FreeNAS best bang for buck
January 17, 2020

FreeNAS best bang for buck

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with FreeNAS

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
  • 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.

Do you think FreeNAS delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with FreeNAS's feature set?

Yes

Did FreeNAS live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of FreeNAS go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy FreeNAS again?

No

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.