NAS4Free is an open source BSD operating system based on the highly acclaimed and award winning FreeBSD project and designed from the ground up to provide users with an easy-to-use, stable, powerful and reliable NAS (Network-Attached Storage) distribution.
Key features
Its main goal is to support files sharing across multiple operating systems, including GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, UNIX-like and Microsoft Windows platforms. Thanks to its easy to set up configuration, it can be effortlessly deployed on both home and enterprise environments.
It comes with a wide range of streaming features, specifically designed to ease the sharing of multimedia file across multiple devices over the network. In addition, it includes ZFS version 28 (RAIDZ, RAIDZ2 and RAIDZ3) software RAID (0,1,5), S.M.A.R.T, disk encryption, and email reports.
The currently included protocols are NFS (Network File System), CIFS (Common Internet File System) using Samba, FTP, HAST (Highly Available Storage), RSYNC, TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol), BitTorent, UPnP, AFP (Apple Filing Protocol), Unison, iSCSI, Bridge, and CARP (Common Address Redundancy Protocol).
Availability and boot options
The system is distributed as Live CD ISO images, supporting both 64-bit and 32-bit architectures. It features automatic boot with the ability to select from six different options, to boot NAS4Free in normal mode (default), with ACPI enabled, in safe mode, with verbose logging, as well as to drop to a shell prompt or reboot the system.
Users will be able to configure the network interfaces and IP address, reset the password of the web interface, reset the system to factory defaults, ping a host, access the shell prompt, reboot or shutdown the server, as well as to install or upgrade from the Live CD/USB boot medium.
Bottom line
In conclusion, NAS4Free is a decent FreeBSD-based Network-Attached Storage distribution that features a highly configurable web-based interface and can be easily installed on SSD, HDD or USB drives, as well as on Compact Flash media.
