FreeNAS supports rsync and that’s one of the most interesting feature of the operating system. rsync is a protocol for file synchronization and transfer, a really useful tool in a storage device.

In this tutorial we’ll see how to sync a dataset – a sort of folder – between two different FreeNAS devices. In our lab we used two virtual machines following this scheme:

• machine 01 is a file server with IP address 192.168.2.70
• machine 02 is a synced storage for business continuity purposes with IP address 192.168.2.75

The first machine will push (rsync client) data while the second one will pull (rsync server) them.
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Snapshots make us able to restore older versions of a file with little effort, a true advantage in business environment. Furthermore, they are fast and efficient.

FreeNAS uses the powerful ZFS file system to store your business data and ZFS supports snapshots. Scheduling periodic snapshots is simple and may save your day in case of disaster.

Of course you need to have a FreeNAS device and at least a ZFS volume.
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FreeNAS, among its many sharing options, offers a complete support to iSCSI. We’ve already seen how to create an iSCSI target on Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2, with FreeNAS you can set up an iSCSI target even faster, just a bunch of clicks and you’ll be ready.
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We’ve already seen how to install FreeNAS to create a fully customizable NAS. Today we’ll talk about how to create Windows shares on FreeNAS.

This free and open source operating system is quite powerful but it’s not as easy-to-use as it should be. Creating a Windows share requires several steps in different “areas”. Anyway, the operation can be completed in a couple of minutes.
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FreeNAS is a free and open source OS born to create customizable NAS (network-attached storage) supporting the powerful ZFS filesystem. Based on FreeBSD, it allows to create a resilient storage for your business data.

ZFS supports snapshots and encryption, both useful features in business enviroments. Furthermore, RaidZ (a software RAID solution) offers data protection without many issues and limitations of traditional RAID setups.

FreeNAS supports all the most adopted file sharing protocols like Apple’s AFP, NFS, CIFS / SMB and iSCSI.

In this tutorial we’ll show you how to install FreeNAS to build your own – totally customizable – NAS.
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