How to configure a VMware virtual machine for FreeNAS installation

A NAS (Network Attached Storage) server has the ability to provide a central storage system for all your files in one place. If you are a home user and have thought about having a central repository for all your data needs, then you might want to think about a NAS solution. In this article we will show you how to prepare a virtual machine that can host one such free NAS appliance called FreeNAS. In subsequent articles we will show you how to configure the appliance itself. A Virtual Machine for FreeNAS is a great place to get your feet wet and gain some experience before you implement a full blown NAS box.

A NAS device can comprise of cheap SATA or SCSI disks and it can be capable of providing access through many popular protocols both for Windows and *nix environments, commonly available protocols are CIFS, NFS and FTP. The most common access protocol from within Windows is CIFS and from the Unix side, its NFS. Other protocols such as FTP and HTTP are also available and platform independent

The FreeNAS appliance is a free open source product that has a great potential. It can be configured to provide many advance features such as redundancy, fault tolerance and advanced reporting. In this segment we will only get you started on how to prepare a virtual machine on VMWare server, where you will install the FreeNAS appliance later.To proceed we will assume, you are already familiar with VMWare virtual server and have already got it installed

You can learn more about the features, capabilities and benefits of the FreeNAS appliance by visiting http://www.freenas.org/

Step1:

- Launch VMWare server and Click File -> New -> Virtual Machine

Step 2:

- Select next on the wizard

Step 3:

- Choose Typical and click next

Step 4:

- Choose other, then choose freebsd from the drop down box and click next

Step 5:

- Provide a name for your virtual machine (eg; FreeNAST1) and provide a location

Step6:

- Choose type of networking, bridged is default and works fine

Step 7:

- Choose the disk capacity, 8 GB for a test appliance is sufficient, choose "allocate now" click Finish

Step 8:

- Click on Virtual Machine settings

Step 9:

- Configure the CD ROM to connect at boot and use an ISO image. This iso image is what you would have downloaded from the FreeNAS website to install FreeNAS. Its available from the download page at: http://www.freenas.org/index.php?option=com_versions&Itemid=51#FreeNAS%20Images, choose the one that does not say "For VMWARE"