FreeNAS & SSH

After spending all night Saturday and half day Sunday, and after reading the immensely helpful articles over the internet; Link Here:

I’ve finally setup my FreeNAS along with SSH. For those who are not technically with me, FreeNAS is a network storage system and it is FREE! Which means I can host all my data (songs, movies, documents, pictures)in one central location so all my network users are able to use whenever they want. SSH is basically a secured channel between two networked devices. SSH will allow me to access my system from anywhere securely.

Some highlights of FreeNAS:

* Boot up time is faster.
* I can use ZFS or Raid file system, and it’s both stable. This is especially handy as I use Linux on some of my pc’s.
* I can install other services / applications. Namely Git and Subversion.
* Being FREE is always a plus in my book!

Given you pick the right hardware, FreeNAS would be great. The web interface is very easy to use and setup. And the initial install is incredibly simple.

To me the beauty of a FreeNAS based solution (for someone that knows what they are doing of course) is that I can cobble together a load of old bits and put them to good use, serving as a file server on my home network.

After finally getting my FreeNAS and ZFS-based file server up and running, I was looking at ways to access its services from remote locations outside of my home network. for example when I am at work or when at my friends place. There are numerous ways to achieve such a feat, such a creating a VPN between your remote computer and the server.

However, VPN’s typically require either special software installed on the server (which FreeNAS lacks, like Hamachi) or dedicated hardware running on the network (such as a machine running OpenVPN), which I lack. FreeNAS, however, does contain SSH, allowing you to create a sudo-VPN called an “SSH tunnel.” An SSH tunnel is a secure, encrypted connection between the remote computer and the file server for a specific port. Each service running on the server uses different ports, thus it is necessary to create numerous tunnels – once for each service you which to access remotely.

After reading a number of online tutorials, most of which were geared towards Windows, I discovered a very easy way to set up tunnels between a Mac, Linux, Windows remote machine and the FreeNAS server, thanks to more reading and my friends' help. If you guys have any questions on how to install please call the hot-line ;)