Need a FreeNAS/PfSense Server

[TubsAlwaysWins]

Can someone give some recommendations or a list of stuff for a FreeNAS/PfSense server? Looking to spend around $300 (preferably less) on a 2-4TB server. Needs to be rack mount. Don't care about used stuff

[Oshino Shinobu]

So, FreeNAS and pfSense in one machine? 

 

Rack-mount at $300 isn't really going to happen, even using used parts. You're looking at $200+ for the drives alone. 

[TubsAlwaysWins]

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

So, a FreeNAS and PFSense server in one machine? 

 

Rack-mount at $300 isn't really going to happen, even using used parts. You're looking at $200+ for the drives alone. 

I mean why couldn't I buy like 2 2Tb drives or something?

 

To be honest if you can find me a good server (Like from dell or something) it will work

[rabbitburger]

5 minutes ago, TubsAlwaysWins said:

Can someone give some recommendations or a list of stuff for a FreeNAS/PfSense server? Looking to spend around $300 on a 2-4TB server. Needs to be rack mount. Don't care about used stuff

I have no experience with PfSense, but I run a FreeNAS box at home. This link takes you to freenas.org, where the plain-spoken FreeNASer named cyberjock holds forth on recommended hardware. The upshot: Supermicro is good, server grade is necessary, and ECC is non-negotiable. cyberjock knows what he is talking about, and his posts on freenas.org are the besg starting place.

[79wjd]

3 minutes ago, TubsAlwaysWins said:

I mean why couldn't I buy like 2 2Tb drives or something?

 

To be honest if you can find me a good server (Like from dell or something) it will work

You'll definitely need to go used. Depending on what you're doing on the NAS, I'd probably recommend an i3 (although be aware that it's recommended to not run FreeNAS in a VM as it likes having direct access to the drives) if you wanted both on the same machine and 8gb of ram. 

[TubsAlwaysWins]

1 minute ago, djdwosk97 said:

You'll definitely need to go used. Depending on what you're doing on the NAS, I'd probably recommend an i3 (although be aware that it's recommended to not run FreeNAS in a VM as it likes having direct access to the drives) if you wanted both on the same machine. 

Or what if I got something like a Dell Poweredge 2950 on ebay?

[Oshino Shinobu]

2 minutes ago, TubsAlwaysWins said:

I mean why couldn't I buy like 2 2Tb drives or something?

 

To be honest if you can find me a good server (Like from dell or something) it will work

The issue with using consumer drives in a NAS environment and use case is that they can die very quickly, especially if you're using multiple drives in close proximity. NAS specific drives provide firmware and technology to cope with certain use cases, but that comes with a cost. 

 

Rack-mount stuff is also just generally expensive. Pre-built stuff is even more pricey than buying components. 

 

Do you have a specific need for pfSense? If not, you could just have something like a Synology NAS box, which can be decent for about $300. 

[79wjd]

3 minutes ago, rabbitburger said:

I have no experience with PfSense, but I run a FreeNAS box at home. This link takes you to freenas.org, where the plain-spoken FreeNASer named cyberjock holds forth on recommended hardware. The upshot: Supermicro is good, server grade is necessary, and ECC is non-negotiable. cyberjock knows what he is talking about, and his posts on freenas.org are the besg starting place.

Cyberjock is a bit of an elitist ass. Non-ECC is fine if you're on a tight budget (which OP is).

1 minute ago, TubsAlwaysWins said:

Or what if I got something like a Dell Poweredge 2950 on ebay?

I'm not that familiar with prebuilt servers, but be aware that older hardware may cost you more in the long run due to higher electricity costs (as idle power consumption has decreased quite a bit in recent years). 

[TubsAlwaysWins]

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

The issue with using consumer drives in a NAS environment and use case is that they can die very quickly, especially if you're using multiple drives in close proximity. NAS specific drives provide firmware and technology to cope with certain use cases, but that comes with a cost. 

 

Rack-mount stuff is also just generally expensive. Pre-built stuff is even more pricey than buying components. 

 

Do you have a specific need for pfSense? If not, you could just have something like a Synology NAS box, which can be decent for about $300. 

I don't have a need but I like it as a fun home project for when im bored. Ive already got one but it needs alot of help (Pentium 3)

[TubsAlwaysWins]

1 minute ago, djdwosk97 said:

Cyberjock is a bit of an elitist ass. Non-ECC is fine if you're on a tight budget (which OP is).

I'm not that familiar with prebuilt servers, but be aware that older hardware may cost you more in the long run due to higher electricity costs (as idle power consumption has decreased quite a bit in recent years). 

Don't care about power

[79wjd]

2 minutes ago, TubsAlwaysWins said:

Don't care about power

Well, the cost of power will outweigh the cost of better/newer hardware....so you should care. 

