> "Enterprise" implies that you need guaranteed availability and > support. FreeNAS offers neither. An enterprise NAS is a well > supported box running Windows storage server. Nothing fancier than > that. A whitebox running FreeNAS will give you the same features > (probably more) with more stability (FreeBSD kernel vs Windows kernel) > on lesser hardware. But when it breaks, you're fixing it yourself. > HP and Dell sell their NAS products, that price tag includes support > and Windows licensing. I am confused as to your reason for equating "enterprise" and "windows" as if there are no enterprise supported NAS's that run non-windows operating systems. As one example there is the Snap Server http://www.snapserver.com/ which runs GuardianOS (Linux) http://www.snapserver.com/Snap/en-US/products/sw/integrated/gos/ I have gotten real knee deep with the OS and (owner at the time) Adaptec support to resolve some partitioning/RAID problems. They were able to assist and bring about complete data recovery thanks to their non-windows enterprise support. The support is optional.