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Backup and Replacement Windows Server
FreeNAS enables users to build network-attached-storage (NAS) on nearly any hardware platform of your choosing. Often old Windows servers, Pc's or Laptop can be reused to provide a professopn but free alternative to a standard Windows server.The FreeNAS project and software were founded in 2005 on the principle that network storage be made available to the world at no cost and unencumbered by license restrictions. The FreeNAS Project has a mature community and a team of developers dedicated to meeting that goal and providing the best open-source NAS solution on the market.
FreeNAS is so light and easy to install you can boot off USB stick enabling you to utilise old servers and PC to backup Mac's PC's or Unix/Linux machines.
and it is COMPLETELY FREE read more
If FreeNAS has one goal, it’s simplifying complex administrative tasks for as wide a user base as possible. Every aspect of a FreeNAS system is designed to be managed from a Web User Interface. From volume creation to permissions on individual shares, users can perform every task without missing a critical step or encountering a silent failure.
File sharing is what FreeNAS® does best. Every major operating system is supported with SMB/CIFS (Windows file shares), NFS (Unix file shares) and AFP (Apple File Shares) as well as FTP, iSCSI, and other methods of sharing data over the network available.
You can use this server as a direct replacement for Windows 2003 or SBS Servers
Most operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, many Linux distributions, and PC-BSD® can connect using SMB shares with little or no additional configuration needed on the client side. Most Unix-like operating systems support connecting with NFS out of the box, and free clients are widely available. AFP is primarily used by Mac OSX and is well suited for a network environment that only connects with Macintosh clients. FreeNAS® also supports Time Machine backups
Snapshots can be made on a one-off basis or scheduled as a cron job from the web interface. At any time, the entire filesystem can be rolled back to the most recent snapshot. Older snapshots can be cloned and accessed to recover data from that version of the filesystem. From the web interface, users can see how much space a particular snapshot is occupying on the volume and delete, clone, or roll back to individual snapshots as needed.
FreeNAS is the first and only open source project to offer encryption on ZFS volumes! A simple encryption option is available during volume creation. For additional security, users have the options of adding a passphrase or initializing a volume with random data. ZFS Volumes encrypted by FreeNAS still use ZFS version 28, so interoperability with other ZFS implementations is not impacted - the only restriction is that only FreeNAS and FreeBSD can import encrypted volumes.
Encrypted volumes can only be read by FreeNAS systems in possession of the master key for that volume. Encryption allows for confidence when retiring and recycling hard drives because the drives no longer need to be wiped provided the keys are
Customer Reviews:
"We are a 24/7/365 operation and cannot afford any downtime. FreeNAS has helped build our virtualization platform to this effect and has provided us with a very flexible system through with a ROI not matched by any competitor on either the Open-Source or Closed-Source market."
" heard about FreeNAS at a conference and realized it was an immediate necessity for one of my clients. They had an existing NAS system that was not being used to its potential. After I rebuilt their back-up system using FreeNAS, their workflow improved by probably 5 times what they were able to do do previously."