freenas

[lordnacho]

Anyone use it?  No clue what I'm doing
I've got a couple new drives, then moved two old ones into it.  But now want to move it to a raidz2, not sure if I can do that and starting to panic since I don't have a local backup now. 

Thoughts?  Thanks

[Santoro]

I used it for a while but moved over to Windows 8 Storage Spaces.  Great stuff and plays nice with all my Windows boxes.  Freenas was OK though, it worked.

[kahlid74]

I've used FreeNAS and OpenFiler and I preferred OpenFiler.  I noticed however on both systems that their performance was piss poor so I moved to Nexenta.

It's been a bitching long time but I'm fairly certain you'll have to re-create the zPool, so you would lose all your data.  I would backup your data before you try anything either way.  A 3TB USB drive isn't too expensive from amazon.

Side Note: FreeNAS's performance is pretty piss poor when it comes to throughput.  I went to Nexenta because it's an enterprise class SAN OS and provides my virtual farm (40-60VMs) a stable, fast and robust environment to operate in.

[lordnacho]

I used it for a while but moved over to Windows 8 Storage Spaces.  Great stuff and plays nice with all my Windows boxes.  Freenas was OK though, it worked.

I was thinking about this as well.  How does this work with Macs though, my wife uses one. 

I've used FreeNAS and OpenFiler and I preferred OpenFiler.  I noticed however on both systems that their performance was piss poor so I moved to Nexenta.

It's been a bitching long time but I'm fairly certain you'll have to re-create the zPool, so you would lose all your data.  I would backup your data before you try anything either way.  A 3TB USB drive isn't too expensive from amazon.

Side Note: FreeNAS's performance is pretty piss poor when it comes to throughput.  I went to Nexenta because it's an enterprise class SAN OS and provides my virtual farm (40-60VMs) a stable, fast and robust environment to operate in.

Thanks, FreeNas seemed pretty popular, so dove in without doing much research.  I'll take a look at the others you mentioned. 

I got worried so ordered a 2TB last night.  Can use it as a replacement drive when one of these 4 fails. 

[HaRuMaN]

I use FreeNAS, and I like it.  I'm only really using it as a backup using rsync for incremental backups from all my PC's.

[spoot]

I've used both FreeNAS and Openfiler as well and didn't have any issues with performance, but I only have around 4-6 boxes hitting the shares and not 40-60 like kahlid.

[kahlid74]

I've used both FreeNAS and Openfiler as well and didn't have any issues with performance, but I only have around 4-6 boxes hitting the shares and not 40-60 like kahlid.

Even using just one computer connecting, you can see the performance hit.  There's a bunch of good articles out there about it.  For some reason FreeNAS just has big performance issues when it comes to throughput.

[Santoro]

I used it for a while but moved over to Windows 8 Storage Spaces.  Great stuff and plays nice with all my Windows boxes.  Freenas was OK though, it worked.

I was thinking about this as well.  How does this work with Macs though, my wife uses one. 

It's a regular SMB Windows share.   I don't use Macs but I have to imagine they can mount an SMB share natively.    I am sure someone will confirm that for me...