Has anybody tried this?
http://www.freenas.org

looks like a standard BSD with a GUI interface.

Yes
Review and tutorial here
Its quite impressive

Personally, I use an existing linux server for my file shares, but I've built several FreeNAS Boxes and besides the power requirements of running a PC vs a small consumer electronic box, I quite prefer it. Its extreamly flexible....its got smb, iscsi, ftp, domain support, etc... Its also rock solid.

I think this is the key ^

thank you.

In the interest of full disclosure...
Its support for software based RAID 5 is in beta, but the same is true for just about any opensource raid 5 solution. In my testing I found it to be equal to Linux's md support...in that neither has given me any problems on a wide range of hardware and drives. Of course, it supports RAID 0 and RAID 1 fully with out any "beta" tags...
I'm pretty sold on RAID 5, its a little more costly to setup, but considering the reliability factor, I think its worth it.


What I really like a freenas is its small footprint. Its about 28 megs total installed. It really sings, performance-wise.

I almost used it for one of my server, but looks like it does not support
the controllers I've chosen. I'm stuck with the linux for now. But based on
your experience, I think i'll test this out on some other boxes.