FreeNAS and pfSense

[DragonMatt]

I'm in need a of a new router and I want to have some network attached storage that I can access anywhere. So what I am asking is, is it possible to set up a single machine with pfSense and Freenas with FTP so I can have a good home router with a cheap personal cloud setup? My main goal is to spend as little money as possible while still getting a good router and some sort of personal cloud storage that I can access anywhere. Any other ideas are welcome!

[rufee]

The amount of crap you will face when installing pfSense on a virtual machine is not worth the effort + getting FreeNAS working with it. Just get a good consumer router instead.

[thunder9231]

Have two separate machines. Use one for pfsense. You can use a computer just laying around, purchase a couple gigabit nics and pair it with a switch or something. pfsense is router software designed for an old computer or a new one which ever the case may be. 

 

Then have the other machine dedicated for FreeNAS. Configure the way you want.

[DragonMatt]

I'm probably just going to buy a consumer router and use dd-wrt. However, I still need personal cloud storage. I have an old core 2 duo with 4gb ram that I can use for a storage server. I was looking into freenas with ftp earlier but I also found Tonido, I'm not really sure how either of them work so i guess I'm asking what is the best setup for a personal cloud in your opinion?

[thunder9231]

For my server, I have WIndows Server 2008 R2, because I have gotten it for free, and set up the drives for sharing so they can be mapped on the Windows machines for local and for when I'm out and about, I just flip the switch on Filezilla to access my server via FTPS and access it through the client or ES File Explorer on my Android device.

Kinda overkill for what I do with 2008 R2 but it's free!

 

You could probably do something similar with a free Linux server like Ubuntu. 

[DragonMatt]

The amount of crap you will face when installing pfSense on a virtual machine is not worth the effort + getting FreeNAS working with it. Just get a good consumer router instead.

Theoretically, If one were to put pfSense and FreeNAS on a VM approximately how much shit will be accrued?

Why is it difficult to get it working on a VM?

[wako7654]

Theoretically, If one were to put pfSense and FreeNAS on a VM approximately how much shit will be accrued?

Why is it difficult to get it working on a VM?

 

Well VM's are bridged to the interface of the host the computer,  PFSense will act as a router so it is best practice(or normal practice) for it to be connected to the public network physically(not virtually). You may run to a lot of problems such as NAT and port forwarding if you want to access your NAS from the internet. Correct configurations will avert the problem but like the other guy said it is already troublesome to configure PFSense and NAS together so it will be more troublesome. Furthermore using it on a virtual machine means it will put more load on the host CPU, you will incur load from both the host OS and the Virtual OS which is not really recommended if you plan to run it non-stop.  

 

I suggest playing around with pfsense on a virtual box and trying to install FreeNAS. Then after you get a hang of installing both of them together, install it on its own PC with two NICs 

[Dragontail]

Using Vmware ESXI host myself for VMs with a pfsense routing inbetween the LANs and DMZ(yeah got more than 1 LAN) wokring great no issues what so ever, its all about the drivers, if the host has a genereic intel nic using pfsense is never a problem. Cant say for virtualbox, but it should work.

[wako7654]

Using Vmware ESXI host myself for VMs with a pfsense routing inbetween the LANs and DMZ(yeah got more than 1 LAN) wokring great no issues what so ever, its all about the drivers, if the host has a genereic intel nic using pfsense is never a problem. Cant say for virtualbox, but it should work.

 

Well yeah like i said, with correct configurations it should work out the problem, but i dont really recommend it for someone just learning the platform.

[Dragontail]

Well yeah like i said, with correct configurations it should work out the problem, but i dont really recommend it for someone just learning the platform.

 

But its a great startingpoint for learning about VMs and vmware products if you want to use them. Just get intel nics and there are no problems actually

[DragonMatt]

Well yeah like i said, with correct configurations it should work out the problem, but i dont really recommend it for someone just learning the platform.

Why not start out balls to the wall... for me, that's the only way I learn

How would I go about setting up a personal cloud with Ubuntu? It seems easier than FreeNAS, or at least more user friendly in the long run(correct me if i'm wrong).

I think this will be my starting point, once I'm happy with my cloud I'll move on to attempting pfSense on a VM within the Ubuntu rig

[rufee]

With ubuntu you will need to mess around more to get your NAS working, but sooner or later you will get the hang of it.

Use the no gui version you will learn linux much faster.

[565465464]

I would rather use Debian because it uses almost no CPU. 

 

Setup Samba

http://www.debianhelp.co.uk/samba.htm

[l11h]

I have a old computer running linux server (could be any distro, i personally use mandriva as I had to use it for a school project so kind of used to it), and i'm running FTP service on it to access it anywhere and then Samba for the LAN shared files. It's really easy to set up, the link my MKvarner is good or you could just youtube a tutorial. It's cheap and it's good for what I need.