[TubsAlwaysWins]

4 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

Well, the cost of power will outweigh the cost of better/newer hardware....so you should care. 

I don't pay for it so I really don't care

[rabbitburger]

2 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

Cyberjock is a bit of an elitist ass. Non-ECC is fine if you're on a tight budget (which OP is).

I'm not that familiar with prebuilt servers, but be aware that older hardware may cost you more in the long run due to higher electricity costs (as idle power consumption has decreased quite a bit in recent years). 

It depends on how much risk OP is willing to take. ECC RAM plus ZFS scrubs comes as close to guaranteeing data integrity on a pool as anything you can get these days. Use non-ECC, and you may never realize that data is corrupted until all of your backups have the same errors. It's not like used ECC DDR3 is terribly expensive. Is this box for a customer, or is it a project to play around with? That's the difference.

[TubsAlwaysWins]

Just now, rabbitburger said:

It depends on how much risk OP is willing to take. ECC RAM plus ZFS scrubs comes as close to guaranteeing data integrity on a pool as anything you can get these days. Use non-ECC, and you may never realize that data is corrupted until all of your backups have the same errors. It's not like used ECC DDR3 is terribly expensive. Is this box for a customer, or is it a project to play around with? That's the difference.

It isn't going to be storing valuable stuff. Mainly stuff I want for later date but don't care if I loose it. (Like huge files where I can loose them but I won't have to spend hours e-downloading)

[rabbitburger]

4 minutes ago, TubsAlwaysWins said:

It isn't going to be storing valuable stuff. Mainly stuff I want for later date but don't care if I loose it. (Like huge files where I can loose them but I won't have to spend hours e-downloading)

Then you can probably get away with non-ECC, but if it has to be rack-mount, like you said, anything you buy used likely has ECC anyway. Stay away from DDR2, and you're going to want 8gb minimum. Regarding CPU, one of the i3s or Pentiums that support ECC is just fine. If you live in or near a decent sized city, you can probably pick up everything except storage for $100 - $150 used.

[TubsAlwaysWins]

1 minute ago, rabbitburger said:

Then you can probably get away with non-ECC, but if it has to be rack-mount, like you said, anything you buy used likely has ECC anyway. Stay away from DDR2, and you're going to want 8gb minimum. Regarding CPU, one of the i3s or Pentiums that support ECC is just fine. If you live in or near a decent sized city, you can probably pick up everything except storage for $100 - $150 used.

What about this? It is DDR2 but...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Poweredge-2950-III-2x-Xeon-E5440-2-83ghz-Quad-Core-32gb-2x-500gb-Perc6i-/231978336665?hash=item3602fc8199:g:v88AAOSwv0tVTFAT

[rabbitburger]

47 minutes ago, TubsAlwaysWins said:

What about this? It is DDR2 but...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Poweredge-2950-III-2x-Xeon-E5440-2-83ghz-Quad-Core-32gb-2x-500gb-Perc6i-/231978336665?hash=item3602fc8199:g:v88AAOSwv0tVTFAT

Pretty old; I think you can do better. Watch for a few weeks and you should see something more modern.

[TubsAlwaysWins]

Just now, rabbitburger said:

Pretty old; I think you can do better. Watch for a few weeks and you should see something more modern.

I just don't know what to look for. I mean its not bad for $170 (Shipping). ITs got 8 cores and 32Gb of RAM

[TubsAlwaysWins]

1 minute ago, JaredM54 said:

Don't get a 2950, get an R710. Those are too old and that price is terrible.

Dis? http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-R710-8-Core-2-5-Server-32GB-RAM-PERC6i-DVD-iDRAC6-2-Trays-/171669620457?hash=item27f84e86e9:g:Mu8AAOSw-itXuvvU

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 hours ago, TubsAlwaysWins said:

Or what if I got something like a Dell Poweredge 2950 on ebay?

Don't get a 2950. There hot loud and missing features.

 

Id buy a c2100 http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-FS12-TY-C2100-2X-QC-E5506-2-13GHz-NO-HDD-12xTRAYS-16GB-4x4GB-/252041596944?hash=item3aaed99010:g:S9wAAOSw~gRVr9yF

 

 

[TubsAlwaysWins]

14 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Don't get a 2950. There hot loud and missing features.

 

Id buy a c2100 http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-FS12-TY-C2100-2X-QC-E5506-2-13GHz-NO-HDD-12xTRAYS-16GB-4x4GB-/252041596944?hash=item3aaed99010:g:S9wAAOSw~gRVr9yF

 

 

Ok thanks

[Mikensan]

Agreed. Dell R610 R710 C2100 - solid choices, or the proliant G6 series.

