BUILD Doubts on building a home NAS - T20

[samuyeah]

Memory speed for a ZFS NAS isn't suuuuuuuper important. You're limited by the speed of hard disks and ethernets. Don't get all OCD about 1333 vs 1600.

Shame on me: it's clearly stated in T20's manual that max memory speed supported with Pentium G3220 CPU is 1333 Not a big deal as you say.

Besides that: when I first imported the pool in FreeNAS, I automatically got an alert encouraging me to upgrade ZFS version. It was completely clear from the posts in this thread that the best thing to do is to move the data to a new FreeNAS pool. Would you recommend upgrading ZFS having in mind where this pool comes from (Ubuntu ZFS implementation)? If I do so: would you feel safe and secure replacing the old disks with bigger disks in order to expand the pool?

Sorry again for my foolish and OCD doubts, I appreaciate your patience.

 

[jgreco]

Shame on me: it's clearly stated in T20's manual that max memory speed supported with Pentium G3220 CPU is 1333 Not a big deal as you say.

Besides that: when I first imported the pool in FreeNAS, I automatically got an alert encouraging me to upgrade ZFS version. It was completely clear from the posts in this thread that the best thing to do is to move the data to a new FreeNAS pool. Would you recommend upgrading ZFS having in mind where this pool comes from (Ubuntu ZFS implementation)? If I do so: would you feel safe and secure replacing the old disks with bigger disks in order to expand the pool?

Sorry again for my foolish and OCD doubts, I appreaciate your patience.

The Ubuntu pool is unlikely to have the same GPT and partitioning setup that FreeNAS wants and expects, so while the pool was able to be imported and appears to work, there's some risk that in the future, operations such as disk replacement or other higher level functionality will not work correctly (or at all, or even worse, incorrectly in a detrimental manner).

With that in mind, you are much better off destroying the pool and creating a new FreeNAS pool. We all recognize that this is inconvenient and annoying, but I'd be lyin' to you if I said there was a high degree of confidence that you'll experience no problems with an imported pool from another platform.

Your questions are on the outside of the normal stuff that's well documented. If you're taking advantage of the available resources and only asking the things you can't figure out, that's great. If you've just happened to only have questions about some unusual things and haven't looked at the documentation, shame on you! But either way, there are a lot of users here who are happy to help get you pointed in the right directions. We all understand that there's a ton of stuff to know.

 

[joeschmuck]

Right now I'm stressing the RAM memory with Memtest86: no errors so far after 7 hours running (first time I run Memtest86 it freezed up; I tested DIMMs separately and they were OK, I put them both back again and swap (white) slots and everything OK so far). I'll run a scrub when I confirm that everything's soft and smooth.

So lets talk about the RAM and the slots it runs in... I have not seen a photo or user manual for your system but the way motherboards are typically designed these days is for the RAM to operate in interleave mode which is basically twice as fast as non-interleave mode. Again, typically in a system where there are four or more RAM slots, there will be pairs which which will be different in color. If you do not populate all your RAM slots then you must refer to the user manual to know which slots must/should be populated first. On my motheboard I have two black slots and two blue slots and I must populate the blue slots first if I only use two slots of RAM.

As for the speed, as @jgreco said, the difference between 1333 MHz and 1666 MHz is nothing. Sure you would like to get what you paid for but in a FreeNAS system, you will not notice the difference and at the slower clock speed you will save a fraction of energy, reduce heat creation, and more importantly, improve stability. Speaking of stability, run MemTest86 for 3 consecutive days and ensure your hard drives are connected to your system to help load the power supply down some, and if you plan to have this in a closed case, then close up the case during the test so you have the same heat you would expect under normal conditions. If all passes then you should have a pretty solid base for your FreeNAS.

 

[samuyeah]

To be honest I just run memtest86 for about a day and a half. After RAM tests I run a scrub and one of my disks was degraded because of too many checksum errors. I had to run all SMART tests but no errors showed up (couldn't figure out what was wrong with the disk). Then I zpool cleared and run the scrub again: now everything seems fine with the pool.

The thing that really worries me right now is the crazy temperatures my disks are reaching: over 50º! Even with the tape on, even with the case opened, even in rest mode*... I'll have to attach a couple of fans as quick as possible or my disks are going to melt down inside the case this summer.

