Customer Reviews

Learning FreeNAS: Configure and manage a network attached storage solution

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

This was my first excursion into a *nix or Free* type of operating system. I did not know what CHOWN or CHMOD was a couple of weeks ago. I scrathed around the web and found out about both and many other things about FreeNAS.

But I thought my knowledge was lacking so I purchased the Learning FreeNAS book. I have looked at several areas including the ineffective Index.

This book is for some far distant, previous release of FreeNAS and has less than half of what you need to know about many subjects. It does not mention anything about installing on a Hard Disk or Flash drive. I does not mention LiveISO/USB booting & operating.

So installation pretty much a miss. Tried looking up several things in the index. Missing. Wanted to know more about the CIFS configuration. The bottom half of the current screen is missing from the book.

To sum it up, almost everything you need to know, and more than is in this book, is available FOR FREE, on the web. Start with YouTube. With any amount of *nix or Free* knowledge, you already know more than this book does.

Such simple questions as how to install on USB Flash or CF Flash or hard drive are left, essentially unanswered. He goes into configuring your BIOS to boot from USB but not how to make the very thing you need to have to do such a boot from USB flash.

I feel cheated. There are some other sections which contain some useful information but I expect this is on the web, too. If updated to current version(s), this would be a valuable book but as it is, it is only marginally valuable.

Mike Morrow

Book is based on FreeNAS version 6.8, current version from web is 7.2. Menus are all different and book has no mention of ZFS. Almost everything I looked at was outdated. I'm returning the book as I can find more current information on-line.

Packt Publishing has done it again! Another great book about technology that matters. This time I am talking about FreeNAS. If you are like me and you have oodles of movies, music, pictures and just plain data that you want to keep safe and secure, and possibly free up some space on your main PC or laptop, then you really need to know about FreeNAS. There is no better way to know about FreeNAS than to read Learning FreeNAS from Packt Publishing.

As with most of their books the book is around 230 pages, short but crammed with good information. Author, Gary Sims, starts out with an overview of was NAS is and how it can play into your current network and usability.

Gary wastes no time after the first chapters digging in and configuring FreeNAS. He walks you through adding a disk, mounting it, and then connecting to it from a remote PC.

This isn't a super indepth book, I would wager anyone who is familiar with installing software and has the need for storage will be able to follow the principles laid out in the book. Here are some highlights of the book:

* Understand the concepts of Network Attached Storage (NAS) and where FreeNAS server fits into your business.
* Install, configure, and upgrade the FreeNAS server.
* Deploy your NAS following best practices to plan capacity, hardware, backup, redundancy, and network infrastructure.
* Deploy FreeNAS as a file sharing, backup, streaming server by using different protocols like CIFS, NFS, FTP, RSYNC, Unison, AFP, and UPnP.
* Use FreeNAS as a bridge to Storage Area Networks by using SCSI.
* Connect to the FreeNAS server from Windows, OS X, Linux, or UPnP devices.
* Carry out common administrative tasks: add and authenticate users, rebooting and shutting down, network management, and configure FreeNAS to use DNS.
* Improve fault tolerance and drive performance by creating RAID sets.
* Explore backup options--create copies of data on a remote server or another hard drive within the FreeNAS server.
* Carry out advanced system configuration: encrypt discs, add swap space, S.M.A.R.T, and SSH access.
* Troubleshoot your FreeNAS server when faced with networking problems or RAID failures.
* Carry out basic FreeBSD administration tasks.

Overall I was really impressed with the amount of FreeNAS (and consiquently FreeBSD) they covered in only 200+ pages, but it was well laid out knowledge, and easy to understand.

This is a good book and a great introduction to FreeNAS. However, it's a bit dated and the book doesn't really cover ZFS at all. That's a shame too since ZFS is so robust and has so many things to offer over UFS. Still, the information in the book is mostly relevant even to the most recent stable release of FreeNAS (0.7.2). It goes into depth in just about every subject and the explanation on RAID settings is decent. If ZFS was covered, I would give this book 5 stars. Pretty good, but I hope to see an updated version covering ZFS in the future.

I installed FreeNas on my own and got it working the way I wanted it to work, however this book had a LOT of good information from planning on how to use/build your NAS to setup. The book I had was a little out of date for the version of NAS I installed but overall a good pick up.

Good basic information, can find same information on the internet, but not in one handy location. With the program changing so often it's hard to keep it up to date. If you are new to Linux and FreeNAS the book is invaluable. I look forward to the next edition.

Love the software and ease of use and the book really explains everything is plain English, easy to understand and not dumbed down. Only issue I have with it is that it tends to explain things twice.

Learning FreeNAS is a superb book.
One that I have no problem with recommending to anyone.

I was initially tasked with creating a NAS system for a work project and came across FreeNAS in my searches on the web.

Being a total novice to FreeNAS and not having a clue about NAS storage as a whole I knew I had my work cut out for me.

I picked up Learning FreeNAS book about 6 days ago and I could not put it down! The book wastes no time and gets to the point fast!
Gary has an amazing ability to explain things clearly. I had no trouble being able to do some of the most complex configurations after the first read! (By day 3 I had a confidence in FreeNAS and a strong understanding of the technology that would of taken me weeks to acquire!)

What is evidently clear from the book is that Gary has a passion for FreeNAS technology and he explains it so well. The book is well divided so information was placed in the perfect sections and with his website all the latest developments within FreeNAS are reported.

In conclusion:
I felt relaxed that I didn't have to trawl for smidgens of differing titbits of information to decipher. This book gave me the knowledge that i needed and it doesn't cut any corners.

This book initially gave me the knowledge of NAS technologies in a clear and concise manner and now it gives me a solid reference guide for troubleshooting and setting up new FreeNAS in the future as well.

The Learning FreeNAS book is exactly what I wanted. This easy to understand reference is one of the best I have read to date, After receiving this book I was able to set up a Raid 5 NAS with ease. Every configuration is outlined in detail in understandable language. Anyone with the most basic understanding of computers can quickly become a FreeNAS wizard. I would recommend this reference book to anyone interested is Network Attached Storage solutions and using FreeNAS just compounds the benefits.

Gary Sims's "Learning FreeNAS" book was extremely well written. It was very easy to read for a computer novice like myself and still intellectually stimulating for my husband (a more advanced computer user).

My husband and I were extremely impressed with the content. I'm not a "computer geek" and was able to go through this without getting bored. We were able to turn our recycled PC into a Network Attached Storage. The only money we had to spend was on four new hard drives to put into a PC we no longer use. The book also went into great lengths to discuss capacity management. It immensely helped us with picking out the hard drive size.

I even tried to put it together myself by following the book and to my surprise, it was as easy as installing any other software. The book went into great details on how to make this work with your Windows machine. The end result was an excellent backup solution for our music, work documents, valuable family photos and movies.

We were able to put together a very inexpensive solution and will look forward to other books by Gary Sims and/or Packt Publishing.