Help with FreeNAS build

[bobhays]

Hi everyone, I wanted to make a dedicated freeNAS in my house to share files throughout the house (duh its a NAS). The nas doesn't need to have amazing speeds, just steady and reliable. I'm going to start off with a 2tb and 1.5 tb drive I have laying around. So now on to the build questions.

 

1. I have 4gb of RAM. People recommend 1GB of ECC RAM per tb of data. My question is will 4gb of RAM be ok? The low end AMD motherboards don't support ECC IIRC so is non-ECC ok?

 

2. Which of these would perform better? (I am terrible at low end chips)

 

One of these (lower than $80)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100007623%20600110055%20600110170%20600374221

 

or 

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157490

 

and

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113366

 

 

Also feel free to suggest any other combinations you would think that would work better. I am only looking for Mini-itx with support for at least 8gb of ram (laptop or desktop doesn't matter) and at least 3, preferably 4 sata ports. Thanks

EDIT: If it has 2 sata ports I can just add 2 more with a pcie card but that costs $20 so factor that into the price, thanks again.

[lopj245]

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/MFG8wP

[lopj245]

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/MFG8wP

And yes, 4GB would work just fine.

[bobhays]

And yes, 4GB would work just fine.

I want to make a mini-itx build and I don't think there are any itx am3+ boards.

 

EDIT: found an asus one but it was am3 not plus and out of stock.

[bobhays]

Also i was wondering if this would handle 3 1080p streams (someone else asked this and thought it would be good to know).

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

 

Hey bobhays,

 

1GB of EEC memory per 1TB of storage space is recommended for ZFS setups. I would say 4GB would be more than enough for your needs.

I would make sure there are NAS/RAID class drives in that setup in order to have safer and smoother performance with little chance of drive dropouts. I could suggest checking out WD Red: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=x8lTVa

 

Captain_WD.

[bobhays]

Hey bobhays,

 

1GB of EEC memory per 1TB of storage space is recommended for ZFS setups. I would say 4GB would be more than enough for your needs.

I would make sure there are NAS/RAID class drives in that setup in order to have safer and smoother performance with little chance of drive dropouts. I could suggest checking out WD Red: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=x8lTVa

 

Captain_WD.

is it necessary that the ram is ecc? I already have a 4gb stick i'd prefer to use. thanks for the info

[Captain_WD]

is it necessary that the ram is ecc? I already have a 4gb stick i'd prefer to use. thanks for the info

 

ECC (which stands for Error Correction Code) RAM is very popular in servers or other systems with high-value data as it protects against data corruption by automatically detecting and correcting memory errors. Standard RAM uses banks of eight memory chips in which data is stored and provided to the CPU on demand. ECC RAM is different as it has an additional memory chip which acts as both error detection and correction for the other eight RAM chips.

 

EEC is preferred in NAS environments for their ability to reduce errors and data corruption. You should be jsut fine with your regular 4GB stick. You can always upgrade it down the road.

 

Captain_WD.

[Eniqmatic]

Hi everyone, I wanted to make a dedicated freeNAS in my house to share files throughout the house (duh its a NAS). The nas doesn't need to have amazing speeds, just steady and reliable. I'm going to start off with a 2tb and 1.5 tb drive I have laying around. So now on to the build questions.

 

1. I have 4gb of RAM. People recommend 1GB of ECC RAM per tb of data. My question is will 4gb of RAM be ok? The low end AMD motherboards don't support ECC IIRC so is non-ECC ok?

 

2. Which of these would perform better? (I am terrible at low end chips)

 

One of these (lower than $80)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100007623%20600110055%20600110170%20600374221

 

or 

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157490

 

and

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113366

 

 

Also feel free to suggest any other combinations you would think that would work better. I am only looking for Mini-itx with support for at least 8gb of ram (laptop or desktop doesn't matter) and at least 3, preferably 4 sata ports. Thanks

EDIT: If it has 2 sata ports I can just add 2 more with a pcie card but that costs $20 so factor that into the price, thanks again.

 

 

And yes, 4GB would work just fine.

 

No. No. No.

 

FreeNAS/ZFS requires a minimum 8GB of ECC RAM to start. Absolute minimum. If your going to store anything you actually value on this, then you would be extremely silly not to adhere to these guidelines. 

 

We can help you build this correctly, but skimping on hardware isn't wise. Unless you just want to play about then go ahead. 