 

 

[leadeater]

On 9/27/2016 at 2:51 PM, rabbitburger said:

It depends on how much risk OP is willing to take. ECC RAM plus ZFS scrubs comes as close to guaranteeing data integrity on a pool as anything you can get these days. Use non-ECC, and you may never realize that data is corrupted until all of your backups have the same errors. It's not like used ECC DDR3 is terribly expensive. Is this box for a customer, or is it a project to play around with? That's the difference.

 

On 9/27/2016 at 2:44 PM, djdwosk97 said:

Cyberjock is a bit of an elitist ass. Non-ECC is fine if you're on a tight budget (which OP is).

I'm not that familiar with prebuilt servers, but be aware that older hardware may cost you more in the long run due to higher electricity costs (as idle power consumption has decreased quite a bit in recent years). 

 

Well one of the co-founders of ZFS says ECC is not required for ZFS. However if buying a used server you will be getting ECC and for a system that is going to be running 24/7 I would recommend ECC and it isn't that much more expensive, but the often thrown around reasons for ECC and FreeNAS are based on a faulty premise.

 

Quote

OK. “Authority” in this case doesn’t get much better than Matthew Ahrens, one of the cofounders of ZFS at Sun Microsystems and current ZFS developer at Delphix. In the comments to one of my filesystem articles on Ars Technica, Matthew said “There’s nothing special about ZFS that requires/encourages the use of ECC RAM more so than any other filesystem.”

http://jrs-s.net/2015/02/03/will-zfs-and-non-ecc-ram-kill-your-data/

 

I think I'll side with Matthew Ahrens on a debate around whether ZFS requires ECC or not.

 

Quote

As far as I can tell, this idea originates with a very prolific user on the FreeNAS forums named Cyberjock, and he lays it out in this thread here. 

http://jrs-s.net/2015/02/03/will-zfs-and-non-ecc-ram-kill-your-data/

 

Quote

A 2010 paper examining the ability of file systems to detect and prevent data corruption, observed that ZFS itself is effective in detecting and correcting data errors on storage devices, but that it assumes data in RAM is "safe", and not prone to error. Thus when ZFS caches pages, or stores copies of metadata, in RAM, or holds data in its "dirty" cache for writing to disk, no test is made whether the checksums still match the data at the point of use. Much of this risk can be mitigated by use of ECC RAM but the authors considered that error detection related to the page cache and heap would allow ZFS to handle certain classes of error more robustly.^[61]

But it is pointless to single this out as a limitation specific to ZFS because all software (including filesystems) are vulnerable to corrupt hardware such as faulty CPUs, faulty RAM, faulty PSUs, etc. There is no filesystem on the market that have built in mechanisms to detect corrupt CPUs, RAM or PSU because error detection is usually delegated to the hardware (such as ECC RAM). This "limitation" applies to all software, including all filesystems. So why try make people believe this is specific to ZFS?

However, it can be noted that there is an option for ZFS to enable checksumming of all data in RAM which makes ZFS immune to corrupt RAM as discussed in the paper above. This is done by using "ZFS_DEBUG_MODIFY flag (zfs_flags=0x10)" as explained by Matt Ahrens, who is one of the main architects of ZFS.^[62]

Lastly, if normal vanilla ZFS is run on a system with corrupt RAM, the corrupt RAM can not destroy data because ZFS will notice that checksums on disk and RAM differs, so ZFS will not overwrite good data with corrupt data.^[63] Hence, it is not a requirement to use ECC RAM with ZFS, because corrupt RAM will not destroy data

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS#Limitations_in_preventing_data_corruption

 

[79wjd]

4 minutes ago, leadeater said:

 

 

Well one of the co-founders of ZFS says ECC is not required for ZFS. However if buying a used server you will be getting ECC and for a system that is going to be running 24/7 I would recommend ECC and it isn't that much more expensive, but the often thrown around reasons for ECC and FreeNAS are based on a faulty premise.

 

http://jrs-s.net/2015/02/03/will-zfs-and-non-ecc-ram-kill-your-data/

 

I think I'll side with Matthews Ahrens on a debate around whether ZFS requires ECC or not.

 

http://jrs-s.net/2015/02/03/will-zfs-and-non-ecc-ram-kill-your-data/

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS#Limitations_in_preventing_data_corruption

 

AFAIK the ZFS debug flag isn't settable through the FreeNAS GUI, so while possible to set the flag, the user probably won't (honestly, I doubt I would tbh because I'd be afraid of messing something else up in the process -- however irrational that is). 

 

And I agree, ECC isn't that much more when you consider the cost of drives ($200~ for non-ECC vs. $300~ for ECC). But if you're not getting a lot of storage, or you're re-using older drives, and you're trying to stay on a very tight budget then it can be enough of a difference.