Comments on: Cheap home server options https://dfarq.homeip.net/cheap-home-server-options/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=cheap-home-server-options David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more Tue, 24 Apr 2018 21:25:45 +0000 hourly 1 By: Dave Farquhar https://dfarq.homeip.net/cheap-home-server-options/#comment-44991 Tue, 24 Apr 2018 21:25:45 +0000 https://dfarq.homeip.net/?p=17196#comment-44991 In reply to Shirley Marquez.

Good point, I’d forgotten about FreeNAS. Thanks for pointing that out. I assume it prefers Intel NICs like Pfsense does, is that the case?

]]> By: Shirley Marquez https://dfarq.homeip.net/cheap-home-server-options/#comment-44990 Tue, 24 Apr 2018 16:45:15 +0000 https://dfarq.homeip.net/?p=17196#comment-44990 If you’re setting up a server specifically as storage, FreeNAS is another OS option worth looking at. It’s a turnkey network attached storage (NAS) server based on FreeBSD, and offers the advantage of using the super-robust ZFS file system by default. The developers sell pre-packaged FreeNAS servers (that’s how they make money) but you can also install it on most PCs. I run mine on an older desktop PC that slid down my personal food chain, but it should also work well on the server hardware you recommend.

About the only catch is that it’s fairly hungry for RAM because ZFS is like that. 8GB is the recommended minimum and 16GB or more is better. One other quirk is that you can’t boot it from the storage drives. The usual way of handling that is to use a couple of cheap USB sticks as the boot drives – a couple because you normally use a RAID 0 pair for that.

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