FreeNAS as a general server

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I've started playing with jails in FreeNAS 9.2. They're pretty awesome. You need to set up an IP range for jail purposes, but once done, adding a new clean jail is a case of clicking "new jail", picking whether it is "standard" (cut down FreeBSD) or a bunch of other variants including a Linux option and you can grab a shell into it from the web interface and start installing packages.

This, I think looks like a killer app for FreeNAS. Sure, you're not likely to run an enterprise on FreeNAS just yet, but as a home server? Build a ZFS storage box, stick FreeNAS on it and spin up as many jails as you like in a fairly painless manner - all of them hosted on ZFS and gaining full configuration snapshots, etc.

Anyone else played with it yet? I'm keen to stick a bunch more RAM in my little HP N54L and set up mail, etc. on it. I've been wanting to run a home mail server again for a while but didn't want yet more hardware everywhere (which realistically is going to be sitting fairly idle).

I'm extremely impressed.
 
Not on FreeNAS but I do use jails with ZFS on my server. No point and click interface but it's fairly simple to set up. Just create a ZFS filesystem, install a basic jail in there and snapshot it. Thanks to ZFS you can now make an infinite number of copies of that same jail in just a few seconds. If I recall correctly tools like ezjail can make use of the features offered by ZFS.
 
Yeah, aware it's nothing new, but it really is amazingly straightforward. Can also set up Linux environment jails just as easily with point and drool interface.
 
The PC-BSD project also has point-n-click jails and ZFS. It (or its sub-project TrueOS) may be a better general purpose server than FreeNAS which is sort of focused on just being a NAS platform.
 
NewGuy said:
The PC-BSD project also has point-n-click jails and ZFS. It (or its sub-project TrueOS) may be a better general purpose server than FreeNAS which is sort of focused on just being a NAS platform.
Click to expand...

Yeah, have been keeping my eye on PC-BSD for a while, however it has X11 installed by default, which isn't really what I want for a box to sit in the corner and serve mail.

But yeah, as an educational tool or easily administered box (i.e., at work in my test lab where some of the staff may not be quite so savvy) having a bunch of jails on a box with a web driven GUI for snapshot/snapshot restore, etc. is a bit of a win :)

Whilst FreeNAS is "focused" on being a NAS appliance, the new point and drool jail interface in 9.1 (?) makes it quite an impressive jail platform.
 
While the PC-BSD "Desktop" edition has a X11/Desktop installed by default, the PC-BSD TrueOS edition does not. It's a command line server, so would be exactly what you are looking for.
 
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