Server: Dedicated Linux vs FreeNAS plugin - perspectives?

[trifleneurotic 50]

Hello everybody!

I'll try to keep it short and sweet.

Right now, I'm running v3.6.0.81_beta (will upgrade soon to v4) on a headless Fedora 27 box with 4GB of RAM and a dual-core AMD A4-3300 APU on a WD HDD. It also leverages OpenLDAP running on another FreeBSD box on my network for authentication. Have used the setup for years; I try to keep the boxes physically clean and the setup is still running like a champ. Using a couple of external USB 3.0 drives for backup.

 

It ain't pretty, but it works.

Sometimes I have issues with the Android app spinning when trying to play music on my Pixel 2 phone or buffering over WiFi when playing a movie on my Fire TV Cube app (which results in some herky-jerkiness).

Those instances are relatively rare, though although the latter issue is nonetheless more annoying. I am thinking that may be due to streaming higher-resolution movies over WiFi (ideal vs real world transfer speeds, essentially a bandwith issue and not a system resource issue?).

Fast-forward to today, and I have just procured a bona-fide workstation (Dell Precision T3400, Core 2 Duo) that I am converting to (Free)NAS with 8GB ECC RAM, SSD for boot, and media on a RAID 1 two-HDD configuration for redunancy.

Here is the question I'm wrestling with:

Should I move from Fedora-server Emby to FreeNAS-plugin Emby?

Let me say that I know there is no cut and dried answer to this due to different processors, operating systems (essentially Linux vs FreeBSD), chipsets, etc. But anecdotally I have heard of a more performant TCP/IP stack on BSD, and I want to reclaim my USB drives although that is not strictly speaking a dealbreaker. However, Emby would be running from an SSD which I am assuming would make a big difference.

Of course, I also don't have any experience with the FreeNAS Emby plugin. Are there any relatively stable data points or pieces of information that I am missing that may suggest choosing one course over the other?

Many thanks in advance!

[Luke 38818]

Well, the FreeNAS interface is nice, but FreeBSD can be a whole lot more complicated, that's for sure.

[unhooked 17]

Why not just go with freebsd if you've already got a box and experience? The only thing these days I need that I have to compile myself is comskip/comcut, everything else is a simple matter of pkg upgrade and I don't have to muck around with unneeded containers. Granted I've been using it for almost 25 years, but there's nothing really complicated to making it work as your nas/media server.

Openldap is far more difficult to deal with than nfs/samba/zfs.

Edited January 17, 2019 by unhooked