Building/Picking Server

[radmanhs]

I'm trying to find what the min specs are to run a freenas server reliably.  I know ECC ram is practically a req, and a xeon processor helps a lot or reliability. Its just going to be for media storage and streaming, so nothing major, but of course I dont want to sit around waiting for my movie to load or buffer.

 

I have seen a ton of servers that you can buy used for super cheap, in comparison to specing a pc the traditional way, is it worth/ok to pick up one of those and load it up with fresh hard drives?

[TheCherryKing]

25 minutes ago, radmanhs said:

I'm trying to find what the min specs are to run a freenas server reliably.  I know ECC ram is practically a req, and a xeon processor helps a lot or reliability. Its just going to be for media storage and streaming, so nothing major, but of course I dont want to sit around waiting for my movie to load or buffer.

 

I have seen a ton of servers that you can buy used for super cheap, in comparison to specing a pc the traditional way, is it worth/ok to pick up one of those and load it up with fresh hard drives?

Absolutely! That will work just fine. 

[brwainer]

22 minutes ago, radmanhs said:

I'm trying to find what the min specs are to run a freenas server reliably.  I know ECC ram is practically a req, and a xeon processor helps a lot or reliability. Its just going to be for media storage and streaming, so nothing major, but of course I dont want to sit around waiting for my movie to load or buffer.

 

I have seen a ton of servers that you can buy used for super cheap, in comparison to specing a pc the traditional way, is it worth/ok to pick up one of those and load it up with fresh hard drives?

I don't really have an input on whether it makes sense to buy vs build, I just want to point out that there are Pentium and Core i3 processors that have ECC support, and can be installed and used in "server" motherboards that can use ECC memory. Intel does this because the Xeon E3 lineup, if you compare the specifications, are really variants of Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs, and allowing ECC on much lower spec CPUs allows people to have low end servers that are still reliable. You have to look up the individual processor SKUs on http://ark.intel.com, or use the search and filter tools on that site to get a list of only the ECC-capable CPUs.

 

How fast of a CPU you need depends on whether you will be doing transcoding on this server or not. All of the "storage" type tasks that FreeNAS will handle require very little CPU.

[TheCherryKing]

If your looking on building a new server I recommend you look at the Xeon E3 v5 and Xeon E3 v6 series. 

[System Error Message]

ECC ram isnt needed, just look at freeNAS site as it lists the minimum requirements.

 

Any CPU will do that fits the requirements, doesnt have to be xeons, doesnt have to be ECC. However you should run memtest on the ram first. Only if it is critically important should you use ECC and RAID with lots of redundancy. Some RAID configs support spares that can immediately take over should a drive fail.

 

The storage task itself doesnt need CPU, its the programs you run in it that determines how much ram and CPU you need other than the minimum requirements. I also would suggest software RAID over hardware RAID too so you can use storage cards if you dont have enough slots or for use with something like SAS but dont use the card to handle the RAID or the drives, let the OS deal with it.

 

For example if you run plex and want 3 1080p streams you need a phenom x4 or iseries based CPU at minimum, if you use ZFS caching ability more ram helps. SFTP is CPU intensive above 1Gb/s. Below 1Gb/s even an old quad core can handle it.

[ProjectBox153]

FreeNAS does not need ECC memory, and a Xeon isn't required for reliability. I run FreeNAS 24/7 on a free Dell OptiPlex 330 with a Core 2 Duo I also got for free. Both hard drives were free. You don't need much (Core 2 Duo E8500 and 4GB DDR2 in my case) to run FreeNAS reliably and for cheap. The last issue I had on my server (and the only one, at that) was my DHCP server fucking up and giving two machines the same address. I don't remember the last time I had to access the console. It's not a hard OS to run and use, and buying a big server is quite a waste, IMHO. 

[brwainer]

Technically no, ECC memory isn't required for ZFS. The reason why people always say that it is basically required is that there are two types of writes: synchronous and asynchronous. Sync write commands from a program don't complete until the data is actually written to nonvolatile storage - either your actual storage, or a "log" or "slog" device. Async write commands don't wait for this, and the data is kept in memory until enough of them accumulate to write out to storage in a large chunk, which for hard drives that vastly prefer sequential writes makes them a lot faster. While the data is stored in memory, it is susceptible to memory errors. While these are very (very) rare, they do happen, and thus this is a "better safe than sorry" situation.

[TheCherryKing]

There's really no reason not to use ECC memory. The price is about the same as "gaming" memory. Intel Xeon processors may not be required but they are designed to operate 24/7 and are significantly cooler than a Core i5 or Core i7.

[luigi90210]

I find ecc memory to be cheaper in some cases to consumer memory. Check eBay for ecc memory and you can find great deals there. 

[radmanhs]

what about something like a Dell T110, the specs are pretty decent, for $70 on craigslist.  However on the dell spec sheet it says the max storage is 4tb, would that be a hard cap, or can it be increased by just adding a raid controller, if there straight up aren't enough sata connections on the mobo?

[TheCherryKing]

2 minutes ago, radmanhs said:

what about something like a Dell T110, the specs are pretty decent, for $70 on craigslist.  However on the dell spec sheet it says the max storage is 4tb, would that be a hard cap, or can it be increased by just adding a raid controller, if there straight up aren't enough sata connections on the mobo?

Hard disk drives up to 12 TB are available and should work with that server. That server likely lacks UEFI so the boot drive can only be up to 2 TB but the other drives have no limit.

[radmanhs]

o ya, I forgot about the 2tb technicality since its been such a long time, but since freenas will be on a flash drive, it shouldnt be a problem, just some annoying configuring

[radmanhs]

One final question.  Assuming I go eith WD red drives, is it fine using the basic reds with 5400rpm, or will that bottleneck (using raid 5) with a few hi res streams?

[brwainer]

1 hour ago, radmanhs said:

One final question.  Assuming I go eith WD red drives, is it fine using the basic reds with 5400rpm, or will that bottleneck (using raid 5) with a few hi res streams?

Define "hi res stream". 4K footage striaght off of a cinema camera can be up to 250Mbps, for lightly compressed file formats. A Bluray at 1080p uses up to 30Mbps IIRC. Those are both bits per second, not bytes. If you mean "playing back multiple h264 1080p files" then you are looking at 6-25 Mbps per stream, so you'd maybe be reading 100Mbps. That's 12.5MBps. Unless you have a lot of small random IO on the array at the same time, the 5400RPM Reds will handle it fine.

[TheCherryKing]

If you do have lots of small random IO you should look into enterprise SAS drives.

[System Error Message]

registered ECC is the cheapest ram about, however to use that you need a server board and server CPU.

Then you have standard and performance ram

Then you have ECC unbuffered (one of the most expensive if comparing the same speeds).

 

I checked and i have both standard, performance and ECC unbuffered. My ECC unbuffered ram costs more than performance ram for the same frequency now even though it is value ram. When i bought it it was cheap but now compare the price of the cheapest not unknown brand of ECC unbuffered ram (like kingston value ram with ECC unbuffered) to a ram like g.skill trident  and corsair vengeance for the same frequency. Then compare the prices to ECC registered ram from kingston for example and you will see what i mean.

 

Even though ecc registered should be the most expensive, it isnt, its the cheapest. Just make sure to avoid value ram and unknown brand ram and you will be find (this includes patriot and komputerbay).