FreeNAS Replacement

rustikles · July 2, 2015

Despite being a long-time supporter of FreeNAS as a do-it-all home use NAS software, I think it's time to cut my losses and move on. Long story short, it almost seems like I run into some strange niche issue every other week, whether it's permissions, plugins, or the "do everything from here" GUI. With that in mind, I'm weighing my options for server distros. It seems to come down to a choice between Debian or Ubuntu server. I know there really isn't that much of a base difference, but are there any distinct benefits of one over the other?

Specifically, I'm looking to recreate a RaidZ2 ZFS pool with snapshots, along with basic shares (sftp and smb). Otherwise, the machine will mainly be used as a plex server host plus some light virtualization. I'm not really trying to directly mimic FreeNAS, but a similar feature set is definitely a good thing.

FreeNAS is more or less designed to be run directly from a USB stick. Is this something that is ever suggested in a ubuntu or debian environment, and if so, what kind of configuration is best for backing up that boot media?

rtpb5642 · July 2, 2015

use centos

rustikles · July 2, 2015

use centos

Because it's easier? More resource efficient? You've had good experiences with it? I'd like a little bit of reasoning behind the choice if you don't mind.

rtpb5642 · July 2, 2015

Because it's easier? More resource efficient? You've had good experiences with it? I'd like a little bit of reasoning behind the choice if you don't mind.

MUCH more easier than any debian distrro, more resource efficient, i trust it to run my firewall and it never fails me. If u have it set up to be an ftp server make sure to disable firewalld though or it wont work.

It uses yum instead of apt-get and i prefer this a lot.

Centos 7 is the free version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 so its very very good, never crashed on me, systems been up over a month 24/7.

Fedora is basically the same minus a few server tools so thats an option too. Stay away from debian for servers IMO.

Use the Centos "everything" iso, its massive with lots of drivers etc.

Any distro u use, use Webmin, it makes everything so easy, once u install it (instructions on their website for RPM) its accessible via https://serverip:10000 its so easy to administrate stuff with it. Good luck if u have questions feel free to ask. Sorry i didnt say much ealier i got a phone call.