Distributions

FreeNAS — network-attached storage with ZFS

Thus far, this series has looked at Linux distributions that are optimized for network-attached storage (NAS) deployments. This installment will take a slightly different turn: the system under review (FreeNAS) is indeed a free distribution for NAS applications, but it is based on FreeBSD rather than Linux. In many ways it looks like the Linux-based systems reviewed previously, but there are some interesting differences.

FreeNAS might be thought of as the old-timer among extant NAS-oriented systems; it got its start in 2005. In recent years, it has been managed by iXsystems, which is using it as a platform for the sales of server systems and support services. As a result of both its age and the investment from iXsystems, FreeNAS seems, in many ways, to be the most mature and feature-complete system of this type.

Of course, to some, "mature" can mean "old and bloated." Your editor was duly concerned when he read that the FreeNAS 9.3 release requires a minimum of 8GB of memory — the test server used for these reviews, after all, only has 2GB of memory installed. "Using less than 8GB is an 'at your own risk' adventure and not recommended or supported" is the advice given on the 9.3 announcement page. In truth, though, there were no noticeable performance problems resulting on such a "small" system with moderate stress testing. There are almost certainly workloads that require much more memory, but FreeNAS can do basic file serving with 2GB.

Installation and setup were reasonably straightforward. There was a snag when the system required the existence of an LDAP or NIS server for user account information; unlike some other systems, FreeNAS expects management of user accounts to be done elsewhere. Interestingly, the system also wants to set itself up as its own certificate-creating authority. That enables the easy use of TLS to talk to the web-based administrative system, with the usual "untrusted certificate" warnings to get past.

One place where FreeNAS feels immediately different is that it takes far longer to boot (minutes rather than seconds) than any of the other systems tested. It would seem that the focused effort that has gone into reducing Linux boot times has not been replicated in the FreeBSD world. One hopes, of course, that a file server would not require booting often, but, by the same token, when the file server is down, one generally wants it to come back up quickly.

The management of storage space is similar to that found on Rockstor, but the terminology is different. One organizes physical drives into "volumes," which are then used to host one or more "datasets." A dataset is, of course, a filesystem with another name. These filesystems, once created, can then be exported to the net via the usual protocols (NFS, CIFS, AFP, etc.).

FreeNAS, being based exclusively on the ZFS filesystem, can offer the usual range of next-generation filesystem features. Physical drives can be organized into a number of RAID setups, though the FreeNAS system tries to hide and automate that organization to some extent. Snapshotting of filesystems is supported, and the system can be configured to make scheduled snapshots automatically. There is a deduplication feature, but actually using it requires vast amounts of RAM (3-5GB, evidently, for each terabyte of stored data). Encryption is supported at the volume level, and compression is supported at the dataset level.

Disks can be added to and removed from volumes, of course, as long as the constraints set by the current RAID level and free space allow. There are also useful instructions on how to replace a failed drive; one hopes to never need them, but it would be a good idea to always know where they are. FreeNAS can be configured to do regular SMART testing of drives and to report on any problems that are found. There is also a dialog for the configuration of power-management-options.

There is a set of screens for monitoring the performance of the system. The usual parameters, such as CPU usage, network bandwidth, and disk I/O bandwidth are all displayable in a graphical form. There is a set of zoom and shift buttons for zeroing in on specific time periods.

FreeNAS has a plugin feature to allow for extensions to the system, and there is a reasonably substantial list of available plugins. These are dominated by streaming media servers, but there are some others as well; one plugin will set up a FreeNAS box as an ownCloud server, for example. The FreeBSD "jails" feature is used to confine plugins.

As a whole, the FreeNAS administrative interface has the feel of something that has been under development and in active use for some time; there are a lot of features to be found if one looks. More than any other system tested, FreeNAS seems set up for administration without ever needing to go to the command line. Should it become necessary to type commands anyway, though, there is even a terminal emulator built into the web interface; one need not SSH into the server first. For those wanting a lower level of control, there is an extensive API for telling FreeNAS what to do.

One place where things perhaps fall a bit short is with updates. A FreeNAS update requires updating the entire system, so it is not something one will want to do often. There does not appear to be any sort of security update stream; one must update to a newer release to get security fixes. In general, a NAS box should not normally be exposed to the Internet, but there are still reasons for wanting to keep one secure.

