FREENAS

What is FreeNAS?
FreeNAS is an operating system that can be installed on virtually any
hardware platform to share data over a network. FreeNAS is the simplest way
to create a centralized and easily accessible place for your data. Use
FreeNAS with ZFS to protect, store, backup, all of your data. FreeNAS is used
everywhere, for the home, small business, and the enterprise.

What is ZFS?
ZFS is an enterprise-ready open source file system, RAID controller, and
volume manager with unprecedented flexibility and an uncompromising
commitment to data integrity. It eliminates most, if not all of the shortcomings
found in legacy file systems and hardware RAID devices. Once you go ZFS,
you will never want to go back.

History
1.

2015The team released an alpha version of FreeNAS 10 that was based on FreeBSD 10.2
and included a new CLI and IPFS protocols. The team also released FreeNAS 9.3.1, which included
various fixes and published a blog series on FreeNAS 9.3.1

2.

2014The team released FreeNAS 9.2 and 9.3 with an all new volume manager, new
virtualization features, and a setup wizard. This year also marked the end of UFS and 32-bit support.

3.

2013FreeNAS 8.3 is released. The team incorporated ZFS Encryption into the latest
version, making FreeNAS one of the only Open Source projects which do so.

4.

2012FreeNAS 8.2 is released. The team implemented a plug-in system for FreeNAS based
on PBIs and FreeBSD jails.

5.

2011May 2011: FreeNAS 8.0 is released. This is a completely re-written codebase with a
new WebGUI based off of Django and Dojo toolkit.

6.

2010iXsystems takes over stewardship of the FreeNAS project from Volker Theile and
keeps FreeNAS on FreeBSD.

7.

2009Volker Theile announces he is no longer capable of maintaining FreeNAS on

FreeBSD and wants to port FreeNAS to Linux.

8.

2007FreeNAS has been named as one of the 2007 Best of Open Source Software winners
by the InfoWorld Test Center.

9.
10.

2006FreeNAS is a winner of the VMware Ultimate Virtual Appliance.

2005Thanks to the efforts of Olivier Cochard-Labbe, FreeNAS is born! The first alpha
version of FreeNAS is available as an ISO file on SourceForge

File Sharing
File sharing is what FreeNAS does best. Every major operating system is supported with SMB/CIFS
(Windows file shares), NFS (Unix file shares) and AFP (Apple File Shares) as well as FTP, iSCSI
(block sharing), WebDAV and other methods of sharing data over the network are available. iSCSI
also supports VMware VAAI, Microsoft ODX and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and 2012 R2
Clustering.
Most operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, many Linux distributions, and PC-BSD
can connect using SMB shares with little or no additional configuration needed on the client side.
Most Unix-like operating systems support connecting with NFS out of the box, and free clients are
widely available. AFP is primarily used by Mac OSX and is well suited for a network environment that
only connects with Macintosh clients. FreeNAS also supports Time Machine backups.

Web Interface
If FreeNAS has one goal, its simplifying complex administrative tasks for as wide a user base as
possible. Every aspect of a FreeNAS system can be managed from a Web User Interface. A setup
Wizard further simplifies configuration at installation time or later in the setup process. Volume
creation, or the setting of permissions on individual shares or performing software updates, can be
done without missing a critical step or encountering a silent failure.

Of course, the FreeNAS Team knows we cant think of everything. Many services have advanced
configuration options available from the Web User Interface that is available in advanced menus. The
full power of the FreeBSD shell environment is also available just a click away or through SSH.
Ultimately, FreeNAS makes NAS deployment easier than ever but doesnt get between you and the
solution you need.

Data Protection
ZFS is designed for data integrity from top to bottom. RAID-Z, the software RAID that is part of ZFS,
offers single parity protection like RAID 5, but without the write hole vulnerability thanks to the copyon-write architecture of ZFS. The additional levels RAID-Z2 and RAID-Z3 offer double and triple
parity protection, respectively. A software mirror option is also available. The FreeNAS Volumes
screen lists each possible parity arrangement based on the number of disks you select when
creating a new volume.
Every ZFS filesystem is also verified with checksums from top to bottom to ensure data integrity. If
inconsistencies are found, parity blocks can be used to repair corrupt data. A regular scrub is turned
on by default and can be rescheduled or configured from the web interface.

Snapshots
Thanks to ZFS, snapshots of the entire filesystem can be made and saved at any time. As long as a
snapshot exists, administrators can access files as they were when the snapshot was made.
Snapshots can be made on a one-off basis or scheduled as a cron job from the web interface. At any
time, the entire filesystem can be rolled back to the most recent snapshot. Older snapshots can be
cloned and accessed to recover data from that version of the filesystem. From the web interface,
users can see how much space a particular snapshot is occupying on the volume and delete, clone,
or roll back to individual snapshots as needed.

Replication
ZFS Snapshots are more than just local backups they can be used to create remote backups as
well. Replicating snapshots of the filesystem to a remote ZFS filesystem creates a complete
duplicate there. Furthermore, additional snapshots of the same filesystem can be sent incrementally,
reducing the size of each backup to the changes that were made between snapshots. In case of
catastrophic damage to a local ZFS filesystem (such as disk failure in excess of parity protection or
irrecoverable log device failure), any backed-up snapshot can be sent to a new ZFS filesystem,
recovering all data up to that backup.

