First Time FreeNAS

[cmcigas]

Hello everyone, I never installed FreeNAS before, I have only used XPEnology on my Dell R610, 2x CPUs at 3Gz or so with 32GB if RAM. I know the server shouldnt have an issue with running FreeNAS but I am not a software guy.

My main question here is, to use FreeNAS I can use a web browser which is great, I am guessing through the IP? Also I was curious if there was a way to access FreeNAS outside the network without a VPN similar to Synology's QuickConnect. My last question, is there a way to install any type of VMWare on the FreeNAS, similar to how Synology's software allows it on the more powerful NAS'.

I understand I should probably be using server level software for this but like I said I do not know software and think something like FreeNAS will be able to help me out better.

Thank you to everyone who helps me out.

 

[JohnDigital]

FreeNAS is FreeBSD which IS server software. Yes you COULD access FreeNAS from a public IP, but I wouldnt open it up to the world without understanding that risk. Its as easy as forwarding the port from the router to port 80 and your FreeNAS IP. Consider using teamviewer to a local machine and accessing freenas via that machine. Yes you can use FreeNAS as a host system, however as you allocate resources for VMs those resources are gone forever to your FreeNAS system. There has got to be documentation literally all over the place in that regard, a simple google search or the FreeNAS documentation pages will point you in the right direction. If you are ultimately wanting to run a FreeNAS instance, it does run well virtualized. You may or may not be better off that way with an ESXi server. Hope this helps, welcome!

 

[SCS]

Setting up a VPN isn't difficult, if you have a VM environment you could use this template to speed up/ease deployment.

If not you can easily build an OpenVPN server.

I use this for customer sites which don't run pfSense, which is my usual go to.

https://openvpn.net/index.php/access-server/download-openvpn-as-vm.html

 

[Wayland Sothcott]

...
My main question here is, to use FreeNAS I can use a web browser which is great, I am guessing through the IP? Also I was curious if there was a way to access FreeNAS outside the network without a VPN similar to Synology's QuickConnect. My last question, is there a way to install any type of VMWare on the FreeNAS, similar to how Synology's software allows it on the more powerful NAS'.

...
Thank you to everyone who helps me out.

You could access the FreeNAS web interface from outside by port forwarding port 80 from your router. I suspect that's not what you mean. You mean you want access to your files from outside your network.

As a hardware guy there is an easy way to do this. For example the ASUS range of routers has a couple of features you need. Other routers also do this but I've used ASUS recently.

In order to find your router on the Internet it has it's own Dynamic DNS. You just give your router a name, say cmcigus and then on the Internet it's cmcigas.asusdns.com or whatever.

Next is the VPN server. Switch on it's P2PTP server and then from your Windows laptop in VPN from the Internet you would use cmcigas.asusdns.com as the server and whatever username and password you set.

This then puts the laptop inside your LAN so you would use your NAS as normal only slower. Same with your printer and anything else on your LAN.

It's much easier to let the router do all this VPN stuff for you but the server might have better performance if you can get that to do it.

A word of caution. As soon as you activate Dynamic DNS you will attract a lot of hacking traffic to your Internet connection. So you will need proper passwords.

EDIT
It's easy on an ASUS to set up VPN
https://www.asus.com/uk/support/faq/113805/

 

[Glorious1]

Also I was curious if there was a way to access FreeNAS outside the network without a VPN similar to Synology's QuickConnect.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...r-freenas-server-remotely-and-securely.27376/
I suggest you do not rely on a password to protect access through any forwarded ports.