FreeNAS Mini (Diskless) - 4 Bay Compact NAS Storage with ZFS. 8-Core 2.4GHz Processor, 16GB RAM

Summary: Cutting edge, robust storage solution and server for those willing to learn. Not recommended for users who just want to plug in a drive and not deal with it (I wouldn't recommend that approach anyway, but to each his own).Hardware: they are not charging much more than it would cost to buy the parts yourself-- and of course it's fully assembled and tested with the OS installed. You get a motherboard that DIY people use and recommend with a great processor (8-core Intel® Atom™ C2750), 16MB of Samsung server RAM, excellent power supply, and quality case. Drive installation: They do not include instructions other than to remove the plastic trays mounted in the drive carriers, before inserting the drive. However it was easy to install the drives. Each tray has a circular button on the right side. I pressed this button and the front flap of the carrier opened like a door. At that point I pulled out the carrier and plastic tray assembly. I replaced the tray with a drive, and *making sure the front flap was still open*, re-inserted the carrier-drive assembly in the box. Then, I closed the front flap.Software: Running the FreeNAS OS, which is based on the FreeBSD OS, and the ZFS file system. It's worth spending a few hours reading about these technologies if you are considering purchasing a FreeNAS box. Start with the ZFS Wikipedia entry. Bottom line is now your native file system/OS supports many advanced features such as periodic snapshots, data integrity, and compression. Want to set things up so you can recover versions of files up to one month back? Not a problem. Since I am new to the ecosystem, it wouldn't do it justice for me to attempt to describe everything you get. Perhaps what I like best is the "dataset" scheme. You don't partition volumes and allocate space in ZFS as in other file systems-- you make datasets: "Permissions, compression, deduplication, and quotas can be set on a per-dataset basis, allowing more granular control over access to storage data. A dataset is similar to a folder in that you can set permissions; it is also similar to a filesystem in that you can set properties such as quotas and compression as well as create snapshots."Advanced Capabilities: The box has the usual standard services available, easily switched on/off from the web interface (Rsync, ssh, FTP, CIFS (Windows drives), NFS, and much more. If you want your box to run other things, like Minecraft servers or databases, you can do that to with a little work. FreeNAS OS supports two types of Jails, the FreeBSD containerization scheme. You can make a regular FreeBSD jail, or a phpVirtualBox. I am also told Freenas version 10, coming soon, will support Docker jails. For now, if you want to use Docker, you must create a VM with phpVirtualBox first.When I had questions, I was able to get multiple answers on the FreeNas forums within a few hours.This box lets me geek out and have superhuman powers. Everything is fully open. I had used an Iomega NAS system the past few years-- did not appreciate all the closed proprietary things going on there, and I eventually lost all my data anyway. I couldn't bring myself to trust yet another proprietary solution, especially with all the bad reviews going around about products from formerly trustworthy product lines. I'm glad the FreeNAS people are selling boxes like this. It gives us a chance to learn and use FreeNAS without having to build our own box.

UPDATE 12/27/2018: Unfortunately after two years this unit is seemingly completely dead, i've tried to diagnose what the problem might be but the motherboard must be bricked because I can't get anything out of it. For this price, I thought the quality would be a lot better, i've tried to reach out to support several times with no response.------------------------------------------------------------------------------This thing is a powerhouse for a NAS system, but at a pretty hefty price point. I put in 4 x 4TB Western Digital Reds. It is incredibly solid and the highest quality build in a NAS that i've ever seen. Read/Write speeds are impressive over dual gigabit NICs in load balance mode. I'm fairly savvy and this was tough to setup,Overall super reliable and I would highly recommend!

The FreeNAS Mini is a wonderful product for someone who is willing to put some time and energy into making the most of it. On the positive side, it's a very capable piece of hardware – far more so than the average NAS device. The open source operating system sees continuous free improvements with an underlying ZFS file system that's fast, reliable, and very flexible. The snapshot model is a great way to provide basic security against accidental deletions and overwritten files.All that said, it's not a simple plug-and-play device. Basic administration tasks can be done with a serviceable HTML interface but it relies heavily on understanding UNIX conventions and you can reasonably expect to need to use the FreeBSD shell from time to time. Not surprisingly, the included documentation is sketchy at best. The quick start guide states that a VGA display is an absolute requirement for setup, which is thankfully not true. It also says nothing about how drives are removed and inserted, which is pretty fundamental.I'm very happy with my purchase but anyone interested in the product should know what they're getting into.