So you want some hardware suggestions.

[jgreco]

Yeah, that's basically going to be a recipe for unhappiness.

Fundamentally it is kind of a shock... most users are used to moving from one OS and/or filesystem to another and seeing only modest differences. Many filesystems were designed back in the day when 32MB (read: MB not GB) was a large RAM system and 1TB was an unthinkably large amount of disk. Filesystems usually didn't try to do things like additional checksum protection of data, adding a complex volume manager layer, or rely on large amounts of cache being present.

So it is a shock to swap in ZFS and suddenly you have this big heavy beast of an enterprise grade high performance filesystem ... and you were naturally expecting that it was going to be just that ... super high performance. But ZFS isn't magic. It's an enterprise grade high performance filesystem, yes. But the way it does that is to eat CPU and memory resources. Calculating checksums and performing RAID parity calculations isn't computationally free. This is likely to be the largest, heaviest footprint filesystem you've ever used. And FreeNAS itself has been tuned to work well on larger platforms, which kind of squeezes small guys even harder.

Most of us here understand the frustration. FreeNAS isn't necessarily a good choice if you're looking to repurpose old hardware into a high performance NAS. Most of the time, it is at best a compromise. We feel your pain.

 

[Mr_B]

NOTE: Yes I know this system is old crap, but it's all I have available and I dont have the money to spare to buy some better hardware, let alone server grade stuff

Hell, i feel you. I'm in the exact same spot, and went a completely different route. But... If your only using 1 drive for shared storage, isn't a NAS a bit of overkill to start with? That would indicate that you, like me, do it party "coz you can" and the expectation is to wrench the best performance out of the system for the least amount of money / effort. I'd suggest going back to the Ubuntu if you were happy with that, i went ahead and experimented with WHS 2011, and so far it's what i wanted. And, that system is hardly "crap". I bet you can drop the frequency to 15-1600, cut the vCore to 1.3-1.4v and still get the expected performance from Ubuntu. Hell, those chips clock as low as 2-300MHz, at around 1v if i remember right. That should make it run at ambient temps, but i doubt it's fast enough for the usage. Anyway, it's a perfectly fine low power, and low cost system. I wouldn't call that crap, just "not current enterprise level" but lets face it... Who the heck has that sort of stuff available as "left over, old, used scrap"

Good luck with the re-rigging, have fun, and all that.
B!

 

[Lordadmiral Drake]

OS-wise I started with WHS V1, then I moved to Ubuntu + btrfs. But I wanted a headless system, and Ubuntus Samba shares were unreliable for me, every once in a while being inaccessible from one computer or another. So I moved to FreeNAS, which at the time I thought to be a bare-minimum, minimal hardware NAS-system.

I'm using an NAS because in addition to it I have a gaming rig, a Laptop and an HTPC and I don't want to have to have all stuff an all computers. Plus my mum backs up her PC to my server. And I had the hardware lying around. Previously my server was running on a 2,66 GHz P4 with 2GB of DDR400 RAM and some Intel Pro1000 network controller. But the mobo died on me and the Athlon machine was the fastest spare system I had around.

 

[Lordadmiral Drake]

So, I took my Data disk and stuffed it into another machine I had lying around. Then I installed the latest 64 bit release of FreeNAS on my Corsair Flash Voyager 4GB and after some tinkering with BIOS config it actually managed to boot up, import my saved config and work as it should. This doubled my write performance to 70 MByte/s over GBit Ethernet.

"New" Specs:
MoBo: Foxconn 945G7MD-KS2H
Chipset: Intel 945G + ICH7
CPU: Pentium Dual-Core E2140 1,6GHz
RAM: 2GB DDR2-667
NIC: Some Realtek GBit Ethernet, works great

I'd like to put more RAM into that box, but I found out that the 945G maxes out at 3GB because it doesn't support Memory Remapping like the 965 does. Well, at least I get decent performance.

EDIT: I just remembered that I formated the Data disk with UFS and not ZFS like I thought I did. Might explain why I get 70MBytes with this hardware ^^

 

[Mr_B]

Um... Whut? 4GB is supported by the chipset. You should be able to get away with 16-32MB allocated for the integrated GFX. Or disable it, and use a PCI card with 0,5-4MB memory on, if you can get a hold of one.
Both the CPU, and the motherboard (BIOS) support 64bit addressing, so you should be able to get away with "any" GFX, 4GB RAM, and a 64-bit OS as well. At least i think so?
Might need a BIOS update, they are here.

B!

 

[jgreco]

The 32-bit OS will be more memory efficient on a 4GB platform...

 

[Mr_B]

Except the fact that he wont be able to address all the memory. Well, not without page swapping, and stupid stuff like that.
I'm not sure 3.5 vs 4GB really is the end of the world, thats why i suggested going with 16-32MB allocated for the GFX, or a PCI card with minimal memory on as a first choice.
B!

 

[jgreco]

Why wouldn't he be able to address all the memory? 2**32 = ...?

 

[Mr_B]

You lost me.

