I have been using FreeNAS for a number of years. I was really happy with it, but a long running problem in recent releases has made me look for an alternative. The first time I noticed a problem there was an extended power outage at my house. When the power came back on I was working on my laptop and saw the network share wasn't active. I tried the web administration page and it also was not available. Since I run the server headless it is a pain to drag it out from under my desk, plug in a monitor and keyboard, and diagnose the issue. The problem was FreeNAS wasn't booting because it could not find the system's hard drives. After some research it turns out this is a known bug and it effects a number of people who had previously working systems. I have installed multiple updates hoping that one would finally fix the issue, but I had the same problem again and decided it was time to move on.
I researched a number of alternatives and decided that OpenMediaVault had the best feature set. It is very similar to FreeNAS in it's appearance and operation, so the interface is comfortable. I used a minimal Debian as the base and used these instructions to get OpenMediaVault up and running. I have had this system running for a couple months now with no issues. I restarted multiple times just to be sure that there were no boot problems before deciding to stick with this configuration. I will now recommend OpenMediaVault to friends who want to set up a large home network share.