Set up file sharing on your network in 10 minutes!

I recently needed to share some files at work with my group and I needed something that was quick and easy, in case I needed to move it somewhere else or if someone else would need to manage it. I had heard about a special BSD operating system called FreeNAS and I decided to try it out. I went to their website and downloaded the latest ISO and burned it to a CD.

You can simply boot your computer from the CD and install the OS, but I wanted it to be a little more portable, so I decided to install VMWare on a desktop I had in the office and run FreeNAS as a VM, or virtual machine. If you do not know what virtualization, it is basically a way to run multiple "guest" operating systems on a "host" operating system. You can head over here for more information on how virtualization works and how you can download one of their products. I suggest vmware server, since it's free and runs on Windows and Linux (you still have to sign up to get the licence key, but the signup and licence key are still free).

I started up the VM with the FreeNAS disc and it boots into a basic console that has a few options to choose from. I selected the option to set up an IP address. You can use DHCP to set the IP address, but you can't utilize some of FreeNAS's features if you use DHCP (like FTP), so I set my IP manually. After that, it tells you to go to that IP address on a web browser on another PC to finish the install (ex. http://192.168.1.100). I went to the website and set up users, folders, FTP, etc. It was really easy and I was adding files to it after about 5 minutes of setup. After I was done, I could tell people to go to that address on their web browser, which is authenticated so only people who had the username and password could get in. Once they authenticated they could see all of the files I had added as hyperlinks and simply click on any of the file links and download a copy of the file to their PC.

This solution was perfect for me, since I could now take an image of the VM and move it to any other PC running VMWare and share files on whatever network I'm on. You can even run the operating system on the CD if you only need to share the files temporarily, keeping in mind that as soon as the computer shuts off, you would lose your configuration.

So, if you need to share files quickly on a network, or just want a simple solution to share files, I would suggest you check out FreeNAS.