Question - FreeNas build on the cheap

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c00kie

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OK so I am in the process of getting a better solution for my data storage. Currently it just all sits on a couple of 1.5 TB drives in my desktop and backs up to a USB drive. I have acquired components over the years, and I just recently purchased (for next to nothing) 5 2TB sata drives from work they did not need anymore. They are all the same model and were lightly used. I'd like to make a freenas box with a raid6 using those drives, but the remainder of my components are sketchy.

NM70I-847 Motherboard (http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=617) and 4GB DDR3. Generic PCI express 2-port sata card.

I have read that on 4GB on the new freenas gets mixed results. I'd be using this for just one, maybe two streams at a time. It will not be under heavy use, so I am not too concerned about read/write speeds. I also have a spare 50GB SSD that I can throw in there, but I am not sure if it would even be of any use. I can't really find much on the freenas site aside from using it as an l2arc but I don't think that would benefit me.

Does anyone have experience with similar compontnts? Would it even be worth attempting this, or would I just be wasting my time.
 
c00kie said:
OK so I am in the process of getting a better solution for my data storage. Currently it just all sits on a couple of 1.5 TB drives in my desktop and backs up to a USB drive. I have acquired components over the years, and I just recently purchased (for next to nothing) 5 2TB sata drives from work they did not need anymore. They are all the same model and were lightly used. I'd like to make a freenas box with a raid6 using those drives, but the remainder of my components are sketchy.

NM70I-847 Motherboard (http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=617) and 4GB DDR3. Generic PCI express 2-port sata card.

I have read that on 4GB on the new freenas gets mixed results. I'd be using this for just one, maybe two streams at a time. It will not be under heavy use, so I am not too concerned about read/write speeds. I also have a spare 50GB SSD that I can throw in there, but I am not sure if it would even be of any use. I can't really find much on the freenas site aside from using it as an l2arc but I don't think that would benefit me.

Does anyone have experience with similar compontnts? Would it even be worth attempting this, or would I just be wasting my time.
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You should be fine, performance won't be super ideal but it looks like you won't need it. I've ran RAID-Z on a low end dual core box w/ 4Gig of memory fine. As far as I know the SSD wouldn't be necessary for that either unless you need a boot drive. Though given FreeNAS can be installed on and boot from USB a cheap flash drive would be better suited for that purpose.

Though with that many drives of that size i'd recommend RAID-Z2 and not RAID6. It's basically the same thing but better. (not sure if FreeNAS even does vanilla RAID6 anymore, I did hear something about how they're going ZFS only)
 
Thanks. I am going to give it a go later today. I will post results in case any one else is interested.

And yes I will do the RAID-Z2 rather than traditional "raid6". I still am not familiar with the ZFS terminology for their equivalent to the common RAID#'s.
 
FnordMan said:
You should be fine, performance won't be super ideal but it looks like you won't need it. I've ran RAID-Z on a low end dual core box w/ 4Gig of memory fine. As far as I know the SSD wouldn't be necessary for that either unless you need a boot drive. Though given FreeNAS can be installed on and boot from USB a cheap flash drive would be better suited for that purpose.

Though with that many drives of that size i'd recommend RAID-Z2 and not RAID6. It's basically the same thing but better. (not sure if FreeNAS even does vanilla RAID6 anymore, I did hear something about how they're going ZFS only)
Click to expand...

Just finished the setup. Running the 5x2TB drives in a RAID-Z2. Performance is much better than I anticipated it would be. I am getting right around 115MB/sec writes and 85MB/sec reads. More than enough for what I need. Thanks for reply earlier!
 
I've had a freenas system for a couple of years now on an old biostar mobo and athlon 250u. Runs flawlessly and performance is great for my needs. I did drop some ECC mem in as well.
 
capt_zman said:
I've had a freenas system for a couple of years now on an old biostar mobo and athlon 250u. Runs flawlessly and performance is great for my needs. I did drop some ECC mem in as well.
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Nice. How much RAM do you use in your box? I read they highly advise against going below 8GB. I have 4GB in mine on FreeNas9.3 and stressed the read/write pretty heavily last night (for my use anyway). The system consistently used almost all of the memory, but performance was still good. Do you have any addon's running on yours? I am considering using it for Plex/Subsonic, but I am not sure it has the horsepower with only 4GB and a low powered dual core celeron.
 
ZFS will always use all of the avaliable memory for ARC, so that's normal. ZFS lives and dies by its caching so you want to throw as much ram as physically possible at it.

4GB will be ok for a basic low use file serving box, just don't post that spec on the freenas forum without a flame suit at the ready.
 
c00kie said:
Nice. How much RAM do you use in your box? I read they highly advise against going below 8GB. I have 4GB in mine on FreeNas9.3 and stressed the read/write pretty heavily last night (for my use anyway). The system consistently used almost all of the memory, but performance was still good. Do you have any addon's running on yours? I am considering using it for Plex/Subsonic, but I am not sure it has the horsepower with only 4GB and a low powered dual core celeron.
Click to expand...

I have 8GB and it runs flawlessly. I use it mainly for storing movie files and streaming to 2 different htpc's and an xbox. Never had a problem with multiple boxes streaming at once. Also use it as a Time Machine backup box for a couple of macbooks as well.

No addon's other than using it as a VPN (OpenVPN) when I'm traveling. And the best thing is it pulls 15w from the wall when idling, which it does 99% of the time. I also use a cron job to shut it down every night and 11:30 and use the automated mobo wakeup to start it again at 06:30. Overall it has been the perfect solution for me.

Z
 
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