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Freenas 8 build advice

N

Narfski

n00b
Joined
Dec 2, 2012
Messages
8
Hi there,

I'm currently in the planning phase of building a separate box that will have Freenas 8.* on it and I was just wondering if anyone that had already had experience with playing around with it could comment on the following setup or just answer some questions I have.

Already have the following hardware available for the box:

CPU: Intel i3-2100 (3.10 Ghz w/ 3MB Cache)
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H
RAM: 4GB (2 x 2GB of DDR3 1333 - will probably get another pair)
Network card: Intel CT 10/100/1000 (PCI-E) (x2 if needed to pair)
HD's: 4 x 500GB SATA-II drives, all matched with same firmware, etc....

** Got a 8GB USB Stick for Freenas **

I'm planning to increase the storage but for now that will do. More or less just wanting a main location for storage within the network. I've also got a jumbo frames enabled / supported switch. Replacing my old storage box that was just a Win XP system with an old 3ware PCI RAID (SATA-I) controller card.

Looking to setup everything with RAID-5 (will get a new hardware SATA RAID controller) as I don't know the limitations with the on-board RAID / SATA controller on this motherboard. Would be nice if I could hit a read and write rate over the network to this box of around 100 MB/sec (no idea if this is in reach or not with SMB / CIFS)

Thanks in advance and sorry for the long-winded post :)

Narfski
 
Last edited:
You are aware that Freenas 8 supports ZFS which is looking more appealing than Raid 5, right?

Hardware wise, this sounds sufficient for a starting point. How far are you looking to grow this? What is the purpose of this? File server or other?


I've got an old Athlon with 4gb, dual gigabit NICs, and 12 drives: 2-iSCSI for VM's, 1-CIFS. CPU hardly gets taxed.
 
Don't have any experience with ZFS, I assume it is fairly straight forward to get up and running?

Basically I'm looking for just a plain file server for the whole house. Connecting to it will be Windows 7 clients via shared CIFS. Eventually I would like to have 4 x 3TB SATA-II / III HD's in there, but for now I'm just toying with what I've got.

Currently I've got all of the mentioned hardware installed and ready.

Would it be wise to get a SATA controller (non-raid since I will try out ZFS) instead of using the onboard motherboard one? Don't know if they are normally good or not, or even if that will be a bottleneck at getting my 90 - 100 MB/sec read and write to this system via CIFS?
 
Use zfs over raid 5. Get a board that supports ecc ram
This is a server not a gaming machine. Trust me ecc will prevent corrruption over time. The i3 dies support ecc.
 
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