johng Blog

I have been shopping around recently for a network attached storage device to see if I can come up with a better solution than my current linux server. One of the main features I am interested in is automatic volume expansion. Basically if I insert a new hard drive the NAS should just handle it and I won’t have to do anything.

Devices such as the Drobo and the ReadyNAS NV+ offer implementations of this but at £400 to £500 without any drives included makes them ridiculously over priced. So I looked back at my linux box and wondered what could be done in software.

The much hyped Sun file system ZFS offers these features and more but with it only being on Solaris and a Linux port not even close I ruled it out a while back. Then I remembered that FreeNAS is BSD based and that ZFS has been ported to FreeBSD 7. Well it turns out that FreeNAS is currently based on FreeBSD 6 but they specifically mention in the roadmap that ZFS support will be coming soon.

So now I just have to wait a bit and soon I will be able to build my own free software alternative to the overpriced Drobo.