Setting Up a Home NAS with FreeBSD and ZFS Mirror (RAID1) Configuration
By
todsacerdoti
5mo ago· 13 min readen
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Summary
The article documents a technical guide for setting up a home NAS (Network Attached Storage) system using FreeBSD with ZFS mirror (RAID1) configuration. The author describes using a Lenovo ThinkCentre M720s SFF computer for the project and explains their decision to use vanilla FreeBSD instead of TrueNAS. The content focuses on testing the setup in a virtual machine environment, installing FreeBSD 14.3 via SSH with bsdinstall, and configuring ZFS mirroring for data redundancy. The article serves as a practical tutorial for creating a reliable home storage solution with detailed technical steps.
Key quotes
· 5 pulledI have an idea to set up a home NAS on FreeBSD.
For this purpose, I bought a Lenovo ThinkCentre M720s SFF – it’s quiet, compact, and offers the possibility to install 2 SATA III SSDs plus a separate M.2 slot for an NVMe SSD.
While waiting for the drives to arrive, let’s test how it all works on a virtual machine.
We will be installing FreeBSD 14.3, although version 15 is already out, but it has some interesting changes that I’ll play with separately.
Of course, I could have gone with TrueNAS, which is based on FreeBSD – but I want 'vanilla' FreeBSD to do everything.
Prototyping a Home NAS with RAID1 on FreeBSD on a virtual machine: system installation via SSH with bsdinstall, configuring ZFS mirror and working with datasets
