Quick and easy NAS

I’ve been looking for a cheap NAS solution for a while now. Portable hard drives are available but I didn’t want to do a shared drive. I wanted an actual network storage system that wouldn’t cut too deep into my wallet. Most of the ones I found were over $130 and they only allowed one hard drive. What if I wanted to expand it later on?

Some people suggested I just install a Linux/BSD distro with the bare minimum programs (e.g. no GUI). That sounded like a good solution considering I had an older desktop that I wasn’t using sitting at my house. The OS I decided to go with was FreeNAS 0.671 which is based on FreeBSD 6.1 (stable).

The system
The computer FreeNAS was installed on is a Dell Optiplex GX260. The specs are:

The system is a little over kill but it’s one that I was using for Linux test. I don’t use it for testing anymore so it made a perfect candidate for a NAS.

Installation
Installation is all text based so don’t expect any fancy GUI. A GUI isn’t really necessary because the installation prompts are easy to follow. How easy was it?

  1. Boot from the CD
  2. Choose option 7
  3. Choose option 2
    • This option installs 2 partitions. One partition for the FreeNAS data and one for storage (both formatted UFS).
  4. Type the mount name for the CD-ROM (acd0 for me)
  5. Type the mount name for the hard drive (ad0 for me)
  6. Choose option 5 (reboot) after installation.
  7. Remove the CD during POST.

That’s it, just seven steps that took maybe 2 minutes. The FreeNAS install is less than 30 MB so that left over 159 GB of storage space.

Configuration
The first thing I did after installation completed was configure the network settings (Option 1 on the boot screen). By default, the IP address assigned was 192.168.1.250. I already had a machine on my network with that IP so I changed it to a different IP outside the DHCP range.

Next, I had to assign a network interface (Option 1). The first set of instructions were to type the name of the NIC connected to the network. The NIC that was connected to the network was shown as connected so it was easy to choose the name. After that, it asked me to type in the name of the optional second NIC. I just hit Enter because there wasn’t any second NIC to configure.

The system was shut down because of the network interface change. Only a reboot was required but I wanted a headless system. I disconnected everything except for the power cord and the network cable before turning the system back on.

Web Administration
The default login for FreeNAS is admin (username) and freenas (password). It is highly recommended that you change this information in order to prevent unauthorized changes to the system. This was easily accomplished by going to General Setup located on the left of the admin page under System.

General Setup is also where you change the hostname, domain/workgroup name, add DNS servers, enable HTTPS and set your time zone as well as a couple of other settings. The LAN link, located under Interfaces, is where you can change the IP address, assign a gateway IP (required for outbound connections like time updates), MTU speed, network speed and duplexing.

You will need to add the disk (hard drive) and a mount point in order to utilize storage. This can be accomplished using the Management and Mount Point links under Disks. Since I only had the one hard drive, I just added the drive and then mounted partition 2 (partition 1 is the FreeNAS OS). No formatting was required because the partition was formatted during installation. FreeNAS does support RAID 0, 1 & 5 if you have more than one hard drive in the system (3 or more for RAID 5).

I enabled CIFS, enabled Local User authentication and added a local group and username. I didn’t want anonymous access because I sometimes have friends over with their laptops and there are some files they just don’t need to get into.

The laptop I regularly use now has a mapped drive to the share located on the NAS. There isn’t any lag when I read from or write to the drive. All my music and backups are being stored on the NAS so that frees up space on my system.

Conclusion
I highly recommend FreeNAS if you have a spare PC laying around and want a NAS. It only took about 15 minutes to install and configure the system. It is very easy to administer thanks to the web interface. Plus, it is based on the rock solid foundation of FreeBSD which is known for stability and speed.

Documentation is ok but there are some parts that are incorrect. The incorrect information will not hamper setting up the system as they are minor details (e.g. wrong example IP). The user documentation is a draft so it will most likely be corrected by the time FreeNAS 1.0 is released.

FreeNAS screenshots

20.Jul.06 Articles, Networking, Operating Systems

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One Response to “Quick and easy NAS”

  1. CypherXero | July 20th, 2006 at 6:27 pm

    FreeNAS is awesome, I installed it in just a couple minutes on an old computer of mine that had two 30GB HDs. From the web interface, I was able to format, partition, and mount the drives, and from there, share the drives with samba.

    It was simple, lightweight, and fast. Just the way a NAS should be.

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