FreeNAS Questions.

[SHAD0WxF1R3]

Hello NAS Enthusiasts, I have a couple questions on FreeNAS hoping to get answered.

 

1. I know FreeNas recommends 8gb of RAM, but I am going to use an old system and two drives (add up to less than a TB) with 2gb of DDR2. Is this OK or should I worry?

2. How would I access FreeNAS from say, my android device (Zenfone 2 Laser ZE551KL, I believe). Will I need a special file manager?

3. Can I share Ethernet from my main PC? Because my router is stuck between a rock and a hard place an I can't necessarily run a cable all around my house.

 

I am sure to come up with more, but this is all I have for now as a Noob, any help appreciated.

[Godlygamer23]

1.) I think that's fine.I would get more if possible though, and having 8GB will allow for caching in RAM.

2.) You can use ES File Explorer which is free.

[SHAD0WxF1R3]

1 minute ago, Godlygamer23 said:

1.) I think that's fine.I would get more if possible though, and having 8GB will allow for caching in RAM.

2.) You can use ES File Explorer which is free.

Yeah That's cool, but what about, say, streaming videos or music to my android, will I have a problem then?

[Oshino Shinobu]

1. For ZFS 8GB minimum is required in order to have a decent experience. For UFS, 2GB is okay, though more is generally better. 

2. You can get various apps on Android that allow them to connect to CIFS or SMB shares. http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-apps/five-free-android-apps-for-easy-smb-connection/

3. By the sounds of things, a switch would work if you're just putting it next to your PC. You can pick up a 4 port Gigabit switch for around $10. 

[Godlygamer23]

Just now, SHAD0WxF1R3 said:

Yeah That's cool, but what about, say, streaming videos or music to my android, will I have a problem then?

Is the server doing any actual transcoding, such as through Plex? If not, it should be fine. My NAS had 4GB before, and it consumed less than 2GB of RAM.

[Godlygamer23]

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

1. For ZFS 8GB minimum is required in order to have a decent experience. For UFS, 2GB is okay, though more is generally better.

How do you define "decent"? I had 105MB/s of throughput as long as my drives were able to sustain that.

[SHAD0WxF1R3]

Just now, Godlygamer23 said:

Is the server doing any actual transcoding, such as through Plex? If not, it should be fine. My NAS had 4GB before, and it consumed less than 2GB of RAM.

Not really, everything is all set in terms of for mats, was hoping to use VLC to playback all my files.

 

2 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

3. By the sounds of things, a switch would work if you're just putting it next to your PC. You can pick up a 4 port Gigabit switch for around $10. 

Yes but I am not using the ethernet port on my Main pc so sharing is fine for now. Until I get a decent setup.

[Oshino Shinobu]

4 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

How do you define "decent"? I had 105MB/s of throughput as long as my drives were able to sustain that.

I'm going from the FreeNAS documentation for that. I've never personally used ZFS with less than 8GB, but they kind of keep hammering it in that 8GB is the minimum for a stable system. 

http://olddoc.freenas.org/index.php/Hardware_Recommendations

EDIT: Also, for just file sharing with simple array/volumes, ZFS doesn't really require 8GB of RAM. If you add Plex (or pretty much any add-on), the jails eat up RAM and things like RAID-Z use up a load as well. 

The OS loads to and runs from RAM (Think it uses about 1GB), so 2GB is going to be cutting it extremely close. They seem to recommend 8GB as a minimum as it's the cut off point for the ZFS pool being destroyed. Probably a matter of them covering themselves a bit, but basically for anything other than simple file sharing and arrays, 2GB isn't enough on ZFS. UFS would work okay, but there's no apps and it's lacking in features compared to ZFS. 

 

[Godlygamer23]

Just now, SHAD0WxF1R3 said:

Not really, everything is all set in terms of for mats, was hoping to use VLC to playback all my files.

I don't think you'll have any issues honestly. That being said, I could be wrong.

[Godlygamer23]

3 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

I'm going from the FreeNAS documentation for that. I've never personally used ZFS with less than 8GB, but they kind of keep hammering it in that 8GB is the minimum for a stable system. 

http://olddoc.freenas.org/index.php/Hardware_Recommendations

Quote

and the FreeNAS® Forums provide anecdotal evidence from users on how much performance is gained by adding more RAM.

Anecdotal evidence isn't enough, and adding RAM won't necessarily result in better performance because the limit will be the network ultimately.

It is possible to use ZFS on systems with less than 8 GB of RAM. However, FreeNAS® as distributed is configured to be suitable for systems meeting the sizing recommendations above. If you wish to use ZFS on a smaller memory system, some tuning will be necessary, and performance will be (likely substantially) reduced. ZFS will automatically disable pre-fetching (caching) on systems where it is not able to use at least 4 GB of memory just for ZFS cache and data structures.

