FreeNAS

Storage liberated!

Features

ZFS
- Replication
- Data integrity
- Encryption
- Snapshots
Easy web manager
Jailed plugins
Lots more!

ZFS

Automatic striping across devices
Fault-tolerant / self healing
Copy-on-write (COW)/ snapshots
Machine independent
Volume manager

ZFS COW

On write, copy block and write to the copy
When copy finishes, pointers are updated to reference block copy + freshly written data
Want snapshots?

ZFS Snapshots

COW allows for a few different kinds of "snapshots" to be created:

snapshots: point in time reference to a set of blocks.
clones: filesystem that references blocks at a point in time.

Think of clones like a directory that contains old data symlinked in.

ZFS Self Healing

Every block has a 256-bit checksum associated with it.
Validated every read.
Data can be healed from another copy if checksums do not match.
scrub reads everything, should be used regularly on low access data!

ZFS Partitions?

We don't need no stinking partitions?

vdev: files, hard drive partitions or entire disks.
- Usage of entire drive is recommended as it simplifies things greatly.
zpool: a collection of one or more vdevs (think of a zvol as a raw disk device).
datasets: chop up a zpool to allow differing permissions, quotas and compression per dataset.

Web Manager

The web manager covers a very broad range of tasks

Word of caution: The web ui does not use https by default. Only access it from a trusted network during initial setup!

Jailed Plugins

Utilizes FreeBSD's jail(8) and PC-BSD's Push Button Installer (PBI).
Allows for isolated applications.
Fine grain access control to zpools can be leveraged.

Setup

[if you don't see a live demo - the presenter needs more beer!]

Uses

What can't you use it for? :P