FreeNAS vs. Oracle Solaris

FreeNAS suited really well in managing our legacy systems and it handled all our network flows really well, less maintenance is required on our part. FreeNAS also gave the option to switch to TrueNAS for free as now its support is limited. The major issue that we faced was with the installation as it is really complex and required lots of time. Rest all is good and FreeNAS still works well on our systems.

Incentivized

For running Oracle databases, Solaris can't be beat. Leveraging Zones allows for virtualization out of the box. In addition, using zones with clustering can make migrating from Solaris 10 to 11 very easy. Finally, in an enterprise environment that requires 24/7 up-time and meeting SLA's, Solaris is a viable and robust choice.

Incentivized

• The FreeNAS web interface is modern looking. It makes tasks like provisioning drives into raid volumes easy.
• The ZFS raid option allows you to add in an SSD as a cache drive to increase performance.

Incentivized

• Live update for patching in conjunction with the package management functions. This ability to rollback is very convenient.
• dTrace
• Built in compliance testing.

Incentivized

• Not good for beginners as it requires deep understanding of networking and storage.
• Most of the good and required features are not available in free version.

Incentivized

• Takes time to learn.
• Integration into Microsoft's Active Directory.

You need to take the time to learn it. It is a massive product.

There were some things that can be found by other users on forums and Google and some things that were not.

Incentivized

The support teams are well trained and responsive. Patches are rolled out regularly and are easy to deploy and backout.

Stress testing and timing is key. You need test systems that mirror the live environments. User testing must be reflected in peak loads.

Before swapping to FreeNAS, we'd been using plan old Linux servers running Samba and NFS with ZFS storage underneath. This worked really well for our requirements at the time but required a lot of administration when new versions came along, or new users had to be added or drives needed replacing, and so on. FreeNAS did away with 95% of that work and does a much better job too.

Incentivized

Oracle Solaris is Scalable, have a good patching capability and secure by default. You want to have something that's up and running and stable, something that's not going to crash. But if we do have an issue, we can get somebody for technical support who can help us work through the problems.

Incentivized

• Low-Cost Network Attached Storage
• Provides additional network storage to support client & business operations
• FreeNAS secures our data using custom encryption keys

Incentivized

• Possibility to migrate old servers protecting previous inversions
• reduces implementation times and accelerates time to obtain value in the market.

Incentivized