Which Nas OS?
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@oliveryuan said in Which Nas OS?:
@jmoore I have used FreeNAS several times and have implemented it at work. It’s rock solid and simple to use plus it has a huge support network
We do support of it and see it lose data regularly. It's awesome only when everything works perfectly, the moment they release a bug or the hardware has an issue, it's flaky as can be. Rock solid and simple are exactly what it is not. It feels rock solid and feels simple during setup and until things fail... but everything is rock solid until it fails. The difference is, fixing Ubuntu or Fedora or Illumos or FreeBSD is easy and standard once something has failed. Experts abound to help you. When FreeNAS fails, it drops you into FreeBSD (but since you are using FreeNAS, the assumption is you aren't comfortable with BSD hence the purpose of FreeNAS on top of it since it adds no functionality) and leaves you on your own, but it's a more complicated FreeBSD system than standard because of the FreeNAS cruft layered on top.
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@jkaspersen said in Which Nas OS?:
@scottalanmiller said in Which Nas OS?:
world's largest Solaris shop, we had Dtrace
well luckey you then...
i dont know when i got knowledge of the old sun os... but i started with ZFS in 14. august 2009 16:25 to be exact. I only worked onece for a semi big company once (back in 1994) .. and that was Data General... ( the one with Aviion and Clariion storage).. but that is just "old tale and long gone company".. but i have been on them All DG/UX HP/UX, SUNos/ Solaris, EP/IX, AIX, SCO and even interactive... and SMOS Supermax operating system... they had hybrid system with both motorola and MIPS in same OS... only danish people can come up with stuff like that... ( i never understood why they did it , just making trouble for you self)I got started with ZFS during the pre-release of Thumper (the hardware it was originally designed for.) We were lucky, we were under NDA so got to use ZFS and Thumper before it was on the market. Very cool stuff. Thumper was the inspiration for both the SAM-Sd systems and things like BackBlaze pods - but obviously two very different directions from there.
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@scottalanmiller what about Synology?
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@krisleslie said in Which Nas OS?:
@scottalanmiller what about Synology?
If you buy a Synology and use it that is fine. You don't install the Synology OS on your own gear.
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@JaredBusch that's true, but you know there is a niche small market of people running the open version of the Synology OS on intel equipment. I don't think I could do that for production, at home maybe for kicks and giggles. I will honestly say from a standpoint of deploying the Synology platform, it did "just work" after reading TFM. Never really have issues. The biggest issue I have is when your device is outdated, support will NOT be there to hold your hand. Mark my words!
I guess on one hand 10 years later I still see SAM's logic, you are introducing risk and potentially a single point of failure. Most people just buy 1 Nas (raised my hand) and while it's powerful in that I can add rsync and other goodies to it, there really the same apps I can get from a stripped down linux. At home I use the Turnkey File Server/NAS and honestly it works better than my Windows Server. It doesn't hog anything. Have been considering ditching the Windows file server completely at home.
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@JaredBusch so JB I picked up a break/fix client from my partner MSP and they had a Synology running (well not running since it was unplugged.....) and the first thing I did honestly after evaluating their environment for 2 servers well past EOL and 1-2bay Synology nas was ordered 3 new servers so 1 can be an app server the other 2 can handle backup properly. I told the client I would feel more comfortable in a modern, stable environment.
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@krisleslie not going to second guess hat you recommended, but on the point of this thread, I do like the simplicity of the Synology NAS for clients. because I know it is easier to hand off to someone else.
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That I can't lie it's pretty simple. Once it's setup. It takes just one evening. If the guys that made TurnKey Linux would change their FileServer to use one of the modern interfaces, I honestly wouldn't need to go anywhere.
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@krisleslie said in Which Nas OS?:
I guess on one hand 10 years later I still see SAM's logic, you are introducing risk and potentially a single point of failure.
That's not what I was talking about. A Synology is a NAS, not an NAS OS. It's NAS OS that I warn against because it's conceptually a bad idea. NASs themselves are fine.
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@JaredBusch said in Which Nas OS?:
@krisleslie not going to second guess hat you recommended, but on the point of this thread, I do like the simplicity of the Synology NAS for clients. because I know it is easier to hand off to someone else.
Yup, we use real Synology (hardware appliances) all the time. Easy to price, easy to acquire, easy to support, and easy to hand off. They are great.
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@Dashrender said in Which Nas OS?:
I could have sworn that @scottalanmiller has been against at least FreeNAS - just use a Linux OS and manage the shares. What value does FreeNAS/ReadyNAS, etc add on top of Fedora/Ubuntu/CentOS, etc?
I haven't actually used FreeNAS yet but from what I can tell it has a nice GUI aimed at using the system as a NAS, similar to something like Synology with its DiskStation Manager. I feel like if you use something like FreeBSD then its going to be more manual management with no easy way to do what you want to do - unless you're really good with Linux.