The corporate presence behind FreeNAS has its advantages and disadvantages. At the top of the list of advantages, of course, is that the community gets a highly functional and mature system for the management of network-attached storage. The fact that iXsystems appears to be successful also suggests that FreeNAS will be around and supported for some time. On the other side, one must deal with the iXsystems logo all over the administrative screens and occasional attempts to make sales to users. Some of the company's communications (example: "We make FreeNAS for when storage is non-critical" versus "We make TrueNAS for enterprise stability") resembles that which came out of Red Hat in the early days of its enterprise distribution. For most users, those will be small costs to pay.

In the end, one might choose FreeNAS for its stability, and for the features offered by the ZFS filesystem. A FreeBSD-based system will feel unfamiliar to those who are used to Linux, but the Linux-based alternatives may be seen to lack either the next-generation functionality or the relative maturity of FreeNAS. While those Linux-based systems are also fine NAS servers, there are certainly good reasons why FreeNAS appears to be the default choice for many users setting up a NAS system.

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Distribution quotes of the week

-- Kevin Fenzi

-- Stephen John Smoogen

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Calamares 1.0

Version 1.0 of Calamares, a distribution-independent installer framework, has been released. "The initial idea for Calamares popped up in May 2014, less than a year ago, and out of frustration: many successful independent Linux distributions came with lackluster installers, and all of these installers were a result of competition rather than cooperation. Improving one of the existing installers wouldn't have fixed this, as every installer was more or less distribution specific. We wanted to create a product that would satisfy the requirements of most Linux distributions, developed as an upstream project for all of them." See this blog post for more details.

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FSF adds Guix System Distribution to list of endorsed distributions

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has announced the addition of the Guix System Distribution to its list of recommended GNU/Linux distributions. "As the name suggests, at the heart of the Guix System Distribution is the GNU Guix (pronounced like "geeks") package management system. GNU Guix offers users uncommon features such as transactional upgrades and rollbacks, as well as declarative operating system configuration."

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Debian Project mourns the loss of Clytie Siddall

The Debian Project has announced that it has lost a member of its community. Clytie Siddall passed recently after a long battle with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. "Clytie was a contributor of Vietnamese translations to Debian and other projects for many years. Within Debian she worked on translations for the installer, dpkg, apt and various documentation. She also contributed translations within the GNOME community and many other projects. Clytie was a GNOME foundation contributor."

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Results from Fedora's FESCo election

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openSUSE 12.3 has reached end of SUSE support

SUSE-sponsored support of openSUSE 12.3 is now officially discontinued. Users are encouraged to upgrade. openSUSE 13.1 and 13.2 are supported.

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Distribution newsletters

• DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 595 (February 2)
• 5 things in Fedora this week (February 3)
• Gentoo Monthly Newsletter (January)
• Red Hat Developer Newsletter (January)
• Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 402 (February 1)

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CoreOS 'Rockets' Ahead With Docker Alternative (eWeek)

eWeek takes a look at CoreOS, its Rocket effort, and etcd. "A key part of the CoreOS platform is the etcd system, which provides a shared configuration and scheduler coordination capability that is enabled by a distributed, consistent key-value store. As an open-source effort led by CoreOS, etcd is also used in the Google Kubernetes project as well as Pivotal's Cloud Foundry and Apache Mesos. On Jan. 28, CoreOS announced etcd version 2.0 and tagged it as the first major stable release of the technology. Prior to etcd 2.0, the most recent version was 0.4.6."

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You're the Boss with UBOS (Linux Journal)

Doc Searls takes a look at UBOS, on Linux Journal. "UBOS is a new Linux distro that I like for two reasons. One is that it works toward making it easy for muggles to set up their own fully independent personal home servers with little or no help from wizards. The other is that it comes from my friend Johannes Ernst. It's in beta at the time of this writing, and it runs on PCs, Raspberry Pi models B and B+, and on Macs in VirtualBox. It's been tested with ownCloud, Known, WordPress, Mediawiki, Selfoss, Shaarli and Jenkins and plugins for a number of those."

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