While they state that you should have at least 8GB of RAM for your build, it's not a requirement, and I've had decent performance(subjective, as it depends on the user) even with multiple transfers going on. Basic stuff shouldn't be an issue, but if the user plans on stacking drives later, I would most certainly upgrade the amount of RAM.

[SHAD0WxF1R3]

2 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

While they state that you should have at least 8GB of RAM for your build, it's not a requirement, and I've had decent performance(subjective, as it depends on the user) even with multiple transfers going on. Basic stuff shouldn't be an issue, but if the user plans on stacking drives later, I would most certainly upgrade the amount of RAM.

Trust me, I have very little in terms of hard drives. My focus is on my main PC, which I hope to upgrade to skylake when I get the money (but that's a different story).

[Oshino Shinobu]

5 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

Anecdotal evidence isn't enough, and adding RAM won't necessarily result in better performance because the limit will be the network ultimately.

 

 

While they state that you should have at least 8GB of RAM for your build, it's not a requirement, and I've had decent performance(subjective, as it depends on the user) even with multiple transfers going on. Basic stuff shouldn't be an issue, but if the user plans on stacking drives later, I would most certainly upgrade the amount of RAM.

Edited my post with a bit more info. 

They recommend a minimum of 8GB for ZFS for a "stable" experience. It seems to be the cut off point for the ZFS pool being lost/destroyed (as in, they haven't seen the pool lost at 8GB+). For basic file transfers, not much RAM is needed (MIGHT be able to get away with 2GB, but the OS seems to load into 1GB of RAM from what I can tell, so only 1GB or so is left). Going to 4GB would be my recommendation (if possible) to lessen the chances of issues with ZFS. 

For Plex and other apps and jails, I wouldn't even try without 8GB. 

[Godlygamer23]

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

Edited my post with a bit more info. 

They recommend a minimum of 8GB for ZFS for a "stable" experience. It seems to be the cut off point for the ZFS pool being lost/destroyed. For basic file transfers, not much RAM is needed (MIGHT be able to get away with 2GB, but the OS seems to load into 1GB of RAM from what I can tell, so only 1GB or so is left). Going to 4GB would be my recommendation (if possible) to lessen the chances of issues with ZFS. 

For Plex and other apps and jails, I wouldn't even try without 8GB. 

I have personally run a FreeNAS server with MC in a jail, and it ran without issues. I just had 128MB left, which I was not comfortable with.

[leadeater]

10 hours ago, Godlygamer23 said:

I have personally run a FreeNAS server with MC in a jail, and it ran without issues. I just had 128MB left, which I was not comfortable with.

@Oshino Shinobu FYI

 

Also only FreeNAS has the 8GB recommended ram. ZFS itself does not have these high requirements and only recommends large amounts of ram when using dedup.

 

Quote

Effective use of deduplication may require large RAM capacity; recommendations range between 1 and 5 GB of RAM for every TB of storage.^[45][46][47] Insufficient physical memory or lack of ZFS cache can result in virtual memory thrashing when using deduplication, which can either lower performance or result in complete memory starvation.^{[citation needed]} Solid-state drives (SSDs) can be used to cache deduplication tables, thereby speeding up deduplication performance.^{[citation needed]}

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS

 

ZFS by itself doing no more than storage pooling actually requires very little memory. Adding more memory in such configurations only increases the ARC (L1) size theoretically improving performance, memory caching can only do so much.

 

Just something to keep in mind when talking hardware requirements that you are referring to the correct product/technology, also the features you intend to use has a huge impact on this.

[Raggou]

On 3/4/2016 at 5:57 PM, Godlygamer23 said:

1.) I think that's fine.I would get more if possible though, and having 8GB will allow for caching in RAM.

2.) You can use ES File Explorer which is free.

3.) Just simply add a cheap switch right next to your router so you can run a cable to your NAS 

[Jarsky]

Just out of curiosity, if you only have 2 drives totalling less than 1TB, and it's going next to your PC - why not just install them in your PC and share the drives from Windows?

 

And yes running a lower amount of memory is fine for transfers, but if its too low it means you may not be able to do some advanced features like dedup and scrubbing which are highly recommended for maintaining the integrity of your zfs array.

[Raggou]

On 3/6/2016 at 2:06 PM, Jarsky said:

Just out of curiosity, if you only have 2 drives totalling less than 1TB, and it's going next to your PC - why not just install them in your PC and share the drives from Windows?

 

And yes running a lower amount of memory is fine for transfers, but if its too low it means you may not be able to do some advanced features like dedup and scrubbing which are highly recommended for maintaining the integrity of your zfs array.

Personally, if that were me in this case then I would just share them from Windows. Thats just me though... but then again I am currently using FreeNAS with 15TB of storage so im not in that scenario