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@dave247 said in Which Nas OS?:
@Dashrender said in Which Nas OS?:
I could have sworn that @scottalanmiller has been against at least FreeNAS - just use a Linux OS and manage the shares. What value does FreeNAS/ReadyNAS, etc add on top of Fedora/Ubuntu/CentOS, etc?
I haven't actually used FreeNAS yet but from what I can tell it has a nice GUI aimed at using the system as a NAS, similar to something like Synology. I feel like if you use something like FreeBSD then its going to be more manual management with no easy to manage interface so you can do what you want to do - unless you're really good with Linux.
The point is you never run a NAS OS on your own gear. You run a NAS OS only on the NAS vendor’s stack.
Anything else is over complicating the job and introducing huge failure domains.
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@dave247 said in Which Nas OS?:
@Dashrender said in Which Nas OS?:
I could have sworn that @scottalanmiller has been against at least FreeNAS - just use a Linux OS and manage the shares. What value does FreeNAS/ReadyNAS, etc add on top of Fedora/Ubuntu/CentOS, etc?
I haven't actually used FreeNAS yet but from what I can tell it has a nice GUI aimed at using the system as a NAS, similar to something like Synology with its DiskStation Manager. I feel like if you use something like FreeBSD then its going to be more manual management with no easy way to do what you want to do - unless you're really good with Linux.
EXCEPT, it doesn't provide that nice GUI when it matters, only when it doesn't. In order to use FreeNAS you have to know even more BSD than if you'd not used FreeNAS and used BSD directly.
Everything that makes it "feel" like it is easy to use, actually does the opposite. It's LESS easy to use, requires more skill and more knowledge and is harder to get support than regular BSD, which has a fraction of the knowledge and support out there as Linux.
So think orders of magnitude worse.
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@dave247 said in Which Nas OS?:
I feel like if you use something like FreeBSD then its going to be more manual management with no easy way to do what you want to do
That's the false marketing that they want you to think. They prey on people getting sucked in to the pretty pictures and seeing the easy tasks that don't need a GUI having a GUI and hoping that they will ignore that the hard tasks where you'd actually hope that the GUI will save you, don't have a GUI. Plus it takes something really simple and makes it more complex, and more prone to failure (FreeBSD is famous for CAUSING dataloss!) Storage is not a place to be set up to need extra skills, nor a place for instability.
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@scottalanmiller said in Which Nas OS?:
@dave247 said in Which Nas OS?:
I feel like if you use something like FreeBSD then its going to be more manual management with no easy way to do what you want to do
That's the false marketing that they want you to think. They prey on people getting sucked in to the pretty pictures and seeing the easy tasks that don't need a GUI having a GUI and hoping that they will ignore that the hard tasks where you'd actually hope that the GUI will save you, don't have a GUI. Plus it takes something really simple and makes it more complex, and more prone to failure (FreeBSD is famous for CAUSING dataloss!) Storage is not a place to be set up to need extra skills, nor a place for instability.
Yeah to me the easiest things to work with are the tools that give me the most flexibility and options.
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@scottalanmiller So that usually means a cli or just a full OS. BSD is nice to use and does its job well. Wish I could find a solid Solaris fork that was still being developed.
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@scottalanmiller Hey Scotty! Yes, I know you meant the NAS OS (that we can install) vs Vendor + Hardware/Software/Support Stack. Gotcha we on same page!
I honestly wish Synology would make a Linux distro
their stuff is sexy can't lie. But I think what I was referring to is really the "niche" market of people doing Synology OS (the open-source version) that is basically the same thing as loading FreeNAS. I haven't done it but was thinking of tinkering with it at home for sh*ts & giggles. Same with FreeNAS. But at work I started off with Synology, and honestly after all the learning and listening from you Scott over the years, it's like I kinda don't even need Synology I would rather just have another server with a proper virtualization stack. The only thing I'm missing out on is really the remote backup features from XCP-NG. I would probably like to send a feature request for them to maybe consider using like Amazon or Azure as a backup point. But I recall MSP360 can do the heavy lifting. -
@jmoore said in Which Nas OS?:
Wish I could find a solid Solaris fork that was still being developed.
I mean, Illumos has been idle for seven hours now.
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@krisleslie said in Which Nas OS?:
But I think what I was referring to is really the "niche" market of people doing Synology OS (the open-source version) that is basically the same thing as loading FreeNAS.
They'd fall into the same boat. A system that depends on support, whose function is support, layered onto something else. Synology is a great product. Remove the support and it's a nice looking, but worthless GUI layer.
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@scottalanmiller said in Which Nas OS?:
@jmoore said in Which Nas OS?:
Wish I could find a solid Solaris fork that was still being developed.
I mean, Illumos has been idle for seven hours now.
Ok I am going to try it with OmniOS.
