Setting up your first NAS
with FreeNAS

What to Expect:

Introduction to FreeNAS

How to Install

Doing it Right

Making it Work

FreeNAS is a Free and Open Source Embedded Operating System For
Network Attached Storage

What You Need

4GB USB Flash Drive

x64 Computer with at Least 8GB RAM

CD Drive (for CD installation only)

At Least Two (Identical) Hard Drives

Get FreeNAS

FreeNAS.org/download

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Choose 64-bit File

ISO file if you have CD drive, IMG.XZ if not

Install FreeNAS

1. Burn ISO to a CD

2. Make sure your PC boots from the CD

3. Follow the instructions to install

First Time Setup

Remove the CD

Boot the PC from the USB

Get an IP address

Welcome to FreeNAS

Users and Groups

Planning your Volume

All disks should be as close as possible in size

You can't add disks to ZFS RAID groups, only stripe new groups together

ZFS Raid Options

Mirror or Stripe of Mirrors gives great performance, but loses 50% of capacity.

RAID-Z, RAID-Z2, and RAID-Z3 use one, two and three disks of parity respectively. Good for capacity and redundancy.

Don't use a hardware RAID controller, ZFS works best with direct disk access.

Volume Creation

Dataset Features

Datasets may each have different levels of compression. LZ4 is a good choice.

Choose the share type you plan to use the dataset with.

Quotas reserve space for this dataset or prevent it from using more than a given amount.

Deduplication is for advanced users only.

Permissions

Sharing is Caring

CIFS (Windows) Shares work with most operating systems.

NFS (UNIX) Shares are a popular choice in enterprise environments.

AFP (Apple) Shares work well with all-Mac environments.

Thanks!

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