FreeNAS is what experienced/wise long-time unix admins will setup at home for their giant anime SAN/NAS because:
- they've been around the block long enough to know that FreeNAS can do 95% of what they need better than they can do it, with far less chance of errors introduced, but with 95% less of their valuable time needed to do it
it's that simple honestly.
if you already know how to do setup/configure/tune/tweak all of the components inside FreeNAS specific to your environment, congrats, you're already a great unix admin. you've been in your career a while, and you're probably pretty well paid.
but why would you spend your valuable per$onal time to faff about setting up/configuring/tuning/tweaking what FreeNAS can do out of the box, unless you have an edge case scenario that FreeNAS doesn't cover or can't do well?
for the same reasons, again i must specify -- unless you have very specific edge case scenario(s)/situation(s) or wanted to use this as a learning exercise -- why would you:
1) hand-craft your own *BSD or Linux-based firewall/VPN/router, instead of using pfsense/iptraf/etc
2) hand-craft, build and create your own Wifi router OS image, instead of using OpenWRT
3) roll your own port monitoring and OS proc monitoring notification system, instead of using Nagios/BigBrother/etc
so to get back to your OG question of
> If I already know my way around FreeBSD and around a command line, why would I want to use FreeNAS instead of just sticking to vanilla FreeBSD?
because your time is valuable, and because FreeNAS can do 95% of what you need better than you can do it.
This was pretty much the logic that I used. I was sick of having to worry about data integrity and backups, the amount of arcane knowledge required to do it correctly and safely is immense. FreeNAS has good defaults and good documentation so I got myself a FreeNAS Mini (eventually upgraded to the MiniXL because it is able to take better advantage of zfs).
There can't be two of us in the world with a personal SAN/NAS that isn't a giant anime collection. Since I know I'm the one with a personal NAS without such a collection it stands to reason that if you have a personal NAS you have it full of anime. QED
but of course the 2020 / "cloudy" way to run a giant anime NAS at home is not to run a NAS at home at all:
put your 50TB+ of anime up into Google Drive on a single _unlimited storage_ G suite account, "mount" that onto a Windows 10 VM using Google Drive Filestream, setup Plex on the W10 VM to point to Google Drive, and laugh all the way to the bank because you no longer have to deal with ... well, anything.
- they've been around the block long enough to know that FreeNAS can do 95% of what they need better than they can do it, with far less chance of errors introduced, but with 95% less of their valuable time needed to do it
it's that simple honestly.
if you already know how to do setup/configure/tune/tweak all of the components inside FreeNAS specific to your environment, congrats, you're already a great unix admin. you've been in your career a while, and you're probably pretty well paid.
but why would you spend your valuable per$onal time to faff about setting up/configuring/tuning/tweaking what FreeNAS can do out of the box, unless you have an edge case scenario that FreeNAS doesn't cover or can't do well?
for the same reasons, again i must specify -- unless you have very specific edge case scenario(s)/situation(s) or wanted to use this as a learning exercise -- why would you:
1) hand-craft your own *BSD or Linux-based firewall/VPN/router, instead of using pfsense/iptraf/etc
2) hand-craft, build and create your own Wifi router OS image, instead of using OpenWRT
3) roll your own port monitoring and OS proc monitoring notification system, instead of using Nagios/BigBrother/etc
so to get back to your OG question of
> If I already know my way around FreeBSD and around a command line, why would I want to use FreeNAS instead of just sticking to vanilla FreeBSD?
because your time is valuable, and because FreeNAS can do 95% of what you need better than you can do it.
(edited for formatting/clarity)