A few months ago we talked about the troubled release of the last two FreeNAS versions, which involved a new graphical interface, the premature dismissal of Corral and finally the development of the 11.0 version with the return of the classic UI.

But IXSystems didn’t discourage and kept on developing its NAS system and eventually released the all-new 11.1 version.

Not just a new appearance, but also new features

Let’s start with the aspect that usually draws most of the attention of a system, otherwise quite traditional in terms of features: the new graphic interface.
The dark and edgy theme portrayed in a previous review, developers chose a more comfortable theme based on light colours with a tidier and neatter graphical organization. The overall design resembles the one on latests generations Android systems, quite flat and with icons and volumes characterized by circular contours and vivid colours.

Free11 dash

The upper horizontal menu finally disappears, replaced by a lateral float-out unit which contains the usual features. The organization of voices has been revised and rearranged too, still being coherent with the classic one we’re used to. Another new feature of the UI is a proper visualization on mobile devices too, something the previous releases didn’t accomplish well.

The graphical visualization of data improves dramatically, both within the dashboard and the report section. Graphs are well detailed and easy to consult at the same time. The homepage too gains a substantial improvement with an instantaneous representation of the overall usage of volumes, work-load and state of hardware and network resources. The capability of adding textual notes in the footer is curious indeed, however it’s limiting not being able to reorder tiles according to a custom distribution.

Free11 dash graphs

Colours from eight different layouts can be chosen when customizing a theme.

However this improved user experience has a serious drawbacks as the impact on the resources needed to make it work grows: FreeNAS suggests at least 8GB of memory to work correctly (by the way, during the installation one can use fewer gigabytes). On limited-resource appliances, latency is quite evident.

Free11 less memory

The classic interface still can be used: it’s the default one.

Under the hood

The news about this feature touch several aspects of the underlying system, starting with the new FreeBSD 11.1 Stable as the operating system, which comes with several advantages in terms of hardware support with updated drivers and security and vulnerabilities fixes. OpenZFS is update too, with improvements of the management speed of snapshots and large files.

A new interesting feature is assigning a priority to resilvering operations when substituting a disk or if an array is damaged, and scheduling its execution according to various user-defined criteria, including system workload.
An integration with the main Cloud platform has been added with support to Azure, Google, Amazon and Blackblaze platforms: this feature comes along with Cloud Sync to enable a native synchronization (Task -> Cloud Sync) of folders and volumes on external clouds. The available scheduling options include sync direction (Pull or Push), transfer mode (Sync, Move or Copy) and frequency. This feature is not available with the new UI and is available with the classic one exclusively.

Free11 azure addes

Virtual Machines

The most interesting news of last version was the introduction of real VMs in addition to Jails (which were still available). Being a recent addition, it’s the one that sees the greatest number of improvements: support to non-US keyboards, cloning and restarting VMs from the GUI, changing resolution with VNC, setting the IP and the NIC.

FreeNAS 11.1 also introduces the support to Docker containers, albeit in preview. Docker container instances can be created within the VM management section by leveraging the RancherOS Linux distro.

Further detailed information on the new features is here.

About the Author

Lorenzo Bedin

Lorenzo graduated in Telecommunication Engineering and works as freelance IT consultant, after a period of training as systems analyst. Currently he provides hardware solutions, virtualized infrastructures and websites.

banner eng

fb icon evo twitter icon evo

Word of the Day

The term Edge Computing refers, when used in the cloud-based infrastructure sphere, the set of devices and technologies that allows...

>

The acronym SoC (System on Chip) describes particular integrated circuit that contain a whole system inside a single physical chip:...

>

The acronym PtP (Point-to-Point) indicates point-to-point radio links realized with wireless technologies. Differently, PtMP links connects a single source to...

>

Hold Down Timer is a technique used by network routers. When a node receives notification that another router is offline...

>

In the field of Information Technology, the term piggybacking refers to situations where an unauthorized third party gains access to...

>
Read also the others...

Download of the Day

Netcat

Netcat is a command line tool that can be used in both Linux and Windows environments, capable of...

>

Fiddler

Fiddler is a proxy server that can run locally to allow application debugging and control of data in...

>

Adapter Watch

Adapter Watch is a tool that shows a complete and detailed report about network cards. Download it here.

>

DNS DataView

DNS DataView is a graphical-interface software to perform DNS lookup queries from your PC using system-defined DNS, or...

>

SolarWinds Traceroute NG

SolarWinds Traceroute NG is a command line tool to perform advanced traceroute in Windows environment, compared to the...

>
All Download...

Issues Archive

  •  GURU advisor: issue 21 - May 2019

    GURU advisor: issue 21 - May 2019

  • GURU advisor: issue 20 - December 2018

    GURU advisor: issue 20 - December 2018

  • GURU advisor: issue 19 - July 2018

    GURU advisor: issue 19 - July 2018

  • GURU advisor: issue 18 - April 2018

    GURU advisor: issue 18 - April 2018

  • GURU advisor: issue 17 - January 2018

    GURU advisor: issue 17 - January 2018

  • GURU advisor: issue 16 - october 2017

    GURU advisor: issue 16 - october 2017

  • GURU advisor: issue 15 - July 2017

    GURU advisor: issue 15 - July 2017

  • GURU advisor: issue 14 - May 2017

    GURU advisor: issue 14 - May 2017

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • BYOD: your devices for your firm

    The quick evolution of informatics and technologies, together with the crisis that mined financial mines, has brought to a tendency inversion: users that prefer to work with their own devices as they’re often more advanced and modern than those the companies would provide. Read More
  • A switch for datacenters: Quanta LB4M

    You don’t always have to invest thousands of euros to build an enterprise-level networking: here’s our test of the Quanta LB4M switch Read More
  • Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

    GURU advisor will be at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona from February 22nd to 25th 2016!

    MWC is one of the biggest conventions about the worldwide mobile market, we'll be present for the whole event and we'll keep you posted with news and previews from the congress.

    Read More
  • 1