 

Bear in mind however if you don't stick to the recommended spec and you loose data and ask members of the FreeNAS community to help recover it, they usually won't help.

[Eniqmatic]

AMD processors are also not recommended as they don't support some of the functions of FreeBSD and hence FreeNAS. You should go with an I3 or a Xeon, or one of the Atoms that support ECC and are SOC. There are some good boards out there that I can point you in the direction off.

 

What's your budget?

[wpirobotbuilder]

You will need more than 4GB of memory. The recommendations are 8GB base memory, plus the additional 1GB per TB of drive space.

 

In your case I would recommend going with no less than 8GB for functional reasons, and preferably 12GB or more for performance reasons.

You really should use ECC memory if you are getting this for data security reasons. You can do without ECC memory, but make sure to disable drive scrubbing. The reason being that a bit flip will corrupt your data in one file, and the scrub would cause that bit flip to ruin all your data.

 

For FreeNAS, single-core clockspeed matters more than the number of cores, if you are only doing basic stuff like compression. If you're doing snapshots and deduplication then you'll want more cores. For reference, a low-end Atom processor (C2750) has lots of cores but low clockspeed, and it doesn't suffer many performance bottlenecks. Personally I'd go with the quad-core you chose.

[bobhays]

snip

 

 

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Thanks for the help guys it's really appreciated. I am very new to freeNAS.

 

Ok so, the things I'm going to store on this are basically blu-ray rips, music, and family photos. Of course I would like to keep the system stable because recovery is a hassle, but I also plan on having a cold storage backup so it's not critical (that's why i thought non ECC would be ok).

 

So as I understand I should get at least 8gb of RAM which shouldn't be too hard since it only adds about 25 to my original plan.

 

Now the only thing left is a processor and motherboard combo.

Eniqmatic mentioned freeBSD support on intel and the freeNAS website recommends intel, but at the low end they have a lot fewer cores and I thought for something like a NAS more cores would be beneficial.

 

Can you guys recommend a good solution?

 

A couple things to keep in mind, the most intensive thing I'll be using this for is 3x1080p streams (very rarely), usually 1 or 2 streams, or transferring 5gb files (also rarely). Basically it doesn't need to have amazing performance. I'm also trying to keep the cost as low as possible which is why I found the amd combos for around $60.

 

Last thing I want to ask is what are the benefits of freeNAS over just getting a WD MyCloud. They are very cheap for the storage they provide. I know they won't perform as well or be as reliable but as stated above those aren't huge issues unless they are so slow I can't do what I want.

 

Thanks again for all the help, sorry for the long post.

[Eniqmatic]

snip

 

I would personally save yourself the hassle and do it properly in the first place with ECC. Saves you so much time if something corrupts. AMD can also often be hit or a miss weather it actually support's ECC or not, regardless of what it says in the specs.

 

Intel are known to generally provide great support for OS's outside of Windows (FreeNAS is FreeBSD) hence Intel is recommended. 

 

You'd be surprised about the cores you need, as mentioned above, higher clock speed is generally favoured over more cores (to a point). I've built one recently for a client (http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/335679-the-mini-nas-project/) based on the HP Proliant Gen 8 1610T which has the perfect base - compact, supports ECC, Intel, Dual NIC with a third ILO and many other features - yet is based on a Celeron processor. This has 2 cores, no HT and performs well for a few streams and storage etc. You know the great part about this platform I found out however? It will take Xeon!

 

Does that help a bit?

[bobhays]

I would personally save yourself the hassle and do it properly in the first place with ECC. Saves you so much time if something corrupts. AMD can also often be hit or a miss weather it actually support's ECC or not, regardless of what it says in the specs.

 

Intel are known to generally provide great support for OS's outside of Windows (FreeNAS is FreeBSD) hence Intel is recommended. 

 

You'd be surprised about the cores you need, as mentioned above, higher clock speed is generally favoured over more cores (to a point). I've built one recently for a client (http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/335679-the-mini-nas-project/) based on the HP Proliant Gen 8 1610T which has the perfect base - compact, supports ECC, Intel, Dual NIC with a third ILO and many other features - yet is based on a Celeron processor. This has 2 cores, no HT and performs well for a few streams and storage etc. You know the great part about this platform I found out however? It will take Xeon!

 

Does that help a bit?

yes thank you, I think i'm ready for the build, i'll post here if I have any more questions.