FreeNAS or a Linux distro?

subbass · 24 Mar 2013 at 12:38

Which would be a better choice as a file server?
Currently using Linux but rebuilding so I've thought about whether to use something like FreeNAS or the alike. Thoughts?

Essexraptor · 24 Mar 2013 at 12:57

re-building the hardware ?

subbass · 24 Mar 2013 at 13:30

Yes you can say that - moving it to a new server.

JonJ678 · 25 Mar 2013 at 01:22

ZFS is awesome, and worth the irritation of learning to use an operating system that supports it. FreeNAS (probably) has ZFS as an option.

Otherwise linux is usually robust enough. It it's only running samba and nfs, it doesn't really matter what the OS is.

Frozennova · 25 Mar 2013 at 06:59

Freenas is brilliantly simple and it's Web gui is a doddle for setting up zfs. The only bit that is slightly annoying is the plugin system for installing things like transmission or sabnzb as you have to use jails.

R4z0r · 22 Apr 2013 at 22:30

FreeNAS for a fileserver definitely. Essentially, you want ZFS and FreeBSD has an excellent implementation. It's also easy to use through the WebGUI and well documented.

Drawbacks are SMB performance in BSD is not as good as Linux but it's not miles off, I get about 750mbps out of my HP Microserver.