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Freenas, the best great free NAS solution
January 30, 2019

Freenas, the best great free NAS solution

Chris Thibeau | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with FreeNAS

I required a free network attached storage solution that would work with testing different virtualization solutions. Freenas was a perfect fit, as it supports NFS, SMB, and ISCSI sharing.
I use FreeNAS on old hardware, and it is extremely reliable. It uses a USB stick to boot from, which leaves all the internal data ports available for storage.
  • 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.
  • I found it hard to set user specific security options on shares.
  • Backing up FreeNAS is not simple, as it does not have a built-in option to backup.
Nas4Free, Windows File share, Unaid, OpenFiler

FreeNAS is the best build it yourself solution. It works on any type of hardware you can through at it. Has a multitude of options on how to share out the volumes allow you to select which is best for you.

Now with the ability to create and run VM's and all the additional plugins, FreeNAS is a great solution.
FreeNAS worked best for me in creating a free network-attached storage for my Virtualization cluster testing. Where it has NFS, SMB, and iSCSI services, this provided several connection options, allowing me to test and select the service which provided the best performance. FreenNAS works great on old hardware. When creating a storage pool, the GUI provides all options very clear and easy to understand.