FreeNAS has been listed in the top ten at Best Open Source Software Awards (BOSSIE) 2010 in the networking tools category. Other winners are the Hyperic HQ and OpenNMS monitoring solutions, the Vyatta router Linux and Cacti, another monitoring application.
See FreeNAS listed here: http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source/bossie-awards-2010-the-best-open-source-networking-software-153¤t=5&last=10#slideshowTop
Related links: Best Open Source Software Awards 2010
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Yesterday iXsystems released another internal/experimental snapshot of FreeNAS 0.8. I was able to download the source and build this latest developer preview version and now I am able to post the first screenshot of the new FreeNAS 0.8 web user interface:
Obviously there is more work to be done, but iXsystems and the team there are working hard to get FreeNAS 0.8 finished.
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Warner Losh from iXsystems has kindly send me a disk image of the first FreeNAS 0.8 developer build. The guys at iXsystems have done a great job so far and the core of FreeNAS has been successfully ported to FreeBSD 8.1.
A basic web GUI is up and running and things are starting to take shape. I am working with Warner to try and get some screen shots for you.
If the current rate of progress continues there should be a more general preview build available in the next couple of weeks with the ability to configure the network, disks, filesystems, NFS and SAMBA from the web GUI.
Warner is hoping to do weekly snapshots and I will try and blog about the updates as then come.
admin FreeNAS Releases, News
iXsystems has uploaded a snapshot of their new FreeBSD 8.1-based FreeNAS.
This snapshot is for developers only. It is not functionally complete yet, and there are likely many rough edges.
If you are interested in playing with it you will need to download the code and build it yourself. You can find the code in SVN and here is the accompanying README.
The new FreeNAS is based on nanoBSD and builds for 32 and 64 bit machines, but building a 32 bit image on a 64 bit installation is currently broken.
Related links:
FreeNAS: iXsystems’ FreeNAS snapshot
admin FreeNAS Releases, News
‘yoyojazz’ has posted a review of the Learning FreeNAS book on Amazon.com.
In it he says:
I picked up Learning FreeNAS book about 6 days ago and I could not put it down! The book wastes no time and gets to the point fast!
Gary has an amazing ability to explain things clearly. I had no trouble being able to do some of the most complex configurations after the first read! (By day 3 I had a confidence in FreeNAS and a strong understanding of the technology that would oftaken me weeks to acquire!)
What is evidently clear from the book is that Gary has a passion for FreeNAS technology and he explains it so well. The book is well divided so information was placed in the perfect sections and with his website all the latest developments within FreeNAS are reported.
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Some more details are starting to emerge about what will appear in FreeNAS 0.8:
Planned major features:
- Development on FreeBSD RELENG_8. Release, depending on timeframe may be based on a RELENG_8 snapshot or 8.1-RELEASE
- Migrate off m0n0wall
- Migrate GUI to django
- Add support for ada and ahci SATA drivers
- Add optional SoftUpdates + Journaling support to UFS2 filesystems
- Migration path/tool for previous releases and configurations
- Preservation of all existing features of the current FreeNAS release
- Refactor FreeNAS build system to allow building FreeNAS without affecting the host environment
- Non-Blocking Features
Possible other features
- FreeNAS package support. Binary one click installs that modify the GUI dynamically.
I am sure this list will evolve and you can keep an eye on the current developments here: http://freenas.org/roadmap
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Recently I wrote about the plans to move FreeNAS from FreeBSD to Linux. The reception was mixed, some saying it didn’t matter, some mentioned that the lack of ZFS support was a real problem.
Today Olivier Cochard-Labbé has made a great announcement, FreeNAS will live on and production ready ZFS support will be added with the upgrade to FreeBSD 8.0. At the same time a new Linux version of FreeNAS will be created called OpenMediaVault!
