XigmaNAS is an open-source

Network-attached storage Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a Heterogeneous computing, heterogeneous group of clients. In this context, the term "NAS" can refer to both th ...

(NAS) server software with a dedicated management web interface. It is a continuation of the original FreeNAS code, which was developed between 2005 and late 2011. It was released under the name ''NAS4Free'' on 22 March 2012. The name was changed to XigmaNAS in July 2018. On

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service founded by Geoffrey B. Jeffery, Tim Perdue, and Drew Streib in November 1999. SourceForge provides a centralized software discovery platform, including an online platform for managing and hosting open-source soft ...

, it was elected "'Community Choice' Project of the Month" twice, in August 2015 and March 2017.

Technology

XigmaNAS is an embedded

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

NAS

software distribution Software distribution is the process of delivering software to the end user. Free software distribution tools GNU Autotools are widely used for which consist of source files written in C++ and the C programming language, but are not limited t ...

based on the latest release of

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

. It is

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

under the terms of the

Simplified BSD license BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD licen ...

. It was developed from the original FreeNAS 7 code and updated to work with current FreeBSD releases while preserving FreeNAS's original m0n0wall/PHP architecture and introducing experimental support for the ARM architecture. XigmaNAS supports sharing across Windows, Apple, and UNIX-like systems. It includes

ZFS ZFS (previously Zettabyte File System) is a file system with Volume manager, volume management capabilities. It began as part of the Sun Microsystems Solaris (operating system), Solaris operating system in 2001. Large parts of Solaris, includin ...

v5000, Software

RAID RAID (; redundant array of inexpensive disks or redundant array of independent disks) is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple physical Computer data storage, data storage components into one or more logical units for th ...

(0,1,5),

disk encryption Disk encryption is a technology which protects information by converting it into code that cannot be deciphered easily by unauthorized people or processes. Disk encryption uses disk encryption software or disk encryption hardware, hardware to encry ...

, S.M.A.R.T., and email reports etc., with the following protocols: SMB, Samba Active Directory Domain Controller AD,

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and dat ...

, NFS, TFTP, AFP,

rsync rsync (remote sync) is a utility for transferring and synchronizing files between a computer and a storage drive and across networked computers by comparing the modification times and sizes of files. It is commonly found on Unix-like opera ...

, Unison (file synchronizer),

iSCSI Internet Small Computer Systems Interface or iSCSI ( ) is an Internet Protocol-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. iSCSI provides block-level access to storage devices by carrying SCSI commands over a TCP/IP ...

(initiator and target), HAST,

CARP The term carp (: carp) is a generic common name for numerous species of freshwater fish from the family (biology), family Cyprinidae, a very large clade of ray-finned fish mostly native to Eurasia. While carp are prized game fish, quarries and a ...

, Bridge,

UPnP Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a set of networking protocols on the Internet Protocol (IP) that permits networked devices, such as personal computers, printers, Gateway (telecommunications), Internet gateways, Wi-Fi access points and mobile de ...

, and

BitTorrent BitTorrent is a Protocol (computing), communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a Decentralised system, decentralized manner. The protocol is d ...

. All of this is configurable through its

web interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...

Features

*All XigmaNAS versions **Multiple architectures:

i386 The Intel 386, originally released as the 80386 and later renamed i386, is the third-generation x86 architecture microprocessor from Intel. It was the first 32-bit processor in the line, making it a significant evolution in the x86 archite ...

amd64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set. It was announced in 1999 and first available in the AMD Opteron family in 2003. It introduces two new operating modes: 64-bit mode an ...

and ARM-based versions **Full Web Management Interface ( WebGUI) *Hard drive and volume management **Software

Disk encryption Disk encryption is a technology which protects information by converting it into code that cannot be deciphered easily by unauthorized people or processes. Disk encryption uses disk encryption software or disk encryption hardware, hardware to encry ...

(using cryptographic accelerator card if present) **Partition *** MBR, GPT **

initiator **Filesystems ***

v5000, UFS ***

Ext2 ext2, or second extended file system, is a file system for the Linux kernel (operating system), kernel. It was initially designed by French software developer Rémy Card as a replacement for the extended file system (ext). Having been designed ...

Ext3 ext3, or third extended filesystem, is a journaling file system, journaled file system that is commonly used with the Linux kernel. It used to be the default file system for many popular Linux distributions but generally has been supplanted by ...

***

FAT In nutrition science, nutrition, biology, and chemistry, fat usually means any ester of fatty acids, or a mixture of such chemical compound, compounds, most commonly those that occur in living beings or in food. The term often refers specif ...

NTFS NT File System (NTFS) (commonly called ''New Technology File System'') is a proprietary journaling file system developed by Microsoft in the 1990s. It was developed to overcome scalability, security and other limitations with File Allocation Tabl ...

*Networking ** 802.1q VLAN tagging **

Wireless Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information (''telecommunication'') between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided transm ...

**Network

link aggregation In computer networking, link aggregation is the combining ( aggregating) of multiple network connections in parallel by any of several methods. Link aggregation increases total throughput beyond what a single connection could sustain, and prov ...

** Wake On Lan **

Network Bridge A network bridge is a computer networking device that creates a single, aggregate network from multiple communication networks or network segments. This function is called network bridging. Bridging is distinct from routing. Routing allows mu ...

(Common Address Redundancy Protocol) ** HAST (Highly Available Storage) *Network Protocols **

Server Message Block Server Message Block (SMB) is a communication protocol used to share files, printers, serial ports, and miscellaneous communications between nodes on a network. On Microsoft Windows, the SMB implementation consists of two vaguely named Windows ...

