Windows Home Server or FreeNAS

Question

I have a relatively small home network and host quite a few lan parties. I feel the need to have a proper NAS solution setup.

I want to centralize backups instead of using external drives. I also want the ability to have a centralized network share.

It seems that both products would suite my basic needs well.

I think addons and other features are quite interesting, and would love to play with them. I would like the ability to run a http server so I can drag and drop a file to a folder and quickly link a friend a file that I want them to view.

Major factors that are leading me to Windows Home Server is its ease of extending storage. If my share fills up, I can simply add a drive and I have more room. With FreeNAS, I am not sure what I'd do. Reorganize my files?

Any input is greatly appreciated.

Solution 1

I would have to recomend Windows Home Server for easy of use and functionality (such that my non-technical wife is very happy to manually start a backup of her latop or restore a single file from a given point in time).

If there are specific features or information you are interested in, just leave a comment and I can try to answer any questions as best I can.

Solution 2

Personally, I use FreeNAS, because the only thing I'm interested in is massive storage. I have 6x1TB drives, and it allowed me to use it as an iSCSI target.

Sounds to me like you're going to want to use Windows Home Server. FreeNAS is a bit more hardcore, but for that very reason it might not do what you want.

(p.s. you're bound to get a dozen people on here telling you to use OpenFiler because it's somehow better than FreeNAS. They're entitled to their opinion but I quite like FreeNAS).

Solution 3

FreeNAS... only because the latest RC can do ZFS. :) Everybody else makes good points and you can argue forever, but ZFS is the best file system to have for a NAS, bar none.

Comments

[Admin]

Do you use indexing much? That is something FreeNAS will definitely not have. It is my understanding that FreeNAS can. Do not really have many questions. Serving files is kind of boring.

[Admin]

iSCSI does seem really neatl actually almost a must. Can I share a single iSCSI drive, or share parts of it? I am not opposed for FreeNAS. I use pfsense as an embedded solution, one of the best pieces of software I have ever used. My only concern with FreeNAS is the ability to extend storage with relative ease and how to automate backups. Maybe I can use the NAS as my main "pictures" drive....

[MrGigu]

Correct, FreeNAS does not have native indexing of its files.

[MrGigu]

I love PFSense too. Anyway, with iSCSI you can create virtual images on your disk and mount them as iSCSI extents. So yes, you can share part of your disk as iSCSI - but ONLY as iSCSI. It's like a VMWare Disk Image. If you mount it you can use it as a normal disk, but otherwise it's just a binary file on your drive. Extending storage is very easy, you just add a new disk and mount it, same as you would in WHS. However, when it comes to backups, it doesn't have any native backup utilities. I use the iSCSI functionality along with the native Windows backup for backing up my files.

[Admin]

What is so great about ZFS. Seems to be a big deal!

[churnd]

opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/whatis Might not be your cup of tea though.