FreeNAS vs. Unraid Which Is Best for Your Storage Needs?

1. How much RAM does Unraid need?
2. How much space does FreeNAS need?
3. Should I use Unraid?
4. How reliable is FreeNAS?
5. Does Unraid need ECC RAM?
6. Is Unraid a hypervisor?
7. Can FreeNAS run on 2GB RAM?
8. Can FreeNAS run on 4GB RAM?
9. Why does ZFS use so much RAM?
10. How do I speed up Unraid?
11. What file system does Unraid use?
12. Is Unraid a one time payment?

How much RAM does Unraid need?

If the sole purpose of your Unraid system is to act as a traditional NAS (no plugins, virtual machines, or Docker containers), system requirements are minimal: 2GB of RAM (although 4GB or more is recommended) 64-bit capable processor.

How much space does FreeNAS need?

The FreeNAS® operating system is installed to at least one device that is separate from the storage disks. The Operating System Device can be an SSD, a small hard drive, or a USB stick. We recommend a minimum size of 8GB. A device with 16GB or more provides additional room for boot environments.

Should I use Unraid?

Unraid Is Efficient

Unraid may not be as performant as traditional RAID, but it's far more efficient. There is a huge reduction in power consumption because all the drives aren't spinning to read and write data. Unraid is also efficient in how you can expand the size of the array.

How reliable is FreeNAS?

Freenas was a perfect fit, as it supports NFS, SMB, and ISCSI sharing. I use FreeNAS on old hardware, and it is extremely reliable. It uses a USB stick to boot from, which leaves all the internal data ports available for storage.

Does Unraid need ECC RAM?

ECC isn't required. It's not required at all for ZFS or any other technology.

Is Unraid a hypervisor?

Unraid is not really a hypervisor. So it leaves you with ESXI, XenServer, Hyper-V, Proxmox and XCP-NG (that is a fork of XenServer). AWS most likely use KVM alike with Google and other big companies that is in the enterprise. The really difference on hypervisors is what features you get for what price.

Can FreeNAS run on 2GB RAM?

Yes. It will work. Couple bucks though, and I think you can score some more 1/2gb ddr2 modules. You should really try to get to 4.

Can FreeNAS run on 4GB RAM?

FreeNAS can indeed run in 4GB of RAM : freenas.

Why does ZFS use so much RAM?

Apparently it's the deduplication feature that requires lots of RAM See Oracle documentation. ZFS only support block-level deduplication, and if dedup is turned on, you will need approximately 320 Bytes per block per core. This makes the resulting RAM consumption a bit tricky.

How do I speed up Unraid?

Contents

1. 1.1 Networking. 1.1.1 Use Gigabit Networking. 1.1.2 Reduce Latency. 1.1.3 Jumbo Frames.
2. 1.2 Hard Drives. 1.2.1 PCI and PCIE. 1.2.2 Use Cache Drive. 1.2.3 Move Parity Drive Off PCI Bus. 1.2.4 Assign Disk slots for Performance. 1.2.5 Move Largest and Fastest Data Drives Off PCI Bus. 1.2.6 Parity Check Speed.

What file system does Unraid use?

Unraid

Is Unraid a one time payment?

When you purchase an Unraid license, this is a one-time, lifetime cost.