(SMB, one never used version was known as CIFS) (Samba) **

Active Directory Active Directory (AD) is a directory service developed by Microsoft for Windows domain networks. Windows Server operating systems include it as a set of processes and services. Originally, only centralized domain management used Active Direct ...

Domain controller A domain controller (DC) is a Server (computing), server that responds to security authentication requests within a computer network domain. It is a Network (computing), network server that is responsible for allowing Host (network), host access to ...

(Samba) **

Apple Filing Protocol The Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), formerly AppleTalk Filing Protocol, is a proprietary protocol, proprietary Communications protocol, network protocol, and part of the Apple File Service (AFS), that offers file services for macOS, classic Mac OS, ...

(AFP) (Netatalk) **

Network File System Network File System (NFS) is a distributed file system protocol originally developed by Sun Microsystems (Sun) in 1984, allowing a user on a client computer to access files over a computer network much like local storage is accessed. NFS, like ...

(NFS) **

(ProFTPD) ** TFTP (tftp-hpa) **

(client/server) **

Unison Unison (stylised as UNISON) is a Great Britain, British trade union. Along with Unite the Union, Unite, Unison is one of the two largest trade unions in the United Kingdom, with over 1.2 million members who work predominantly in public servic ...

** SCP (SSH) **

target *Extra services **

server (FUPPES) **

server (MiniDLNA) **

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

iTunes/DAAP server (Firefly) **

Lighttpd lighttpd (prescribed pronunciation: "lighty") is an open-source web server optimized for speed-critical environments while remaining standards-compliant, secure and flexible. It was originally written by Jan Kneschke as a proof-of-concept of the ...

(Webserver) **

Iperf iperf, Iperf, or iPerf, is a tool for network performance measurement and tuning. It is a cross-platform tool that can produce standardized performance measurements for any network. iperf has client and server functionality, and can create d ...

Iperf3 Network Bandwidth measure ** Syncthing File synchronization application ** Transmission BitTorrent client **

VirtualBox Oracle VirtualBox (formerly Sun VirtualBox, Sun xVM VirtualBox and InnoTek VirtualBox) is a hosted hypervisor for x86 virtualization developed by Oracle Corporation. VirtualBox was originally created by InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH, which was ac ...

Virtualbox included and managed by phpVirtualBox and noVNC on GUI *Monitoring ** S.M.A.R.T. (smartmontools) **Alert by E-mail **

SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet Standard protocol for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks and for modifying that information to change device behavior. Devices that typically su ...

Syslog In computing, syslog () is a standard for message logging. It allows separation of the software that generates messages, the system that stores them, and the software that reports and analyzes them. Each message is labeled with a facility code, ...

** UPS (NUT)

Installation

XigmaNAS is installable on almost any boot medium including LiveCD, both for

x86-64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set architecture, instruction set. It was announced in 1999 and first available in the AMD Opteron family in 2003. It introduces two new ope ...

and x86-32 computer platforms up to version 10.3. As of version 11.0, XigmaNAS no longer supports x86-32, but version 10.3 is still getting updates. XigmaNAS can be installed on Compact Flash, USB flash drives, SSD, hard drives or other bootable devices, and supports advanced formatted drives using 4 kB sectors. The software distribution is currently distributed in ISO image (.iso, approximately 370 MB), USB flash drive image (.img, approximately 320 MB) format, and in source form.

Preferred embedded installation

A special small footprint embedded image is also available (.img, approximately 150 MB). The preferred method is the embedded installation onto a USB stick, Compact Flash card (CF), or HDD/

SSD A solid-state drive (SSD) is a type of solid-state storage device that uses Integrated circuit, integrated circuits to store data persistence (computer science), persistently. It is sometimes called semiconductor storage device, solid-stat ...

, for which XigmaNAS was designed. The XigmaNAS OS will load into system memory, eliminating system writes to a drive except for configuration changes written to an archive. Flash devices are more energy efficient and the updating process can be done by WebGUI in the browser, downloading and installing a new firmware image.

History

The original FreeNAS project derives from

m0n0wall m0n0wall was an embedded firewall (networking), firewall distribution of FreeBSD, one of the Berkeley Software Distribution, BSD operating system descendants. It provided a small image which could be put on flash memory, Compact Flash cards as w ...

. The FreeNAS 0.7 branch was end-of-life'd in late 2011 after the FreeNAS name was legally acquired by iXsystems, Inc. Starting with version 8.x, new iXsystems developers rewrote FreeNAS. Legacy FreeNAS 0.7 was no longer available for download. The legacy FreeNAS 0.7 code was unable to be developed any longer under the same name, and a name change was necessary. The founder of FreeNAS (Olivier Cochard-Labbé) donated the original FreeNAS source code to the NAS4Free project. With the support of the former developers, namely Daisuke Aoyama and Michael Zoon, it carries on the original FreeNAS code base. FreeNAS 8.x.y and up is a software fork of the original FreeNAS with a new rewritten code base, continuing the old branded name. In 2018, the project applied for the XigmaNAS trademark to protect the brand prior to the release of v11.2.

Awards

* SourceForge.net Project of the Month, March 2017 * SourceForge.net Project of the Month, August 2015 * SourceForge.net Project of the Week, May 2015 * VMware "Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge, Consumer" (2008) * SourceForge.net Project of the Month, January 2007 *

InfoWorld ''InfoWorld'' (''IW'') is an American information technology media business. Founded in 1978, it began as a monthly magazine. In 2007, it transitioned to a Web-only publication. Its parent company is International Data Group, and its sister pu ...

Best of open source in storage (2008)

References

External links

* {{FreeBSD Free file transfer software FreeBSD Home servers Network-attached storage Software using the BSD license