FreeNAS Mini (12TB) 4 Bay Compact NAS Storage with ZFS. 8-Core 2.4GHz Processor, 16GB RAM

It made it exactly two years before the motherboard died. Now it won't POST and I can't get video out. All of my personal data is tied up in this thing.Build your own.

This review will be about the FreeNAS mini as well as the FreeNAS software and the devs behind it since the mini isn't a NAS without FreeNAS.I give the mini hardware 5 stars. It is small, quiet, runs cool, and the drives are hot swappable. Did I mention small? If you're looking for something unobtrusive, you've found it. Performance is excellent as I had no problem maxing out the gigabit ethernet adapter while transferring data onto the mini. If you want to run FreeNAS, I have no hesitations recommending the mini.I give the FreeNAS software 3 stars. It's great that it is open source, but the down side to that is you get to see how crappy the code is. As a developer myself, I wanted to add some features. When I looked at the code, however, I got buyer's remorse. It is one big, ugly mess... return statuses aren't checked, logging is insufficient, the code is disorganized, the encryption design is flawed, and the list goes on. I set upon fixing the logging problem and the flawed encryption design, but despite claims in the forums that iXsystems loves when people submit changes to FreeNAS, they clearly do not. I have one pull request that as of this writing has been sitting there for 26 days despite repeated requests for it to be merged. I suspect their strategy is to just leave it until you go away. They are working on a rewrite of FreeNAS (FreeNAS 10), but iXsystems said it is a year or more away. We care about what we're running now, of course, and the current version of FreeNAS needs a lot of work.Support gets 1 star. The FreeNAS forums, where you're expected to get most of your support, are generally unfriendly to newbies. One moderator will talk down to you if he doesn't like what you're asking. Search for "condescending" in the forums to get multiple examples of what I'm talking about. There is another moderator who openly admits if you don't answer HIS questions, he will mod you or troll you. The forum regulars follow their lead, which makes for an unfriendly atmosphere. They even joke about the first mod taking it to newbies and the second mod being known for trolling people. What a shame.That makes for an average of 3 stars, which is what I gave the mini.

For part of my living I build and maintain storage, I'm coming from Solaris, I've been working with zpools/zfs for several years and had to work performance issues with a variety of hardware.I had been running a low-power 2TB linux-based server at home for several years (remember when Fry's sold a VIA C3-based PC for $250? That, with linux on it, was my first home server), upgraded it to a 2nd-hand server but was turned off by the power consumption so upgraded again to a Lenovo T140 with 3 internal and 4 external HDDs configured as two zpools (running Nexentastor). Always had some bug with it I could never find, I'd eventually have to reboot it as it would silently freeze up, and I was frequently going to the CLI to work with it.This server has been much easier to work with. It came to me as an AWS deal for about half off, poor packaging, and two HDDs were DOA and I had replaced under WD's warranty which was quick and easy (about 1 week). After that was sorted, setup was easy, I've upgraded the OS 3 times now, always with the GUI (still on the 9.x stable release channel). Moving stuff onto it was harder - I found it more familiar to zfs snapshot each dataset then use zfs send/receive across ssh but my Lenovo server kept hanging some time into the process. Once the datasets were moved I spun this server up as my primary storage. No more silent freeze problems! I copied another 1TB onto it from a CIFS share mounted on Windows workstation and got a minimum sustained transfer rate of 700KBps write speed onto it, with often better write speeds. That, using a Dell 2716 gigabit network switch.I made a partial B.O.M., you can view here:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ij7GIKF7JuZfqQW239L_-9NPvelYTq7Bg3GcxyofZWw/edit?usp=sharingbut I can't figure out who makes the case so that cost (and the HDD drive sleds) aren't on the sheet. You'd be getting a good deal at the price it is selling at now, and a company that stands behind it and a support class for beginners.For what it's worth, although it came with sufficient HDD caddy screws, it uses these very small head screws also known as Supermicro screws.They are 6-32 x 1/4", but with a very small head.Can buy qty 50 from here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/50-Screws-hot-swap-tray-Supermicro-caddy-3-5-hard-drive-6-32-x-1-4-Small-head/380715140994I don't know if you know this, but when you work with storage on Solaris it's pure command line, and you'd have to pay $1k/yr for OS maintenance and an unknown $k/yr for hardware maintenance, depending on who your hardware vendor is. Oracle markets storage with a GUI, but no company I work with is willing to pay for it.I'd kind of want a GUI for the simpler stuff and I had hopes for Nexenta, but when I started work with the community version I was dropping to the CLI more and more. I'm comfortable with the CLI since I have to do it for a living, but would like some GUI for at-a-glance performance and usage. When my particular Nexentastor wasn't working out I started keeping a watch on this FreeNAS Mini, and when the AWS price dropped as far as it did I pulled the trigger. I've been happy with it in that most of the time I'm never at the CLI.

The motherboard (ASRock c2750d4i) for the FreeNAS Mini died on me shortly after the one year warranty was up. I contacted their customer support and I haven't heard back from them yet.

iXsystems should devote more effort to simplifying their web-based configuration utility. I've configured numerous Windows server systems and stand-alone network devices (including other NAS devices), and this thing is far and away the least intuitive of them all. It's really no simpler to configure than the Linux-based FreeNAS that underpins the unit.

IX Systems is the company behind FreeNAS and they have done an exemplary job of putting this new hardware together. We installed three over the weekend at an office and were excited to see the included IPMI on such a small unit. This is an incredible value. There is ECC memory, ZFS support, and expandability if you want to add a PCI-Ex card for additional functionality.Best of all it supports the continued development of great software.