Distributions

A look at EasyNAS

Thus far, this series on network-attached storage (NAS) distributions has looked at three different approaches to the problem. OpenMediaVault provides a NAS server using traditional Linux filesystems, Rockstor bases everything on the Btrfs filesystem, and FreeNAS is a FreeBSD-based system using ZFS. This fourth (and probably final) installment in this series goes back to Btrfs with a look at EasyNAS, which is another attempt to make the unique features of Btrfs available in a dedicated NAS distribution.

Since EasyNAS and Rockstor are both working toward the same broad goal, comparisons between the two come naturally. For a start: while Rockstor is based on CentOS, EasyNAS uses openSUSE as its base. That choice makes a certain amount of sense; openSUSE is putting a lot of effort into making Btrfs a viable option for production use. Neither EasyNAS nor Rockstor appear to have any developers actively working on Btrfs, so the only hope for getting problems fixed is with the upstream distribution. That would suggest that Btrfs-related problems that turn up in EasyNAS are more likely to receive developer attention.

Then there is the issue of development communities. Rockstor is developed by a small group trying to make a business out of it, with a tiny amount of community support. EasyNAS, instead, appears to be the work of a lone developer who has expressed no business ambitions beyond putting up a donation link. The end result is that EasyNAS lags behind Rockstor in a number of important ways.

There are two installation images available for EasyNAS. There is a standard ISO image that can be used to install from a USB drive or an optical disk. On top of that, the project offers a "raw" image that enables the system to run off a USB drive with no separate installation step at all.

As is the case with all of NAS distributions reviewed, EasyNAS runs a web application as the primary administrative interface. It is possible to use TLS once one gets past the inevitable self-signed certificate warning. This interface has its ups and downs, but mostly works as one would expect. It must be said, though, that the built-in "help" functionality is useless; it puts up a window with a terse sentence or two of text — often the same text that already appears in the screen of interest.

Storage configuration follows the usual patterns. One starts by creating filesystems from one or more disks, then creating "volumes" from the filesystems. The volumes (implemented as Btrfs subvolumes) are the actual filesystems seen by users, of course. The volume administrative screen is, among other things, the place where one controls whether each volume is exported via NFS, SMB, AFP, or TFTP.

The disk management screen (seen to the right) has some quirks. The pie chart is thoroughly useless, showing simply how many drives have been put to work. The magnifying-glass icon on each disk device will, if clicked, start an I/O performance test. The identical magnifying glass that appears in a small search bar on every screen does nothing useful at all, as far as your editor can tell. Nowhere in the web-based system is it possible to find out how much space is free on a given drive or filesystem (such information can be had via the command line, of course). It is also not possible to put size limits on an given volume.

There is a rudimentary snapshot facility built into the system. A separate screen allows snapshots to be scheduled at regular times. Your editor initially thought that there was no way to request a snapshot manually — until he clicked on the magnifying-glass icon found on the volume administration screen. Once created, snapshots just look like new volumes on that screen as well. It is true that, underneath it all, snapshots and volumes are essentially the same thing to Btrfs, but users are likely to see them as being different and might like to manage them separately. The names given to snapshots (e.g. v_1502240010 for a snapshot of volume v) encode the date the snapshot was taken (February 24, 2015 in this case), though the format could be a bit more readable.

There is a "power management" screen, but all it can do is to shut down or reboot the system; there is no way to control power-management features like drive spindown times. User accounts can only be administered locally; there is no provision for working with an LDAP or NIS server on the net. EasyNAS also lacks the sort of plugin facility that other NAS-oriented distributions provide. The "resource monitor" screen gives plots of a few system parameters, but lacks useful ones like disk or network I/O bandwidth. On the other hand, there is a basic firewall mechanism whereby one can configure which other systems can access the EasyNAS box.

Those searching for the EasyNAS source on its web site have a long and frustrating task ahead of them. It would appear that there is no publicly available source repository for EasyNAS. The source can be found, though, under /easynas on an installed system. It consists mainly of about 5,700 lines of Perl CGI code licensed under GPLv3+. That is enough for a would-be contributor to work with, but the project would be much more likely to get contributions if it put a bit more effort into making it easy to work on the code.

To summarize, your editor would be reluctant to base a production NAS box on EasyNAS. The fundamentals are there, but there are important gaps in functionality and the project does not appear to have the resources to close those gaps. It is not clear what help is available if things go wrong; the project's forums are a lonely and desolate place. Things can always change, but, as they stand now, it is hard not to conclude that there are better options available.

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Distribution newsletters

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