Building a home NAS: New or old system?

[Mr Technician]

As the title suggests, I am planning to build a NAS using freenas but am unsure of what to purchase for the actual hardware. I currently have an old Dell T3500 with 12 GB DDR3 ECC memory and a Xeon W3530 (Quad core @2.80 Ghz) so performance is not an issue, though it has been repeatedly giving memory errors upon booting. The solution is likely to reseat the memory but assuming there is a failure in the memory (or any other sort of critical failure) would the ZFS pool survive? This would store both mine and my parent's irreplaceable data so reliability is key. If I do get a newer system what would be recommended that is relatively inexpensive (around $400 no drives or case, less if possible) and relatively power efficient? I'd prefer new but refurbished is probably ok, and older parts isn't an issue (again, this is a nas, not a processing server). Also, what raid mode in freenas would be most beneficial for a 3-4 drive setup? I may move to 10gb ethernet in the future so a high read/write speed from the array would be ideal. Last but not least, is drive encryption important for personal use?

[Electronics Wizardy]

9 minutes ago, ThatFlashCat said:

my parent's irreplaceable data so reliability is key.

You need backups aswell then.

 

9 minutes ago, ThatFlashCat said:

would the ZFS pool survive? T

ZFS is pretty good about not losing the pool, its pretty hard to kill a pool with crashes.

10 minutes ago, ThatFlashCat said:

is drive encryption important for personal use?

Do you care if others see your data? If you don't it will make do difference, if you do, it makes it so you can't access the data if they took the drives.

 

What exact memory errors do you get? have you tried removing sticks? I wouldn't use a system with bad ram for a server, its just a recipe for problems.

 

 

[Mr Technician]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You need backups aswell then.

 

ZFS is pretty good about not losing the pool, its pretty hard to kill a pool with crashes.

Do you care if others see your data? If you don't it will make do difference, if you do, it makes it so you can't access the data if they took the drives.

 

What exact memory errors do you get? have you tried removing sticks? I wouldn't use a system with bad ram for a server, its just a recipe for problems.

 

 

Does Freenas have any easy way of backing up an array to an external drive? My only concern with encryption would be if I ever need to RMA a drive. The errors I'm getting are "The amount of system memory has changed" and "failure detected in DIMM 1," which is always directed at the first DIMM. I'll try booting the system and reseating the memory.

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, ThatFlashCat said:

Does Freenas have any easy way of backing up an array to an external drive? My only concern with encryption would be if I ever need to RMA a drive. The errors I'm getting are "The amount of system memory has changed" and "failure detected in DIMM 1," which is always directed at the first DIMM. I'll try booting the system and reseating the memory.

If the error is always at dimm1, then the slot may be bad, do you get any errors when dimm1 is empty?

 

Encryption with rma is good as then they have no chance of getting your data

 

You can backups to a external drive to a external drive, but it can require the terminal.

[Mr Technician]

31 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

If the error is always at dimm1, then the slot may be bad, do you get any errors when dimm1 is empty?

 

Encryption with rma is good as then they have no chance of getting your data

 

You can backups to a external drive to a external drive, but it can require the terminal.

How much overheard does encryption cause? Will it affect the read/write performance? I'm comfortable with the terminal so that's not an issue for backups.

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, ThatFlashCat said:

How much overheard does encryption cause? Will it affect the read/write performance? I'm comfortable with the terminal so that's not an issue for backups.

With that system its a very small impact, and cpu's are much faster at encyption than a few disks can send or receive data.

[Mr Technician]

20 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

With that system its a very small impact, and cpu's are much faster at encyption than a few disks can send or receive data.

The boot before reseating the ram was flawless as was the boot afterwards. Is there a memory test application you'd recommend? Would internal drives in a hotswap bay that are removed to an offsite location be appropriate for backup?

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, ThatFlashCat said:

The boot before reseating the ram was flawless as was the boot afterwards. Is there a memory test application you'd recommend? Would internal drives in a hotswap bay that are removed to an offsite location be appropriate for backup?

Reseating ram can fix this.

 

Id try memtest 86

 

Yep coping data to drives, then moving offsite is a good backup.

[Mr Technician]

On 3/24/2018 at 9:41 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

Reseating ram can fix this.

 

Id try memtest 86

 

Yep coping data to drives, then moving offsite is a good backup.

I ran memtest for almost 24 hours/10 passes with no errors, so I guess I'm good as far as that is concerned. Can a power failure also cause data corruption or other damage?

[Electronics Wizardy]

12 minutes ago, ThatFlashCat said:

I ran memtest for almost 24 hours/10 passes with no errors, so I guess I'm good as far as that is concerned. Can a power failure also cause data corruption or other damage?

zfs is very good with power failures. if there is a error it will tell you what files have issues(normally just ones that were in progress) and using sync and make sure you don't have files that you though were written and really wernt.

 

But rember no system is perfect, and you need backups if you care about your data. What if you delete all you data by accdent? What if the house burns down?

[Mr Technician]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

zfs is very good with power failures. if there is a error it will tell you what files have issues(normally just ones that were in progress) and using sync and make sure you don't have files that you though were written and really wernt.

 

But rember no system is perfect, and you need backups if you care about your data. What if you delete all you data by accdent? What if the house burns down?

Absolutely, I'll make offsite backups of the most critical data then. Does Freenas support hotswap for drives used as backup? (So not the drives making up the array.)

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, ThatFlashCat said:

Absolutely, I'll make offsite backups of the most critical data then. Does Freenas support hotswap for drives used as backup? (So not the drives making up the array.)

Yep freenas supports hotswap, just make sure its turned on in your bios.

[ProjectBox153]

If that system works, it should be OK. I run a Core 2 Duo (in my signature) with FreeNAS and get about 100MB/s. 

[Mr Technician]

Any other important considerations before moving to Freenas?