Encryption

FreeNAS is the first and only open source project to offer encryption on ZFS volumes! A full-volume
encryption option is available during volume creation, providing industry standard AES-XTS
encryption which can be hardware-accelerated (when the processor has AES-NI capability).
Encrypted volumes can only be read by FreeNAS systems in possession of the master key for that
volume. The user can optionally create a passphrase to add an additional layer of protection for
when the whole system is stolen.
Encryption allows for confidence when retiring and recycling hard drives because the drives no
longer need to be wiped provided the master keys are obliterated.

Backup Services
Windows Backup

rsync

Apple Time Machine

PC-BSD Life Preserver

Plugins
FreeNAS supports the core features of a NAS appliance out of the box. However, many users like
to enhance their NAS appliance with third party software for media streaming, alternative protocols,
or web applications.

Hardware Requirements
FreeNAS is enterprise-class storage software, designed with data protection as its primary objective,
and the hardware you select plays an important role in helping it achieve that. FreeNAS is designed

to be installed on commodity x86 hardware, and below are basic guidelines for designing your very
own storage system, from bare minimum requirements for a functional system to full fledged
business-ready hardware design. Enjoy!

Minimum Hardware Requirements:

These specifications will suffice to get a small FreeNAS install running reliably with moderate
performance for a few users.

Multicore 64-bit* processor (Intel strongly recommended)

8GB* Boot Drive (USB Flash Drive suffices)

8GB* RAM

At least 1 direct attached disk (Hardware RAID strongly discouraged)

One physical network port

* FreeNAS no longer supports 32-bit hardware. The last FreeNAS Release with 32-bit hardware
support was FreeNAS 9.2.1.9. This release also supported the UFS filesystem. Deployments on 32bit hardware using UFS had lower hardware requirements of a 4GB boot device and 4GB of RAM.
PLEASE NOTE that further security and stability updates to the 9.2.1.x branch are not guaranteed.

Recommended Minimum Hardware:

These are the specifications for a hardy home media server or small office file share. At this point,
your FreeNAS device will have the resources to run third party services and provide respectable
performance.
The iXsystems FreeNAS Mini Storage Device fulfills these specifications.

Multicore 64-bit processor

16GB Boot Drive (USB Flash Drive suffices)

16GB (ECC Recommended)

At least 2 direct attached disks (Hardware RAID strongly discouraged)

For best results, see FreeBSD Hardware Compatibility List for Supported Disk

Controllers

Drives designed for NAS (such as WD Red drives) are recommended.

At least one physical network port (Intel Recommended)

For best results, see FreeBSD Hardware Compatibility List for Supported Ethernet

Chipsets

Business-Class Hardware Recommendations:

When using FreeNAS in a business setting, the hardware requirements are much less defined by
FreeNAS itself and more defined by your capacity, performance, reliability, and support needs.
To remove the guesswork from this process, iXsystems offers FreeNAS Certified Servers,
which are pre-configured with FreeNAS using fully qualified hardware configurations.
For critical applications where downtime cant be tolerated, iXsystems also offers
theTrueNAS Storage Appliance, which features full enterprise support, High Availability,
tuned performance, and a much greater degree of scalability.

Typical Requirements for Small and Medium Business:

Software Support from iXsystems can only be obtained by using TrueNAS

One to four Enterprise-class 64-bit multicore processors.

Two mirrored 16 GB Boot Drives (USB or SATA DOM recommended)

32GB ECC RAM Minimum (1GB per TB of storage is a good rule of thumb but might need to
be adjusted depending on workload/application)
At least 4 direct attached disks (Hardware RAID strongly discouraged. It reduces the data

protection and recovery features of FreeNAS considerably.)

If necessary to add disks above what the motherboard supports, do not use RAID cards.

Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) are recommended instead to give FreeNAS/ZFS direct access to the
individual drives. LSI HBAs are the best choice with FreeNAS.
For best results, see FreeBSD Hardware Compatibility List for Supported Disk

Controllers

Enterprise quality SATA/SAS hard drives are recommended.

High-endurance Flash/SSD-based write log device (ZIL) for synchronous writes only
(Flash/SSDs with Power Loss Protection recommended). Two devices mirrored if uninterrupted
performance is critical.
High-performance SSDs for read acceleration if the most-requested data doesnt fit in RAM

and the random read load is high.

At least two physical network ports. Intel recommended for 1GbE. Chelsio recommended for

10GbE.

For best results, see FreeBSD Hardware Compatibility List for Supported Ethernet

Chipsets

If Support is required, consider iXsystems TrueNAS Enterprise Storage Arrays

ZFS
FreeNAS is the worlds most popular open source storage operating system not only because of its
features and ease of use but also what lies beneath the surface: The ZFS file system. With over
seven million downloads, FreeNAS has put ZFS onto more systems than any other product or project
to date and is used everywhere from homes to enterprises.
But why ZFS?
FreeNAS uses ZFS because it is an enterprise-ready open source file system and volume manager
with unprecedented flexibility and an uncompromising commitment to data integrity. ZFS is a truly
next-generation file system that eliminates most, if not all of the shortcomings found in legacy file
systems and hardware RAID devices. Once you go ZFS, you will never want to go back