FreeNAS vs. FreeBSD?

[C. P. Ghost]

On Sun, Oct 27, 2013 at 5:13 PM, aurfalien <aurfalien at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've tested with and w/o swap on a ZFS data set and have seen no
> degradation in ZFS performance.
>

That's interesting. Are you using a box with AES-NI instructions or just
plain ZFS (without encryption)?

That's one of the reasons I'm still undecided. With FreeBSD, I could set up
swap on a dedicated slice/mirror without going through ZFS/GELI; which
is important on older CPUs that don't have AES-NI instructions. I'm quite
afraid of the performance hit if swap is on ZFS/GELI.

Any changes made can be backed up to a file and restored on a fresh install
> etc... which is simply either the ability to resort to defaults and reboot
> or a fresh USB key.
>

That's a very useful feature indeed. I just booted a server with a USB
key containing the FreeNAS image, and it works like a charm. Maybe
something similar would be possible with plain vanilla FreeBSD; will
have to investigate.


> So its more then just a GUI.
>

Indeed.


> However they do not have a well defined or a defined for that matter,
> roadmap.
>

Yup, that's the other concern I have with FreeNAS.

The most important question would be: would FreeNAS ZFS/GELI volumes
be importable into a regular FreeBSD system, should I decide to switch back
to FreeBSD (e.g. if FreeNAS ceases to be supported/updated sometimes)?
I suppose yes, provided the keys are properly backed up, but without
testing,
I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

Thanks,
-cpghost.

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