FreeNAS vs Rockstor
FreeNAS and Rockstor are Open Source network-attached storage operating systems that support SMB shares, Copy-on-Write, and snapshots. Each operating system provides a web interface for easy management and both feature a plugin system for managing additional applications.
FreeNAS
FreeNAS is an operating system that can be installed on virtually any hardware platform to share data over a network. FreeNAS is the simplest way to create a centralized and easily accessible place for your data. Use FreeNAS with ZFS to protect, store, and back up all of your data. FreeNAS is used everywhere, for the home, small business, and the enterprise.
Rockstor
Rockstor began development in 2012 and is based on CentOS Linux and the BTRFS filesystem. Rockstor utilizes Docker containers to support additional plugin functionality which it calls “Rock-ons”.
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| Overview | FreeNAS 11.3 | Rockstor |
| Ease of Use | Graphical User Interface | Graphical User Interface |
| Documentation | User Guide, How-To Videos, Training Videos | User Guide |
| Certified Hardware Available | SoHo and Business | No |
| Open Source Licence | Primarily 2-clause BSD | LGPLv2 |
| Base Operating System | FreeBSD 11.3 | CentOS Linux |
| File System | OpenZFS | BTRFS |
| Architecture | 64-bit | 64-bit |
| Downloads | Over 10 million | 148,600+ |
| Development Language | Python, Angular | Python, Javascript |
| Open Source Repository | https://github.com/freenas | https://sourceforge.net/projects/rockstor/ |
| Core Developers | 25+ | Rockstor |
| Forums | 66,500+ users and over 550,000 posts | 1,920 topics |
| YouTube Community Videos | 134,000+ results and 22K+ subscribers | 3,790 results |
| Social Media | 28,800+ Facebook likes, 13,700 Twitter followers | 334 Twitter followers |
| Restorability | Download/Upload configuration file, default settings restore, boot environments | Configuration backup/restore (experimental) |
| Built-in Visual Reporting | CPU, disk, memory, network, processes, uptime, iSCSI, ZFS | CPU, memory, disk, network, shares |
| Supported Disk Configurations | Stripe, mirror, RAIDZ1, Z2, Z3, hot-swap | RAID0, 1, 5, 6, 10 |
| Encrypted Storage Support | Software Disk Encryption, Self-Encrypting Drives (SED), and Dataset Encryption in TrueNAS CORE 12 | Software Disk Encryption |
| Third Party Application Support | Plugins, Jails, bhyve VMs, Docker VMs | Rock-ons |
| API | REST, websockets | REST |
| Alerting Services | GUI, email, and SNMP alerts, integration with AWS-SNS, InfluxDB, Slack, Mattermost, OpsGenie, PagerDuty, VictorOps | email alerts |
| Built-in File Sharing Protocols | SMB, NFS, AFP, WebDAV | SMB, NFS, AFP, WebDAV |
| Built-in Block Storage Protocols | iSCSI | none |
| Other Built-in Network Protocols | rsync, FTP, TFTP, LLDP, SSH, DDNS, SNMP | rsync, SFTP, SSH, SNMP (beta) |
| Built-in Cloud Synchronization | Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Box, Dropbox, FTP, Google Cloud Storage, HTTP, Hubic, Mega, Microsoft Azure Blob Storage, Microsoft OneDrive, pCloud, SFTP, WebDAV, Yandex | |
| Built-in Directory Services | Active Directory, LDAP, Kerberos, NIS | Active Directory, LDAP, NIS |
| Built-in Hardware Protocols | S.M.A.R.T., SCSI Enclosure Services (SES), UPS | S.M.A.R.T., UPS |
| Built-in Virtualization | bhyve, Docker | none |
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