9 Reasons To Use FreeNAS At Work

Several days ago I wrote about 9 Great Things About FreeNAS. These were some ideas and uses for FreeNAS in general, whether it's at home or work. Here are some more reasons you may want to use FreeNAS, at work!

1. Use existing old hardware - This will run well with your boss.
2. You don't need hardware - Run it as a VM, saves you from having to use any new or old computing equipment!
3. No Monitor needed - Once configured, you probably won't touch the physical box again!
4. Speed up networking - By using it as a Windows Workgroup Master Browser, you can turn off the Browser service on your workstations. Which should reduce network traffic in a workgroup setting.
5. No user accounts to regulate as a public share - One of my favorite features, create one box for anonymous access so you have access to often accessed installs and drivers.
6. Can integrate with AD - I have not tried this yet, but I see an option to integrate it with AD accounts!
7. Can function as a standalone server - You don't need Active Directory or anything else to make this functional.
8. Quick setup for projects - You can set one up as a project server, once over you can easily turn it off.
9. Run it from LiveCD - You don't even need to install it (if you don't need to reboot and save settings). It can function very well off a LiveCD. I have one system running this way for some time now!

Do you use FreeNAS? What features do you like best? Share your thoughts and comments. You can get the current iso of FreeNAS here. Do you have other useful resources for FreeNAS?

You can buy the Learning FreeNAS: Configure and manage a network attached storage solution book if you are looking for a good reference book.

For additional links to frugal tips and tricks follow me on Twitter. If you would like to contribute to FrugalNYC or FrugalTech in any way (guest posts, articles, ideas, interesting links, advice, financial assistance, or anything else), feel free to contact me via email. Click here to add this to your RSS reader or Subscribe to FrugalTech by Email.

Learning Basic TCP/IP

I came across a great Basic TCP/IP video on YouTube a few days ago. It's about ten and a half minutes long but you'll end up with some insight to how internet/lan IP addresses work. If you already know how bits and bytes work in IP, this is a good refresher. It is especially helpful for a beginner to take a piece of paper and work along with the video, doing the math.




I hope you found this video helpful. For additional information on TCPIP, you can check out About.com.

For additional links to frugal tips and tricks follow me on Twitter. If you would like to contribute to FrugalNYC or FrugalTech in any way (guest posts, articles, ideas, interesting links, advice, financial assistance, or anything else), feel free to contact me via email. Click here to add this to your RSS reader or Subscribe to FrugalTech by Email.

9 Great Things About FreeNAS

I've been using FreeNAS version 0.69 for several weeks now. I've also briefly used an older version and my experience with it so far has been GREAT! The initial setup of the disk drives did take a little longer than I thought it would. The OS itself booted up fine and everything since then has been pretty much a breeze! If you need a few pointers or need a bit of help with your setup, leave me a comment on this post.

So what are some of the best things about FreeNAS?

1. Share files with more than one computer, a USB drive lets only one pc access the files at a time, with FreeNAS you can have many machines access your files at the same time!
   
2. Stream multimedia content to your PS3, Xbox, Media Center PC.
   
3. Share your iTunes playlists
4. Share your files without having to login using SMB/CIFS and FTP services - anonymous access
   
5. Serve HTTP content via the simple webserver, I serve a copy of my TiddlyWiki
   
6. Practice your basic unix command line.
7. Easy to add additional storage.
   
8. Put your old clunker to use. Yes, your old Pentium II or Pentium II can be brought back to productive life with this software! I'm currently using a 500Mhz pc and have tested with a dual-core PC. Both of them work great!
   
9. Built-in BitTorrent Client - you can free up your pc from BitTorrent downloads. The first bittorrent file I downloaded was DSL, which I knew to be a small download.

If you are security conscious, I really recommend you run FreeNAS behind a firewall. This is a great tool to have and you don't want your new toy to be the hole in your network security procedures.

FreeNAS Resources I found that are helpful:

• FreeNAS.org - the source of the actual software is a great resource of course.
  
• LearnFreeNAS.com - A helpful site all about FreeNAS.
• Linux Backups with NAS - Found an article about backup to NAS using Linux, not exactly FreeNAS based, but found it somewhat helpful.
  

Alternatives:

• OpenFiler
  
• NASLite - Floppy Disk based NAS
  

You can buy the Learning FreeNAS: Configure and manage a network attached storage solution book if you are looking for a good reference book.

Do you use FreeNAS? What features do you like best? Share your thoughts and comments. You can get the current iso of FreeNAS here. Do you have other useful resources for FreeNAS?

For additional links to frugal tips and tricks follow me on Twitter. If you would like to contribute to FrugalNYC or FrugalTech in any way (guest posts, articles, ideas, interesting links, advice, financial assistance, or anything else), feel free to contact me via email. Click here to add this to your RSS reader or Subscribe to FrugalTech by Email.