Researching a little bit I found ideas on how to tune up the case, even on how to fit more drives in the T20!
http://homeservershow.com/forums/index.php?/topic/11134-8-drive-setup/
http://homeservershow.com/forums/in...asy-mod-to-add-more-25-or-35-drives-to-a-t20/

* I programmed the SMART tests and the scrubs in my system but besides that, sometimes I find the disk activity like this:

What are my disks doing? I'm absolutely sure I'm not writing anything in my pool...

 

[Ericloewe]

To be honest I just run memtest86 for about a day and a half.

That's on the short side. It can take several passes for some errors to appear.

 

[jgreco]

That's on the short side. It can take several passes for some errors to appear.

A day and a half is just getting warmed up. A week and a half is a bit on the short side.

 

[jgreco]

The thing that really worries me right now is the crazy temperatures my disks are reaching: over 50º! Even with the tape on, even with the case opened, even in rest mode*...

If you're running with the case open, is there a chance that you're compromising the engineered cooling design?

 

[jgreco]

What are my disks doing? I'm absolutely sure I'm not writing anything in my pool...

Not to point out the obvious, but you're obviously wrong in your absolute certainty. Heh.

From the regularity of it, I'm guessing that maybe you've set the system dataset to reside on the pool and it's doing something with it periodically. I don't actually run any quiescent FreeNAS systems so I don't know what passes for normal these days.

 

[joeschmuck]

The thing that really worries me right now is the crazy temperatures my disks are reaching: over 50º! Even with the tape on, even with the case opened, even in rest mode*... I'll have to attach a couple of fans as quick as possible or my disks are going to melt down inside the case this summer.

Researching a little bit I found ideas on how to tune up the case, even on how to fit more drives in the T20!
http://homeservershow.com/forums/index.php?/topic/11134-8-drive-setup/
http://homeservershow.com/forums/in...asy-mod-to-add-more-25-or-35-drives-to-a-t20/

Bad hard drive temps and those links are just nuts, especially the second one. Who in their right mind would stack hard drives like that? Not anyone that has a clue about thermal dynamics. Also if the case you have resembles what is in those links, you clearly do not have enough air flow. If I were stuck with that case, I'd remove all the components and then in the front of the case I'd remove a large section of metal to fit the largest one or two fans I could fit (maybe two 90 or 120mm fans) to force air across all the hard drives in the lower bay area. You will need to modify the upper area as well to remove the metal grid because it blocks a lot of air and then mount a proper fan. Unblock any air exit holes to promote proper air flow. You can use a smoke stick or incense stick to show you the air flow path once your system is put back together, providing you can stick some small camera inside the case (this is where a clear case comes in handy).

So figure out how top drop those drive temps or you will more than likely have premature failures on your drives and if the temp goes too high, it will invalidate the warranty.

 

[jgreco]

Bad hard drive temps and those links are just nuts, especially the second one. Who in their right mind would stack hard drives like that? Not anyone that has a clue about thermal dynamics.

http://homeservershow.com/forums/index.php?/topic/11134-8-drive-setup/
http://homeservershow.com/forums/in...asy-mod-to-add-more-25-or-35-drives-to-a-t20/

s/erver/hit/g

(goes into a corner and waits to get a talkin'to)

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

The thing that really worries me right now is the crazy temperatures my disks are reaching: over 50º! Even with the tape on, even with the case opened, even in rest mode*

Your disks definitely won't get proper airflow with the case open. If you're seeing 50C with the case closed, airflow around the case is a problem.

Researching a little bit I found ideas on how to tune up the case, even on how to fit more drives in the T20!

I've played these games with a couple of different Dell boxes, and come to the conclusion that it's a foolish thing to do. Dell's engineers design their cases to properly cool a given number of drives in a specific configuration.

* I programmed the SMART tests and the scrubs in my system but besides that, sometimes I find the disk activity like this:

Your disk activity looks normal to me. Expecting no OS activity at idle is like expecting a car engine to do nothing at idle.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

During a scrub, the upper of those two often goes above 40C, but not far above (its lifetime max is 43C). The one below has been up to 41C.

After replacing the vented blanking plates with solid plates, and covering the side panel vent, drive temperatures during the most recent scrub were 4-5C lower than before.