Inphinity: What do you mean by "better"? They both implement ZFS very well, and in part it will probably come down to feature set and personal preference. I do like FreeNAS better, but that's probably because I've used it more.

Inphinity: Most recommendations for RAM I've seen are based on zpool size, so in your example, 32gb. Yes, the 8GB RAM recommendation includes the ZFS recommended amount, for up to 8TB of zpool. The OS itself uses about 1GB. NAS4Free recommend 512MB, but that's before considering what file systems you're using. They recommend 4GB+ for ZFS.

As to how much more, well, I personally don't see the *need* to match 1GB RAM:1TB zpool, unless you're using features like deduplication or AD integration, though it can help keep performance high. If you're doing 16x2TB disks in RAIDZ10, I would want at least 16GB RAM. If budget allows, 32GB. If you want to dedupe, at least 64GB (and ideally 160GB). ZFS is incredibly RAM-intensive, and while I've not seen FreeNAS have any stability issues with 8GB of RAM (even in an implementation with 12x3TB disks), performance will slump if you don't have enough for your setup. The issue I had with NAS4Free, on the other hand, was stability (same hardware, 8GB RAM, 12x3TB disks).

So, in short, either one you should aim for 1GB:1TB ratio, but you can get away with less as long as it's >8GB and >= 512MB:1TB zpool if you're not as fussed about speed. NAS4free with 512MB RAM trying to handle 16x2TB drives is just asking for it to fall over in a pile in my experience, sorry.

As to disaster recovery, I've not had a recovery situation where FreeNAS was an issue, though aside from HDD failures, I've only had to deal with one controller failure on a freenas box, and we just swapped it for one identical and was all good. At the end of the day, ZFS is not a backup replacement ;)

I've only had to deal with one controller failure on a freenas box, and we just swapped it for one identical and was all good. At the end of the day, ZFS is not a backup replacement ;)

BinaryLimited:
When you say controller...you not referring to raid controller are you?

HiTM4N: Xpenology FTW
Think Synology DSM software, but for pretty much any x86 hardware.