Help with first Freenas build

[louiecola2]

I am planning to build my first freenas but not to sure if it possible to do what I want. I would like to make a backups of all hard drives in the freenas box just in case one of them were to go bad. is this possible and how would I go about doing this?

 

[praecorloth]

It sounds like you're just looking to RAID your hard drives. FreeNAS definitely does that. Do you want this FreeNAS machine to be the destination for backups from a desktop and/or laptop? FreeNAS can do that, too.

Tell us a little bit about either the hardware you either have or might get for this box, and also tell us a little bit about how you see this FreeNAS box serving your needs.

 

[cyberjock]

The answer is yes as long as you can use one of the protocols that FreeNAS supports to allow access to the zpool/ufs drive. So you need to examine what program you use, the OS you are using, and find the correlation. For 99% of users, you can do it if you have the technical knowledge to do all of the setup.

 

[louiecola2]

It sounds like you're just looking to RAID your hard drives. FreeNAS definitely does that. Do you want this FreeNAS machine to be the destination for backups from a desktop and/or laptop? FreeNAS can do that, too.

Tell us a little bit about either the hardware you either have or might get for this box, and also tell us a little bit about how you see this FreeNAS box serving your needs.

I plan on using this for storing movies like a media storage, storing family pics and movies and music. Which I would be playing them all through a media player that is hard wired to the network with a gigabit switch. Here is the hard ware that I am thinking about getting.

Motherboard- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130709
Processor- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113329
Memory- 8gigs DDR3 1066
Storage- 8 terabytes of storage

 

[louiecola2]

Also how would I set this up?

 

[Yatti420]

The motherboard while having higher ram support doesn't support ECC.. It's a decent desktop choice.. Wouldn't use that here.. If you are willing to risk it use Freenas with zfs on it.. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182253 (any x9 not nesc this 1) is most likely what I am upgrading to..

 

[louiecola2]

The motherboard while having higher ram support doesn't support ECC.. It's a decent desktop choice.. Wouldn't use that here.. If you are willing to risk it use Freenas with zfs on it.. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182253 (any x9 not nesc this 1) is most likely what I am upgrading to..

I am trying to build this the cheap rout because of money, so if you can recommend something that would be great. Also I would like to be able to run freenas from sdcard rather than take up a sata port on the board. In the future I want to be able to put 8 drives in, also I do have a raid control http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115072 to use in the box

 

[louiecola2]

Also can you run zfs with mirror?

 

[Yatti420]

For 8 drives.. Try looking at some more expensive SuperMicro boards..

 

[gpsguy]

Yes, that's what I'm doing.

Also can you run zfs with mirror?

 

[gpsguy]

For hardware recommendations, see the thread: So you want some hardware suggestions

While you might consider these suggestions to be expensive - I could say the costs are dirt cheap. I manage a 4.5Tb SAN that cost about what a new Toyota Sequoia does.

You ask if you can reuse your old motherboard. Of course you could - though I'd bump it up to 16Gb RAM for the 8Tb of drives. Is it a good idea ... that's a choice you need to make. Read the ongoing thread ECC vs non-ECC RAM and ZFS

Toss your RAID controller. If you need additional SATA ports, pick up an IBM 1015 (about $100 on eBay). It's highly recommended and supported by FreeNAS.

I am trying to build this the cheap rout because of money, so if you can recommend something that would be great.

 

[louiecola2]

I don't have that kind of budget sorry. So maybe I'll just reuse my motherboard and up the memory to 16gb like you said. Also the board already has 8 6gb sata ports so I won't need the raid controller card then and I'll run the drives in a mirror ZFS then also.