Alternatives to FreeNAS

[James Woods]

I've been using FreeNAS for some time now and I'm considering abandoning it for an alternative server OS.

 

Problems just seem to happen too often for me and fixing them takes hours and hours of online research and trial and error. And on top of that, I often find myself doing even more harm while troubleshooting. And this is extremely bad when my young child wants to watch a movie and I can't make it happen.

 

Now, I very well may just be an idiot, but if that's the case I still need a more idiot-friendly server OS.

 

My needs for the server machine are:

- software RAID

- file backup

- Plex Server hosting

 

Anyone want to sell me on a different OS? Something linux? Windows server? I'm all ears.

 

Specs of the hardware for reference:

Pentium G3258

8 GB RAM

MSI z87 Mobo

3x 3TB WD Red HDDs

 

 

[Nem]

I've been testing Openmediavault for the past little while in preparation for a new NAS and I'm liking it. As with any opensource OS if there are problems you're going to need to jump into a CLI to fix the issue. Their forum is also less elitist than FreeNAS so if you need help they can usually offer it.

 

If you want an even more user friendly server you can take a look at amahi. I've never tried them, but it looks fairly simple, I just didn't like their paid model for something that I couldn't even really test beforehand