8 months in, how am I doing?

[Matt Morgan]

Good evening,

Back in December I decided I would spend ~$400 to replace my old desktop media server. Long story short, I learned a lot about Freenas and then learned that my plans for $400 were not going to happen if I wanted to do things the right way.

I ended up taking the advice of these forums built out a reasonable server for my Plex media and Minecraft Server needs. To this point, all has been great and I just wanted to be proactive and check in to see how my reporting looks and if it is time to add more memory.

Here is my build:

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/mamorgan1/saved/JT4J7P

CPU: Intel Core i3-4330 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor (Purchased For $135.00)
Memory: Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) Registered DDR3-1600 Memory (Purchased For $179.00)
Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $114.00)
Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $114.00)
Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $114.00)
Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $114.00)
Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $114.00)
Case: Fractal Design Node 804 MicroATX Mid Tower Case (Purchased For $69.00)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 430W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $25.99)
Other: SanDisk Ultra Fit™ USB 3.0 Flash Drive (Purchased For $9.97)
Other: SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SL7-F-O uATX Server Motherboard LGA 1150 Intel C222 DDR3 1600

I am at 16 GB of RAM right now and I see I can grab the other 16 GB to max out my board for $124.

Based on my reporting, how am I doing and is it a good time to throw in the extra 16 GB?

Thanks for all the guidance setting this up. It has been a real joy. Any feedback on improvements would be greatly appreciated!

Edit to add:
I'm setup with a RAID-Z2 currently yielding about 9 TB of space.

Have great evening,

mamorgan1

 

[DifferentStrokes]

Looks like a pretty textbook build. Doing the research upfront is very wise.

Two things:
Consider adding another USB drive so you have a mirrored boot device. There will come a day that you will be happy you did.
Looks like you are getting pretty close to 80% fill on your pool. Maybe your data will be static, but if you add much more you'll start getting warning messages about it. If you keep adding more you will start losing performance around 90% fill.

Happy NASing!

 

[cyberjock]

I realize this thread 2+ weeks old. But I think this is important..


If you are actually using registered RAM on your i3, you risk breaking your CPU (technically your memory controller, but it is on your CPU die) if you upgrade your RAM. You should NOT be using registered RAM with i3 CPUs. ;)

 

[Nick2253]

I realize this thread 2+ weeks old. But I think this is important..


If you are actually using registered RAM on your i3, you risk breaking your CPU (technically your memory controller, but it is on your CPU die) if you upgrade your RAM. You should NOT be using registered RAM with i3 CPUs. ;)

According to the PCPartsPicker link, he picked out unbuffered ECC memory like he was supposed to.

@Matt: for memory, being registered is something different than having ECC. Registered memory (RDIMMs) are used to help systems support lots and lots of sticks of memory. In general, most home computers do not need to support such large quantities of memory, so pretty much all home and small server systems use unregistered (or unbuffered) memory. Generally, only enterprise servers will use registered memory. Because of that use case, almost all registered memory is also ECC, but they are not necessarily mutually inclusive. For the standard use case in FreeNAS, you'd be using unbuffered ECC memory.

 

[Ericloewe]

Generally, only enterprise servers will use registered memory.

Believe it or not, the only 4GB ECC DDR4 DIMMs I know of are Registered. What kind of enterprise buys 4GB DIMMs these days, for a big-ass workstation or a server?

/Random fact of the day