SMBUP NAS4FREE HOW TO
SMBUP NAS4FREE SOFTWARE

Unlike traditional file systems, which reside on single devices and require a volume manager to use more than one device, ZFS filesystems are built on top of virtual storage pools called “zpools.” A zpool is constructed of virtual devices, or “vdevs,” which are themselves constructed of block devices: files, hard disk partitions, or entire disks, with the latter being the recommended usage. Now its time to create a ZFS “vdev” or virtual device.

We’ve added our two 2TB hard disks and formatted them. Log in to the NAS4Free GUI (“Graphical User Interface”), navigate to Disks->Management, and select the “+” icon.

The first thing we need to do is logically add the two new disks to NAS4Free so the system acknowledges their existence, permitting further configuration on them.

SMBUP NAS4FREE SOFTWARE

The software versions used in this post were as follows: All steps involved assume that the two hard drives have been installed correctly and are recognized by the BIOS, and that NAS4Free is installed and operational. We’ll also discuss a few post-install activities to help maintain your ZFS mirror. To help explain the steps involved, we’ll use two new 2TB (Terabyte) SATA 3.0 hard disks, along with the ZFS utilities available within NAS4Free, to create and configure our ZFS mirror. If one disk becomes defective, the remaining disk still contains all the data. In RAID 1, data is written identically to two disk drives, thereby producing a “mirrored” set.

SMBUP NAS4FREE HOW TO

This post will describe how to setup a simple, yet resilient, ZFS-based RAID 1 (ZFS mirror) in NAS4Free. ZFS is implemented as open-source software, licensed under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL). The features of ZFS include protection against data corruption, support for high storage capacities, snapshots and clones, continuous integrity checking and automatic repair.

The ZFS (“Zetabyte File System”) is a combined file system and logical volume manager designed by Sun Microsystems. NAS4Free code and documentation are released under the Simplified BSD License. NAS4Free can be installed on Compact Flash or USB flash drive, hard disk or booted into a “LiveCD” environment. Support for ZFS, Software RAID (0,1,5), disk encryption, S.M.A.R.T, email reports, CIFS FTP, NFS, TFTP, AFP, RSYNC, Unison, iSCSI, HAST, CARP, Bridge, UPnP, and Bittorent, are among its many features – all configurable through its GUI interface. NAS4free is an open source NAS (“Network Attached Storage”) platform based on FreeBSD that supports file sharing across Windows, Apple, and UNIX-like systems.

Smbup nas4free