FreeNAS makes Network Attached Storage cheaper and easier
January 26, 2019
FreeNAS makes Network Attached Storage cheaper and easier
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with FreeNAS
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.
- 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.