Learning FreeNAS Book
Learning FreeNAS
This book will show you how to work with FreeNAS and set it up for your needs. You will learn how to configure and administer a FreeNAS server in a variety of networking scenarios. You will also learn how to plan and implement RAID on the server as well as how to use Storage Area Network technologies like iSCSI. The standard FreeNAS documentation walks you through the basic configuration, but this book will tell you exactly what you should do to plan, work, and deploy FreeNAS. This book has a comprehensive troubleshooting section that will point you in the right direction whenever you need help.
Read the full Table of Contents for Learning FreeNAS
What you will learn from this book
- Understand the concepts of Network Attached Storage (NAS) and where FreeNAS server fits into your business.
- Install, configure, and upgrade the FreeNAS server.
- Deploy your NAS following best practices to plan capacity, hardware, backup, redundancy, and network infrastructure.
- Deploy FreeNAS as a file sharing, backup, streaming server by using different protocols like CIFS, NFS, FTP, RSYNC, Unison, AFP, and UPnP.
- Use FreeNAS as a bridge to Storage Area Networks by using SCSI.
- Connect to the FreeNAS server from Windows, OS X, Linux, or UPnP devices.
- Carry out common administrative tasks: add and authenticate users, rebooting and shutting down, network management, and configure FreeNAS to use DNS.
- Improve fault tolerance and drive performance by creating RAID sets.
- Explore backup options—create copies of data on a remote server or another hard drive within the FreeNAS server.
- Carry out advanced system configuration: encrypt discs, add swap space, S.M.A.R.T, and SSH access.
- Troubleshoot your FreeNAS server when faced with networking problems or RAID failures.
- Carry out basic FreeBSD administration tasks.
Approach
This book has been written from the system administrator’s perspective, tackling the topics that will be most important to help you understand FreeNAS, and get it set up as securely and quickly as possible. You will just see how to get the job done.
Who this book is written for
This book is for systems administrators who want a low cost, simple way to provide large amounts of network-attached storage. It does not assume knowledge of BSD, and will work for people using FreeNAS in any network environment.
Gary Sims
Gary Sims is a freelance Linux/FreeBSD consultant and writer from the UK and has been working with open-source software since the mid 1990s. He first saw Linux while completing his degree in Business Information Systems at Portsmouth University. Then while working for Digital Equipment Corp he came in to contact with DEC’s Ultrix and later Digital UNIX (formerly OSF/1). While developing enterprise software for DEC on its UNIX platforms he became more and convinced of the benefits of open source and open-source Unix-like operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD. After leaving DEC he became a software contractor and after moving to Romania in 2003 he became a freelance Linux/FreeBSD consultant and writer and started publishing articles for the Open Source Technology Group (owners of Linux.com and SourceForge.net). This then led to him writing his first book with Packt.
“Use FreeNAS as a bridge to Storage Area Networks by using SCSI.” should be “# Use FreeNAS as a bridge to Storage Area Networks by using iSCSI.” Look forward to reading the book. At the moment I use Ubuntu or Openfiler but I like FreeNAS a bit more.
Hi Gary,
I just bought the ebook version of your book ‘Learning Freenas’ and had a quick look through it. It’s seems to be very useful and I’ve already tweaked my freenas config based on a few points I’ve read in the book.
Unfortunately you don’t mention the DAAP service which is of interest to me. I’ve enabled it and from the logs it seems to be running and scanning the library as expected. From my Vista laptop Itunes detects the shared library however as soon as I click on the library in iTunes the shared library disappears from the UI.
Would you have any ideas as to why this is happening? or could you please point in the right direction to learning some more about this service. I did spend some hours last night on the freenas.org forum but still haven’t been able to resolve this issue.
By the way CIFS(w/ User logins), Transmission, RSYNC are all working perfectly. Many thanks
Is there any info in this book about using active directory users/groups for setting filesystem security descriptors under FreeNAS?
10x
@Dan Ionescu
Dan,
There is a section in the book that covers integration with Active Directory.
Is there any chance we will see an updated version of the book, covering FN 0.7 and the ZFS/raid-z concepts, in the near future?
Alternatively, could these could be released as a free online addition to the book?
The only thing keeping me from buying the book is the lack ZFS. 🙁
Is there an update with ZFS concepts?
Thanks,
Hi
On the rsync section does yr book cover how to set up rsync between two FREENAS on remote locations?
is there a script that the NAS will pull up the backups?
sh script that will pull up the backup
Looking for an updated version with ZFS coverage… again, one more here would buy the book in a second for ZFS docs
Saw your youtube video on Learning NAS, very nice!
could you pls provide details on mirroring freeNAS (with another freeNAS with similar structure) in another geographic location over internet as a backup.
thank you.
Love your book and site and love Freenas.
The only preblem webgui reads properly the amount of space on my freenas but windows 7 (pro) does not my two drives list 500 megs. When my freeNas box has 3 drive on 500 gigs with two partitions on have a full install of Freenas (v. 07.2.5255) and the other is made of two drives in a raid 0 (2x western digital 1 tera green).
When I tried to back up my mirrored 169 gig drive on freenas windows 7 not enough space.
any clues on how to fix this?
I would of bought this book if it had had detials on setting up/ expanding etc ZFS RAID arrays.
The main reason I’d like to set up a NAS on FREENAS is its cheap to set up a NAS with RAID by using ZFS as no expensive RAID cards are required and the cost of an 8 hard drive commercial NAS is up around $2000 with no drives included!!
I would also like to see a newer version of the book with ZFS/RAIDZ coverage. With version 8 coming soon, I think more users will be switching over to ZFS. I know I will.
Apparently no information in a useful manner exists on how to create folders for multiple users requiring login for use for example in a school enviroment.
I wonder if you can help on this matter
Thank you
Pavlos
+1 for Version 8 support and indepth ZFS coverage.
I’m a WHS convert — with the removal of DE from WHS 2011, I’m looking for a replacement NAS system with a bit more ‘oomf’ than WHS has been able to provide.
I’d buy an updated 8.0 book with ZFS info in a heartbeat!
Dave
+1 for the v8 revision…I’ll buy it.
Recently upgraded from NASLite to FreeNAS using a ZFS RAIDz file system. Should have done it a long time ago.
+1 for the v8 and ZFS subjects! (idiot/monkey’s guide would be the best!)
+1 for Version 8 support and indepth ZFS coverage.