is well suited to provide NAS services using existing drives and hardware. It is a low-cost solution that is very powerful and flexible to provide Network Attached Storage to your organization. If enterprise performance is required, please use the appropriate hardware for your custom NAS so you have sufficient network bandwidth, processing power, memory, and drive performance.
  • Low-Cost Network Attached Storage
  • Provides additional network storage to support client & business operations
  • FreeNAS secures our data using custom encryption keys
One alternative to FreeNAS is NAS4Free. FreeNAS tends to be a bit more cutting-edge, which is good for us technical enthusiasts. By contrast, NAS4Free sticks with the core NAS functionality and doesn't provide a fancy interface. NAS4Free is opensource, but enterprise support is not readily available. There are many other Network Attached Storage appliance that can be purchased which come with proprietary commercial software.
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