Olivier explained it like this: FreeNAS needs some big modification to remove its present limitations (with one of the biggest being the lack of support for add-ons/plugins). We think that a full-rewrite of the FreeNAS base is needed. Therefore, we will take 2 different paths:
- Volker will create a new project called “‘OpenMediaVault” based on a
GNU/Linux and use all his experience acquired with all those nights and week-ends spent improving FreeNAS during the last 2 years. He will still
continue to work on FreeNAS (and try to share his time with these two
projects).
- And, a great surprise: iXsystems (http://www.ixsystems.com/), a company specialising in professional FreeBSD systems has offered to take FreeNAS under its wing as an open source community driven project. This means that they will use their professionals FreeBSD developers to better FreeNAS! Their manpower will permit a full-rewriting of FreeNAS.
Olivier also added that he will personally come back to actively working on FreeNAS and begin to upgrade it to FreeBSD 8.0 (which is “production ready” for ZFS).
This is brilliant news all round and I think Volker and Olivier should make sure that the two projects share as much code as possible. Also I think iXsystems should be congratulated for their support of FreeNAS.
admin News
Harryd has blogged about the future of FreeNAS and it looks like the future is Linux not FreeBSD.
Harrdy has gleaned this information from this forum thread
In short… FreeNAS 0.8 will be based on Debian GNU/Linux! Volker (the core developer) started an intermediate project called CoreNAS. FreeNAS 0.8 will be based on that.
Here is a short list of pros by Volker:
- Text and graphical installer that can be customized. This means no hand written install scripts anymore which causes some problems in FreeNAS
- WOL works in Linux
- lmsensor – A WORKING sensor framework which is a really needed feature in FreeNAS to check the CPU/MB temps and fan speeds
- Better Samba performance
- Ability to implement HA features
- System can be updated via ‘apt-get’ or any other deb package manager
- Better driver support
- Maybe ‘ZFS’ over FUSE (there is already one commercial product available that uses this feature)
- NFS4
ZFS
The really big problem is ZFS… If it is Linux under the hood or FreeBSD it really doesn’t make that much different to the end user, but and it is a big but, Linux doesn’t have (and can’t have due to licensing issues) ZFS and really running ZFS under FUSE is not a real option.
Is it time for someone else to take up the development of FreeNAS where 0.7 and Volker left off?
admin News
The NVD (National Vulnerability Database) has issued two security alerts for FreeNAS.
1. Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in FreeNAS before 0.69.2 allows remote attackers to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via unknown vectors.
2. Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the WebGUI in FreeNAS before 0.7RC1 allows remote attackers to hijack the authentication of users for unspecified requests via unknown vectors.
If your FreeNAS is in anyway connected to the Internet it is recommended that you upgrade. If your FreeNAS is on a secure LAN then these issues will probably not affect you.
Related links:
National Vulnerability Database (NVD) National Vulnerability Database (CVE-2009-2739)
National Vulnerability Database (NVD) National Vulnerability Database (CVE-2009-2738)
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Eric Kie of the network0.org blog has written a review of my book Learning FreeNAS and I glad to say that he likes it!
Here are a few excerpts from this review: I was given the chance to review Learning FreeNAS by Gary Sims. As any good geek, I like to know the nuts and bolts of the OS I’m running. Gary Sims has delievered on this expectation. I think this book would be excellent for an intermediate user who has built their own computer before and has spare hardware laying around or some capability to run FreeNAS in a virtual machine as it is an excellent way to learn about FreeNAS.
Learning FreeNAS is also full of good pointers such as capacity planning (you can never have too much disk space!) and backup strategies (such as building 2 FreeNAS servers to mirror each other) to consider when you are building your NAS. It also goes into helping you understand drive types such as IDE, SATA, and SCSI and the various RAID Levels (0,1,5,6,10) and when it is appropriate to use each. Gary also points out the networking options that exist within FreeNAS and which ones will yield the best results.
As a conclusion Eric writes:
I would definitely recommend buying this book if you are looking to build or test FreeNAS as it is a clear and conscise guide to learning and implementing FreeNAS. Gary has done a terrific job in detailing all the features included in FreeNAS.
You can read the full review here: Learning FreeNAS: A Review
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