Memory address space is 4,294,967,296 bytes on a 32bit system. All memory is included in this, as well as hardware that use memory mapped I/O, some (all?) CPU registers, PCI busses, and so on. Meaning a system with 4Gb RAM, and a 1Gb texture memory on the GFX will have some issues allocating all of it. Since the BIOS mostly by autopilot adds a memory hole for the GFX RAM to be allocated, it's going to be RAM "falling outside" the 4GB limit. Using PAE you can circumvent the issue, but at a performance hit. At that point, which is faster, 64bit or 32bit with PAE is unknown to me. I do assume that FreeNAS could support PAE, it's been available long enough, but as far as i know, FreeBSD has issues where some drivers wont work with PAE enabled kernels. But again, possibly my limited BSD/Linux experience is playing trickery on me, and lead me astray?
B!

 

[cyberjock]

PAE does NOT work with FreeBSD. It was abandoned years ago when x64 came out. PAE was only meant as a stopgap for systems with lots of memory. When x64 came out PAE as ditched as nobody in their right mind would rely on PAE over x64.

 

[jgreco]

He's also confusing virtual address space with physical. Besides, if you have a GFX card eating 1GB of address space, there is an obvious solution to that problem.

So the question is, if you can use 3.5GB...3.8GB of an i386 system's 4GB memory, or all 4GB of it by running x64, which do you do?

The nonobvious answer is that i386 wins, because on average an i386 system takes about 25-30% less RAM than an identical x64. The i386 will make better use of 3.5GB than x64 makes of 4GB. The i386 will feel like an x64 with about 5GB.

This was more of a concern mid-2000's when 8GB RAM was "a lot" for a typical CPU. I vaguely recall $1200 for 8GB of 1GB sticks. We most recently paid about $350 for 32GB (4 x 8GB ECC unbuff) so memory costs are less than a tenth.

PAE isn't AS interesting today because back then 8 or 16GB could max a server and it was often a server running lots of small processes, so the idea of running 20-40% more stuff on the same hardware was way attractive and worth some hassle.

These days, memory is cheaper and systems much larger, and virtualization common, so the window of attractiveness for PAE is smaller. We use i386 heavily (any VM with 4GB or less if RAM unless there is a compelling reason). Since it is inherently more memory efficient, that is an all-around win.

But PAE isn't really worth the effort.

And for ZFS, the system basically wants gobs of kernel mem, and PAE offers no relief there (at least as designed).

 

[Mr_B]

So the question is, if you can use 3.5GB...3.8GB of an i386 system's 4GB memory, or all 4GB of it by running x64, which do you do?

I think i already answered that one.

Um... Whut? 4GB is supported by the chipset. You should be able to get away with 16-32MB allocated for the integrated GFX. Or disable it, and use a PCI card with 0,5-4MB memory on, if you can get a hold of one.
Both the CPU, and the motherboard (BIOS) support 64bit addressing, so you should be able to get away with "any" GFX, 4GB RAM, and a 64-bit OS as well. At least i think so?
Might need a BIOS update, they are here.

B!

Yeah, i did. If you for what ever reasons can't get away with the primary choice, a 32bit system, then a 64bit one should work.

He's also confusing virtual address space with physical.

As far as i know, it doesn't matter, since it has to be addressed together. The limitation isn't 4 GB RAM, and 4Gb virtual address space.

Besides, if you have a GFX card eating 1GB of address space, there is an obvious solution to that problem.

Yeah. Pull it, and use something else, a PCI S3 virge with 2MB memory comes to memory as being easily available, and reliable. Funny, i seam to remember mentioning pulling the card before... Nah, i must be imagining things.
B!

 

[Lordadmiral Drake]

I'm currently thinking about tapping into my money reserves to make a hardware upgrade with the following components:

16GB Kingston ValueRAM DDR3-1333 ECC DIMM CL9
4x 4000GB WD Red WD40EFRX 64MB 3.5" (8.9cm) SATA
ICY BOX IB-544SS
Intel Pentium G3220 (boxed)
Asus P9D-X Intel C222 So.1150 Dual Channel DDR3

Whatya think?

 

[jgreco]

like why would you get a board with three pci slots? seriously, look at the supermicro offerings, which are at least as good as asus, usually have a better selection, and usually cheaper too. if you must asus, ditch the 1995 pci technology.

 

[cyberjock]

Any reasons you are going that route over Supermicro? I don't consider Asus hardware to be anywhere near the same league as Supermicro. And I can buy a comparable Supermicro board with all PCIe for slightly less. So why go Asus?

And why PCI slots? Those are useless for SATA/SAS controllers. They are useless for a PCIE NIC. They are literally useless.

I also don't see IPMI on the Asus. Once you go IPMI you never go back.

 

[jgreco]

Told you you'd love IPMI... though you can get most SM boards without if you're a VGA+PS/2 masochist.

 

[jyavenard]

Told you you'd love IPMI... though you can get most SM boards without if you're a VGA+PS/2 masochist.

with asus server boards, they usually have a slot for an optional ipmi interface: http://www.asus.com/Commercial_Servers_Workstations/ASMB5iKVM/

 

[cyberjock]

Ug.. at about $50 I'd rather go with Supermicro!

 

[jgreco]

yup, don't see the value to addin cards.

 

[cyclerider]

Boot device:

Use a USB flash drive that you trust. I know the FreeNAS specs say 2GB. Most of the ones that claim to be 2GB are a bit less. Get three nice name-brand 4GB USB flash drives, not out of the 99c bin. SSD is totally awesome for a boot device, much faster, but eats a SATA port, is quite expensive (in comparison), and isn't necessarily any more reliable. Three USB flash drives means one for current use, one to install an upgrade, and one for backup/oops.

Is there a guide on setting up the USB as you described? My searches were unsuccessful.