Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, morphine, Steel
demolition wrote:FreeNAS is great indeed but you should be aware that the ZFS file system which is the standard and recommended choice is designed to be used with ECC memory so it should be used with an ECC-capable platform only.
I have the smallest config with the G1610 CPU which is plenty of power for my needs, but upgraded the memory to 2x8GB ECC memory (with ZFS it is recommended to have 1GB memory per 1TB of disk space which is why you would want to stuff it to the max). I use 4x6TB disks with it.
DragonDaddyBear wrote:Just a thought, maybe consider adding 10 gb/s link to your requirements? It's really easy for a NAS to saturate a 1 gb/s link. It's going to add cost but it should be a little more future proof. Asustor just announced a low-ish cost one.
DragonDaddyBear wrote:I usually frown on promotting sites that are not the host in a forum, but in this case I really think you should head over to smallnetbuilder.com. The site has some really quality reviews over there.
demolition wrote:FreeNAS is great indeed but you should be aware that the ZFS file system which is the standard and recommended choice is designed to be used with ECC memory so it should be used with an ECC-capable platform only.
I run FreeNAS on an HP ProLiant Microserver Gen8 and that gives me plenty of power and functionality for a really low cost - much lower than any decent dedicated NAS device from QNAP/Synology/etc. Here's a review of the MicroServer:
http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac ... 460/review
I have the smallest config with the G1610 CPU which is plenty of power for my needs, but upgraded the memory to 2x8GB ECC memory (with ZFS it is recommended to have 1GB memory per 1TB of disk space which is why you would want to stuff it to the max). I use 4x6TB disks with it.
Relative to your requirements it is missing the hot-swap functionality though. If a disk goes bad, the machine should be powered down, the faulty HDD replaced and the system rebooted. Then the array can be rebuilt (or resilvered as it is called with ZFS) with the new disk.
just brew it! wrote:DragonDaddyBear wrote:Just a thought, maybe consider adding 10 gb/s link to your requirements? It's really easy for a NAS to saturate a 1 gb/s link. It's going to add cost but it should be a little more future proof. Asustor just announced a low-ish cost one.
I'd be more inclined to upgrade the NIC later, and just make sure I've got a spare PCIe x4 or better slot to drop the 10Gb NIC into. No advantage to 10Gb until the rest of the network infrastructure supports it.
Waco wrote:I love FreeNAS but almost everything you posted here isn't true.
ECC, while recommended, is required no more than with any other filesystem.
DragonDaddyBear wrote:picked up an excess Cisco 3850 for under $200
Darthutos wrote:Just remember to buy raid specific hdds.
Darthutos wrote:Even so, I recommend that if you do a diy not a nas box that's alread made to buy, do not raid your drives. Just copy and paste your files.
Every single raided hdds I owned died. I lost folders and folders of my photos this way. (raid).
Darthutos wrote:don't raid the 8tb seagate archive drives. (Although seagate waranty process is the easiest) shhhh..... (they may change it).
Darthutos wrote:Also you probably won't have he hot swap ability if it's an older system with old non uefi bios. read the downloadable manual before you make a decision on mobo purchase.
Darthutos wrote:Just remember to buy raid specific hdds.
Darthutos wrote:Even so, I recommend that if you do a diy not a nas box that's alread made to buy, do not raid your drives. Just copy and paste your files.
Darthutos wrote:Every single raided hdds I owned died. I lost folders and folders of my photos this way. (raid).
just brew it! wrote:Waco wrote:I love FreeNAS but almost everything you posted here isn't true.
ECC, while recommended, is required no more than with any other filesystem.
In the interest of (hopefully) putting this to bed, here's a post from Matt Ahrens (one of the original developers of ZFS) regarding the ECC issue: https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic ... #p26303271
Darthutos wrote:Just remember to buy raid specific hdds.
Even so, I recommend that if you do a diy not a nas box that's alread made to buy, do not raid your drives. Just copy and paste your files.
just brew it! wrote:I'd avoid the archive drives in general, unless cost/byte is your overriding concern. And this is regardless of whether you plan to RAID them or not.
deruberhanyok wrote:I appreciate the nerd factor in building your own NAS, but my frustration with the typical open source style of documentation for a lot of those projects (zfs configuration was designed by engineers, for other engineers) combined with the pain in the ass of managing my storage pools manually (even once I could figure out how to build them properly), plus not being able to find updated versions of some softwares which had since been abandoned (mt-daapd) made me decide that my time was worth more to me than the $450 an appliance would cost.
deruberhanyok wrote:Price? Heard this before. It doesn't really hold up IMO.
deruberhanyok wrote:Price? Heard this before. It doesn't really hold up IMO.
