Learning FreeNAS [Kindle Edition]

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 Almost everything I looked at was outdated.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.