PCWorld has published a guide to advanced FreeNAS server configurations. This article is something of a follow-on to their earlier article about how to turn an old PC into a modern server. In the new article, they take that old PC and teach it some new tricks with some advanced FreeNAS tips.
Among those advanced tips is how to configure FreeNAS with multiple user accounts:
You could easily throw open your new server to everyone in the office, but you probably don’t want to give the folks on your sales team access to the same files your accounting department uses--and vice versa. That’s where FreeNAS’s powerful Users and Groups tools come into play.
Another useful configuration is to setup your FreeNAS server to provide snapshot type backups:
This step assumes that you’ve configured your FreeNAS server’s storage using ZFS, as I outlined in the previous how-to.
Periodic Snapshot Tasks create a read-only version of a volume, so in the unlikely event that the server hiccups--or in themore likely event that you need to recover an older version of a file, or to rescue an accidentally deleted critical file--you can roll the server back to the point at which you took the snapshot. And snapshots don’t consume any storage unless a file has changed since the last snapshot.
The final advanced configuration that the article discusses concerns setting up an FTP server. The article explains how to use the FTP server even if you don't have a static IP address to login to:
Sign up with a third-party dynamic-DNS service provider (Dyn and No-IP are two examples), and you can create a unique and easy-to-remember name for your server--such as freenas.yourcompany.com--that the DNS service provider will map to your dynamic IP address. Your FreeNAS server will automatically update the service each time its IP address changes, so you’ll always be able to connect to the server from the Internet using the unique URL you've created.
Once you’ve signed up with a dynamic-DNS service, log in to your FreeNAS configuration screen, click Services, and then select Dynamic DNS. Choose your service provider from the drop-down list, enter your domain name, and enter the username and password for your dynamic-DNS account. The update period is the interval--measured in seconds--at which your FreeNAS server will update your dynamic-DNS service provider with its IP address. Contact your service provider for a recommendation, as updating too frequently could get you blacklisted.
FreeNAS is a powerful server software operating system designed with home and small office use in mind. Despite its free nature, however, it is feature rich and can provide many server applications.
Related articles
- Building a FreeNAS Mini ITX Storage Appliance (nas-pro.com)
- FreeNAS, OpenFiler or Ubuntu Server (nas-pro.com)
- Turnkey Linux - File Server Appliance (nas-pro.com)
- NAS4Free (nas-pro.com)
- Dynamic DNS: Bridging The Gap Between Dynamic & Static IP Address Environments (dyn.com)
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