[ Full disclosure: I work for iXsystems™ Inc. This eBook was 3/4 completed when I joined on July 1, 2020 ]
I am releasing my FreeNAS™ eBook today. It was completed about 4 weeks ago, but I wanted the release date to be significant which is August 31, 2020.
FreeNAS logo
Why August 31st? Because today is Malaysia’s Independence Day.
Why the book?
I am an avid book collector. To be specific, IT and storage technology related books. Since I started working on FreeNAS™ several years ago, I wanted to find a book to learn. But the FreeNAS™ books in the market are based on an old version of FreeNAS™. And the FreeNAS™ documentation is a User Guide where it explains every feature without going deeper with integration of real life networking services, and situational applications such as SMB or NFS client configuration.
Since I have been doing significant amount of feature “testings” of FreeNAS™ from version 9.10 till the present version 11,3 on Virtualbox™, I have decided to fill that gap. I have decided to write a cookbook-style FreeNAS™ on Virtualbox™ that covers most of the real-life integration work with various requirements including Active Directory, cloud integration and so on. All for extending beyond the FreeNAS™ documentation.
Screenshots galore in colour
This took a lot of work, because I have to test and capture almost every screenshot of every configuration used. But I think the cookbook style will help the reader, and provide a more practitioner approach to learning.
All of the screenshots are in colour to enhance the learning as well.
The Chapters
There are 16 chapters in all. Or maybe 15 if Chapter 0 does not count. Here they are:
- CH 0: Introduction
- CH 1: Virtualbox Setup for FreeNAS
- CH 2: FreeNAS Installation
- CH 3: Post Installation Configuration
- CH 4: FreeNAS Networking
- CH 5: FreeNAS RAID and Storage Management
- CH 6: FreeNAS File Sharing in Windows for Workgroup
- CH 7: FreeNAS User, Group and Permissions
- CH 8: FreeNAS in Windows Active Directory
- CH 9: FreeNAS File Sharing in Linux
- CH 10: FreeNAS with Apple File Protocol
- CH 11: FreeNAS iSCSI SAN
- CH 12: FreeNAS Object Storage with Minio
- CH 13: FreeNAS Snapshots and Replication
- CH 14: FreeNAS Command Line Interface
- CH 15: FreeNAS Cloud Sync
Procrastination
Yeah, yeah. I procrastinated. I started in August 2019 and completed the first 6 chapters with gusto. Then other priorities took precedence and the work on the other chapters started to trickle. By March 2020, I was about 3/4 done, with the iSCSI chapter (the big one), MinIO object storage (the little one), and the Command Line Interface (the difficult one) remaining.
I was forgetting the eBook until someone actually paid USD$30.00 for my book in June 2020. So I coerced myself forcefully to complete the eBook.
The Cover
Here is the cover of the eBook. Yeah, it is boring.
Fun with FreeNAS on Virtualbox eBook Cover Page
TrueNAS® CORE 12.X
FreeNAS™ is rebranded to TrueNAS® CORE in the 12.x release. The current version is 12.0 Beta 2.1, with 12.1 in development. Even though I build the eBook materials on versions 11.2 and 11.3, most of the concepts and configurations should not change much. You can still map your drives in Windows and mount your exports on Linux the same way. So I think the eBook will be useful for some time.
I will update the materials when TrueNAS® CORE 12.x is GA.
How to get the book
The book is priced at USD$30.00, You can purchase it by clicking on this link. Or you can click the FreeNAS 11.2/11.3 tab on my blog in the screenshot below:
FreeNAS 11.2/11.3 eBook Tab on StorageGaga blog page
Once you have made payment with Paypal, I will send you the link to download the eBook in PDF form. Also please email to me at chinfah@katanalogic.com to alert me of your purchase.
Thank you for your support
I hope you will benefit from using and sharing my eBook. Thank you for support. Enjoy!