If you are buying 4x 8TB WD Red drives at $250 each, you're looking at $1450 + a few clicks setup time for the Synology solution or $1200 + building a PC + installing software (might cost money) + longer setup time for a roll-your-own.
It's only "TWICE as much" if you buy the device and never install storage.
deruberhanyok wrote:I have yet to find a situation (for my use) where the device's processing power / memory is insufficient, so while I understand the need for ECC in some workloads, or while you might want a faster processor and more RAM for something or other, when someone says to me "I just need a box to serve storage with some hot swap capabilities" I think simpler is better. You've got a nice home server there but some people just want a NAS.
Omniman wrote:I'm looking to start queuing up the replacement of my Windows Home Server 2011 server. I really only needed it for storage of my music and family pictures. Anyhow, I'm looking for a NAS that is a RAID1 or RAID5 that can allow for hot swapping if a drive starts to fail. Any recommendations?
Glorious wrote:The component in question does indeed cost twice as much.
Waco wrote:It's a hell of a lot more if you need something with more than a few slots - I have 24 bays in mine and last I checked the 8+ bay prebuilts get steep very quickly.
Ryu Connor wrote:demolition wrote:I have the smallest config with the G1610 CPU which is plenty of power for my needs, but upgraded the memory to 2x8GB ECC memory (with ZFS it is recommended to have 1GB memory per 1TB of disk space which is why you would want to stuff it to the max). I use 4x6TB disks with it.
Waco wrote:demolition wrote:FreeNAS is great indeed but you should be aware that the ZFS file system which is the standard and recommended choice is designed to be used with ECC memory so it should be used with an ECC-capable platform only.
I love FreeNAS but almost everything you posted here isn't true.
ECC, while recommended, is required no more than with any other filesystem.
..
/signed ZFS sysadmin/architect with 100+ PiB at work and a 17 drive FreeNAS box at home.
deruberhanyok wrote:Just because we are all "enthusiasts" doesn't mean we all want to constantly tinker with hardware, tweak settings and spend Saturday morning googling a bizarre BSD jail error code in FreeNAS. Sometimes you want a little box that "just works" so you can sit back and stream episodes of Firefly to your TV.
deruberhanyok wrote:So sure, if we're all talking as a bunch of techgerbils, roll your own NAS if you want. Go hog wild, get 12 drives, a hardware SAS controller and a Xeon. Do custom cooling to keep the noise down and build it into a rackmount enclosure to store in the rack you keep in your basement. Whatever tickles your fancy. But... if someone just wants a box to serve up pictures and an iTunes library, that's a lot of extra effort. And I think maybe you guys are overlooking that part.
deruberhanyok wrote:Yes, the individual component costs a little more than twice as much. And by itself, your individual component and this other one doesn't actually DO anything. The total cost of the system, to do what you want it to do, is what you should be comparing. And an empty storage server or an empty NAS is useless.
demolition wrote:Not sure if you are referring to the fact that 4x6TB > 16?
Since I am using RAIDZ1, and after other overhead etc. is factored in, the net storage space of my pool is 16.6TB so pretty much spot on.
demolition wrote:The arguments that convinced me that ECC was required in my build
demolition wrote:While ZFS can run with non-ECC memory just like most other file systems, at least with ext4 you have f.s.c.k.
article wrote:In addition to ZFS, we have applied the same fault injection
framework used in Section 5 to a simpler filesystem,
ext2. Our initial results indicate that ext2 is also vulnerable
to memory corruptions. For example, corrupt data
can be returned to the user or written to disk. When certain
fields of a VFS inode are corrupted, operations on
that inode fail or the whole system crashes. If the inode
is dirty, the corrupted fields of the VFS inode are propagated
to the inode in the page cache and are then written
to disk, making the corruptions permanent. Moreover, if
the superblock in the page cache is corrupted and flushed
to disk, it might result in an unmountable filesystem.
demolition wrote:Ok, it might not always be able to fix 100% of your data, but >99.9% is usually enough to satisfy most home users. With ZFS it is pretty much all or nothing.
demolition wrote:The regular scrubs done with ZFS is meant to combat bad sectors on the HDD but if there is a bad memory cell in the host machine, it could quickly and royally screw up your ZFS pool if you're unlucky since it could suddenly detect a load of incorrect checksums which it may try to recover and eventually your pool goes into degraded state and offline as the errors pile up during the scrub.
demolition wrote:While this presentation is just one man's opinions (and his background is not a pro sysadmin), they seem quite reasonable towards any home-user wanting to build a system with ZFS:
Waco wrote:I love FreeNAS but almost everything you posted here isn't true.
ECC, while recommended, is required no more than with any other filesystem.
DRAM requirements aren't governed by space, but by workload - 8 GB will keep almost every NAS file storage user happy, more just helps for non-typical workloads since ZFS has an excellent read cache (the ARC).