Best NAS OS + Configuration?

Sounds Good

Hey Guys,

Setting up my VMWare storage and general storage with 6 TB in RAID 5. What is the best NAS OS and configuration to use?

I'm thinking FreeNAS with NFS or ZFS

Also can I expand my storage once after I set it up? I'll have 3 x 3TB WD Reds going in at the moment. But may want to add more later on.

Which OS/Configuration is better for VMWare Lab?
Which OS/Configuration is better for Home Backup/File Server?

Thanks

ptilsen

iSCSI is the way to go for a VMware lab. NFS would be fine for backups and such, but since you're labbing VMware you might as well do iSCSI.

Use whatever OS you are comfortable with. FreeNAS should work fine. Windows Server 2008 and on work well enough, too. I recall OpenFiler being popular at one point, perhaps still.

Whether you can expand a volume within the OS will depend on the OS and the hardware. Some RAID implementations will let you add disks and present the entire virtual disk as larger to the OS. Most desktop hardware won't do this, AFAIK. You can generally stripe or RAID within the OS, if at a performance cost. I don't think you'll be able to expand an iSCSI LUN after adding drives, regardless of the OS and hardware. Not sure on NFS. Admittedly, it has been a while since I've configured any of it.

Sounds Good

Is there a way to separate the volume logically so that 3TBs are iSCSI and 3TB are NFS?

ptilsen

Yes. LUNs and NFS shares needn't be an entire volume. You may size them arbitrarily.