NAS

So the other month I bought a ton of new equipment for a new NAS box.  The question was, which NAS software to go for?  As ever it needed to be free, preferably open-source, and have all the functionality I was looking for.

Webserver
FTP server
SAMBA/CIFS
RSYNC

I wrote about my excitment for OpenMediaVault (OMV) more than a few months back (http://bleedingedgegeek.blogspot.com/2009/12/current-nas-situation.html).  However during this wait my current NAS (FreeNAS) began to fail, due to harddrive issues, and the fact that it was a crappy old box.

OMV has yet to be released, so I was in a bit of a pickle, I have new hardware, I need a new NAS, so I began to try my alternatives.  I installed and checked out the following NAS solutions:

eBox
Openfiler
Amahi

P.S. There are more, but some of them were ruled out due to hardware limitations, or pricing for several drive solutions (unRAID).

eBox was nice in the fact that it had a built in LDAP server, but I soon realized that it is not something I really need.  Openfiler was cool, but I had some issues with my WD EAR drives (advanced 4KB sectors), and I wasn't really a fan of the Volume Management. And Amahi... it sounds good, but the plug and play aspect is a little cluncky/cloogy in my mind.

So in the end, I stuck with FreeNAS!  I have implemented encryption on my drives, FreeNAS handles the WD EARS no problem, setup the UPS feature for safe power downs.  All in all I am happy with my decision, there is no guarantee that OMV will be in a good shape when it is release, so why take the risk - stick with something I know and love!