I currently have a FreeNAS box that I use for document archives as well as media… I want to be able to automount at start up to shares on my FreeNAS box, and wanted to know which was better, NFS or CIFS(Samba) for getting this job done?
This will help you make a decision: http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_sharing.html
It’s difficult to give advise because there’s some information missing form your request, but here goes a summary anyways. The whole thing comes down to this:
If you are using your FreeNAS to support Linux systems – and even if you have some Windows systems that make use of it, but only has “tourists” (only used occasionally and not meant to stay online and perform intensive tasks like real-time backups or data streaming) – you want to go with NFS. Transfer speeds are generally greater, it’s more friendly towards your NAS cpu and NFS file permissions are the familiar Linux file permissions (SMB/CIFS uses Windows ACLs).
If the situation is inverted and Windows represents the bulk of the NAS clients it’s not necessarily true that you should go with CIFS. WIndows professional editions fully support NFS since Windows 7, at least. NFS is still a better option as far as performance is concerned. But SMB/CIFS comes with a few interesting options that may mean something to how you plan to use your NAS; It allows you to configured shadow copies of the home directory, which NFS doesn’t and requires an external program, and it has a so-called VFS package that includes numerous modules for extra functionality that again may be important to you.
In short, I would always give my preference to NFS. I prefer its setup simplicity, performance and easily understandable permissions system. Anything else extra that I may need, I look for in external applications. That’s the Linux Way, anyway. However if I require intensive and fine-tuned access to a NAS, I would probably go for CIFS.
Note, I made no commentary on the security of either one. Truth the matter is that I don’t know enough about it. I never considered this to be important because every NAS setup I ever did was for my own consumption. I would never dream of sharing a NAS outside my home network. For that type of setup NFS and CIFS are equally capable. For real security concerns, you’ll have to ask someone else.
3 Likes
Hi @MuscialCoder,
there is more info about ZFS here (another option for you) but I don’t have a clue myself!:
http://louwrentius.com/why-i-do-use-zfs-as-a-file-system-for-my-nas.html