FreeNAS vs OpenMediaVault

Cerulean

Cerulean

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Jul 27, 2006
Messages
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So, what's the difference? Why should I chose one over the other? =)
 
FreeNAS sucks. Never tried OpenMediaVault.

However I was trying out FreeNAS when v8 was in beta. Maybe its improved.
 
I'd be interested in the response as well. I have a FreeNAS 7 box and just built an 8.0.2 one to take over duties. Tried OpenFiler but didn't like the way it handled certain configuration/management tasks not to mention it crapped out on my hardware with a commit failure.

After a quick look at the features and FAQ, OpenMediaVault does not appear to support ZFS or iSCSI which are two things I am using. Other than that it appears to have all the standard stuff.
 
I've tried FreeNAS 7 which seemed to have some limitations. FreeNAS 8 still seems a bit beta but it is updated a lot, and every time I find a limitation or bug it's fixed fairly quickly and it runs off a USB stick quite well. Also upgrading between versions seems to work well. The down side for me is that it is slower (only by a little) than Openfiler and OpenMediaVault. FreeNAS also has ZFS support.

OpenMediaVault is really slick, looks nice, is fast and has a great plugin system. The downside is I haven't succeeded in getting it to boot off a USB drive (as FreeNAS does) it also doesn't have iSCSI out of the box (which is something I look for on these things). While it can install to a USB drive by the looks of things there is no 'embedded' operation that is to say that it thrashes the USB device and on a USB key this will lead to failures quickly vs a HDD. I really like OpenMediaVault and would hands down recommend it if the 'embedded' mode was as full featured as FreeNAS.

Openfiler for me is a bust, it doesn't seem to be able to run from a USB key due to it seeming more like a full Linux distro. I don't like the way it handles partitioning and disk allocation. On the plus side it does seem to work well speed wise and is reliable.

Just my thoughts, hope that helps.
 
FreeNAS is solid product, just a lot of people make the mistake of making their entire drive available to the operating system which it will not see once installed.

So install FreeNAS on one drive then after install add 2 3 or 4 drives to it then you can create your File system. I run FreeNAS in Raid 10 ( two raid 5 mirrored). Its fast and secure.

Now if you want a Media server look at Mybuntu and make sure you read the requirements,.
 
Sean.hulbert said:
FreeNAS is solid product, just a lot of people make the mistake of making their entire drive available to the operating system which it will not see once installed.

So install FreeNAS on one drive then after install add 2 3 or 4 drives to it then you can create your File system. I run FreeNAS in Raid 10 ( two raid 5 mirrored). Its fast and secure.

Now if you want a Media server look at Mybuntu and make sure you read the requirements,.
Click to expand...

Never have any issues with My FreeNas box, but then again the hdd's are storage and the USB thumb drive is the os :)
 
Sean.hulbert said:
I run FreeNAS in Raid 10 ( two raid 5 mirrored)
Click to expand...

Not to quibble here but RAID 10 is NOT a mirror of two RAID 5 arrays (what a holy nightmare that would be). RAID 5 is basically a stripe (like RAID 0) with parity (where the third drive comes in). RAID 10 is a mirror (RAID 1) then a stripe (RAID 0). Recovering data from a RAID 5 is done by using the parity info and the remaining block of data to calculate the missing data block. This is why rebuilding a RAID 5 takes a long time. You rebuild a missing data block with just one read in RAID 10.
 
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