please help with new nas

[riferaft]

hi i am making a nas i need help with a few things please. i don't need it to be that fast.

here are the the components i picked:

 

• CPU: AMD A8-7600 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor
• CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper TX3 54.8 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler  
• Motherboard: MSI A68HM-E33 V2 Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard
• Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
• Case: Thermaltake Commander MS-I ID ATX Mid Tower Case 

 

things i need help with: help

1. OS i don't know os to use for my nas and it needs to be free and i want to be able to run a game server on it too
2. Raid, I don't know what raid card to use or what type of raid. I just want to replace a drive if it fails and it and it will rebuild the data for me.
3. hard drives i want to use wd and i don't know the speed  it should be. 

[Godlygamer23]

1.) What kind of game server?

2.) FreeNAS supports a software RAID if you want to use that.

3.)WD Red.

[riferaft]

 

6 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

1.) What kind of game server?

2.) FreeNAS supports a software RAID if you want to use that.

3.)WD Red.

a rust server and what speed HHD

 

[Godlygamer23]

Just now, riferaft said:

 

a rust server and what speed HHD

 

Don't know if FreeNAS can do that, but you can certainly try. WD Reds come in one rotational speed which is defined as "Intellipower" but I think the maximum rotational rate is 7200RPMs.

[riferaft]

9 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

Don't know if FreeNAS can do that, but you can certainly try. WD Reds come in one rotational speed which is defined as "Intellipower" but I think the maximum rotational rate is 7200RPMs.

i looked into it i found that i could us a jail to ran my rust server. 

[Godlygamer23]

1 minute ago, riferaft said:

i looked into it i found that i could us a jail to ran my rust server. 

Great.

[riferaft]

Thank you Godlygamer23 for all your help

[beavo451]

You need to up your RAM. 8GB is really the minimum for FreeNAS. If you have more than 8TB of drive space, 1GB of RAM per 1TB of disk space is recommended.

 

Primary reason to use FreeNAS is to use ZFS. ZFS in an oversimplification is a better RAID 5. Do not use a RAID controller or enable RAID with ZFS.

 

Use WD Reds.

[Godlygamer23]

Just now, beavo451 said:

You need to up your RAM. 8GB is really the minimum for FreeNAS. If you have more than 8TB of drive space, 1GB of RAM per 1TB of disk space is recommended.

Depends on your needs. My NAS ran fine with 2TB of total space with less than 4GB of RAM - I even ran an MC server on it.

[riferaft]

41 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

Depends on your needs. My NAS ran fine with 2TB of total space with less than 4GB of RAM - I even ran an MC server on it.

so should i up it to 12 or 16

 

[Godlygamer23]

14 minutes ago, riferaft said:

so should i up it to 12 or 16

 

If I were you, I would stick to a single stick of 8GB RAM. It'll allow you to upgrade easier later.

[alpenwasser]

13 hours ago, Godlygamer23 said:

Don't know if FreeNAS can do that, but you can certainly try. WD Reds come in one rotational speed which is defined as "Intellipower" but I think the maximum rotational rate is 7200RPMs.

A while back a review site measured them as 5.4k RPM: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1285-page5.html

 

Whether this is true for all Red drives is another question. Regardless of that  though, as far as I know each drive runs at a constant RPM. Having a variable RPM would be power-hungry (accelerating and decelerating the platters) and annoying (they'd emit a tone which changes frequency instead of a constant one, which is far less easy for human hearing to blur into the background) I'd expect.

 

I must admit I'm not a fan of the term "Intellipower" and the "5,400 - 7,200 RPM" thing. Way too much confusion (which I suppose was the point, so well done, marketing?).

10 hours ago, beavo451 said:

You need to up your RAM. 8GB is really the minimum for FreeNAS. If you have more than 8TB of drive space, 1GB of RAM per 1TB of disk space is recommended.

 

Primary reason to use FreeNAS is to use ZFS. ZFS in an oversimplification is a better RAID 5. Do not use a RAID controller or enable RAID with ZFS.

 

Use WD Reds.

 

9 hours ago, Godlygamer23 said:

If I were you, I would stick to a single stick of 8GB RAM. It'll allow you to upgrade easier later.

From what I've been able to find out over the years, the "1 GB of RAM for 1 TB of storage" isn't as strictly true anymore these days as it once was (and it might never have been as strictly true for home use in the first place, the primary purpose of ZFS originally being large-scale deployments where performance is more critical). When ZFS emerged onto the market, HDDs were much smaller. But as HDDs grow bigger, the amount of RAM used for caching (and in the end, that's what most of the RAM gets used for) doesn't seem to grow proportionally with the pool size from what I can tell. I have 32 TB of raw storage (well, more, but that's ZFS) in my server, and 24 GB of RAM, and usually RAM usage hovers between 10 GB and 16 GB with the machine just idling along and not doing anything.

 

I have also run a 17 TB (raw size) pool on another machine with 4 GB of RAM, while also using said machine as a regular desktop. No stability issues, but when ZFS needed to relinquish too much RAM, performance started to degrade (a few times I brought pool speed down to almost a halt). But once it had access to memory again, it just continued as if nothing had happened without any ill effects.

 

I'd start out with a single 8 GB stick, then go from there, as that was the minimum amount recommended for FreeNAS last I checked.

 

I would however look into ECC RAM if you have important data on that machine. It can run fine without it, but that's what I'd recommend. Decision is yours though.

[beavo451]

I've seen Red drives marked 7200RPM on the box (Brown boxes, not retail). Red Pros maybe?