FreeNAS versus unRAID as the operating-system for a DIY NAS?

thethirdnut Wrote:ZFS looks great on paper, but FUSE tests woefully slow at best and the Linux(es) is where its at - sorry BSD, Solaris! ;-)

There's also the ZFS kernel. Not sure what you have against Solaris, but it's running couchpotato, sickbeard, & sabnzbd. Anything it doesn't have is in a Debian Virtual Machine.

I have nothing personal against Solaris.

HOWEVER, I have a whole swack of sw running on the 24/7 server / desktop. Then there's the matters of a much smaller user-base vs Linux, sw choice + hw compatibilites [from what I have heard] - and also Mr 'Evil' Ellison...

You pay any attention to btrfs?

thethirdnut Wrote:I have nothing personal against Solaris.

HOWEVER, I have a whole swack of sw running on the 24/7 server / desktop. Then there's the matters of a much smaller user-base vs Linux, sw choice + hw compatibilites [from what I have heard] - and also Mr 'Evil' Ellison...

You pay any attention to btrfs?

Other than it's untested and has this blazen across their home page:
Btrfs is under heavy development, but every effort is being made to keep the filesystem stable and fast. As of 2.6.31, we only plan to make forward compatible disk format changes, and many users have been experimenting with Btrfs on their systems with good results. Please email the Btrfs mailing list if you have any problems or questions while using Btrfs.

Note that Btrfs does not yet have a fsck tool that can fix errors. While Btrfs is stable on a stable machine, it is currently possible to corrupt a filesystem irrecoverably if your machine crashes or loses power on disks that don't handle flush requests correctly. This will be fixed when the fsck tool is ready.

I've read all the documentation, and honestly ZFS seems much easier to pickup and use.
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My server is a server. It serves. Anything fancy I added to a VirtualMachine that has a root device as a zvol snapshotted daily.

Yep. Agreed.

At this point btrfs is not ready for prime-time...its in the 'maybe someday' category...which is the horizon I am in for upgrading.

To be continued... ;-)

Have a good weekend.

I looked at FreeNas in the past, but have been waiting patiently on openmediavault, and did use Naslite in the past as well..

But I eventually settled on Ubuntu Server. Add in the WebMin and you have a great NAS that is capable of whole lot more if needed.

And, Debian 6.0 was just released with kFreeBSD, meaning Debian + ZFS is now possible.

darkscout Wrote:And, Debian 6.0 was just released with kFreeBSD, meaning Debian + ZFS is now possible.

Thanks for the note Darkscout; I'll have a peak.

If Debian + ZFS is doable it definitely would be worth a closer look.

Lot's of great information in this thread. I'm glad I found it.

I hope I'm not hijacking the thread to take it into a different direction but could someone provide a bit more clarity on the differences between Nexenta and Nexentastor? I've been scouring the web but can't get a clear answer. Also, among all the ZFS options it would be great if someone could provide a pros and cons list for them.

I've outgrown my 4-Bay ReadyNAS and am getting ready to build my own. I'm leaning heavily toward ZFS based on what I've been reading but would like the most stable, easiest to setup and administer option.

Thanks

darkscout Wrote:And, Debian 6.0 was just released with kFreeBSD, meaning Debian + ZFS is now possible.

thethirdnut Wrote:Thanks for the note Darkscout; I'll have a peak.

If Debian + ZFS is doable it definitely would be worth a closer look.

I am about to build my new media server box. It is a single dual purpose box, which I know some of you guys don't like, but it is what it is. (7) 1.5TB drives, and I'd like to do ZFS RAID-Z and XBMC with Debian 6.

Just wondering if anyone has had success so far with XBMC on Debian 6. I figure it should be straightforward, but wanted to ask...

There's Debian/kFreeBSD and Debian/GNU.

Debian/kFreeBSD is the one with the ZFS in the kernel. I know someone has submitted patches to get it to compile on FreeBSD, but I'm not sure if anyone has compiled it yet for Debian/kFreeBSD.

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Nexenta:NexentaStor::FreeBSD:FreeNAS
Nexenta:NexentaStor::Linux:unRAID