iXsystems Upgrading FreeNAS Mini Home and Small Office

iXsystems Inc. announced the third iteration of its FreeNAS Mini Home and Small Office storage device.

The hardware has been redesigned to support the features that have been added to the software over the past two and a half years. FreeNAS has undergone development since the version shipped with the first Mini model in 2012, FreeNAS 8.0.1. These models will ship with v9.2.1.2 or later, and have the performance necessary to serve multiple streaming HD clients over the same network, transcode HD video to mobile devices, support multiple plug-ins, and support more filesystem and media sharing protocols than ever before, all with lower latency and increased throughput.

It draws on feedback from the FreeNAS community. The most important feature is the addition of ECC RAM, which prevents in-flight corruption of data, before the error-correcting properties of ZFS come into play. The CPU has been upgraded from two to eight cores, in response to requests for a CPU that can support both the I/O and encryption demands of ZFS and the parallel processing requirements of FreeNAS plug-ins. A second GbE port has been added to accommodate additional performance or for link failover, and a dedicated remote management interface is also included. Default system memory is 16GB, though an option to double the RAM to 32GB also exists in response to demand for a Mini that can leverage the full power of ZFS, without the footprint of a full-size server.

Jordan Hubbard, CTO, iXsystems, says: “This is the kind of home and small-office FreeNAS appliance I’ve always wanted to see us offer: High performance in a compact package, advanced fault-tolerance features to keep your data safe, and with all the remote management and monitoring features generally only available on much bigger systems. We’re demanding engineers, and this is a system we would be happy to recommend to our friends!“

Features:

Eight-core 2.4GHz CPU, drawing 17 watts
Hardware-accelerated ZFS disk encryption
16GB of ECC memory = performance and data protection (upgradeable to 32GB)
Hot swap functionality with tool-less, front loading drive bays
Capable of saturating dual Intel Gigabit LAN Ports

Dedicated remote hardware management interface or option to share through on-board LAN
Latest FreeNAS version installed and configured on dedicated, internal flash device
3xUSB 2.0 Ports (2 front, 1 rear), 1xSerial Port (DB9), 1xVGA
Physical security: locking front bezel, latchable drive trays, and chassis lock eyelet (for cable or padlock)
Uses Western Digital Red drives, which are designed for small office and home office NAS applications