Built my first FreeNAS, my experience and some questions

[DanielW]

Hello,

I recently built my first FreeNAS server. The goal was to replace my aging Synology DS209 which was too slow (40 MByte/s max over CIFS), loud and running out of space (2x4TB in a mirror setup). First I had planned to buy a DS1415(+) which would be more expensive and not as powerfull as a custom FreeNAS build. (not to mention ZFS and its features). My usecase is mostly storing media for streaming (to FireTV and Android Tablets), some personal documents and photos, a small git repo for some fun projects and running SickRage. (yeah that really worked (somewhat) with the 256 MB Ram of the DS209).

My build (in some points divergent from the usual recommendations, but I hope not in a really bad way):
Mainboard: Fujitsu D3417-B (a Skylake board with C236 chipset and ECC support built for 24/7 usage. It had a good price and supposedly a low power consumption. 6xSATA+M.2 support which I liked)
CPU: Pentium G4400
RAM: 16GB DDR4-2133MHZ ECC CL15 DIMM 2RX8 (one module so that I can upgrade later if needed)
Disks: 5 x WD Red 4TB in RaidZ2
SSD: Samsung SM951-NVM-e 128GB M.2 (for jails and system dataset to let the disks spin down)
PSU: PicoPSU 150W (seems to be low but works great so far. Max power when spinning up the drives is about 120W total, idles at 24 Watt with drives stopped)
UPS: Eaton 3S 550 (not pure sine, but not too expensive and seems to work fine with FreeNAS)
Case: Nanoxia Deep Silence 3 (already knew the case, has good noise insulation, I only use three 120mm fans on slowest speed (2 on the HDDs in, one near the CPU out). CPU is cooled "passive".

My experience, the good:

• Its fast. Easily saturates my gigabit lan (with little CPU load). Sickrage is usable without waiting seconds each click. It seems the is CPU why faster than I expected compared to the on in the DS209. (I expected factor 10 or something, seems way more). So far no regrets not going for a Xeon.
• Its quiet (you can here the discs but way less than with the DS209)
• FreeNAS itself is nice. Installation was easy, jails are great to separate the core NAS system from the other things. I liked that a lot of notifications are pre setup. And documentation (+forum threads) is good.
• ZFS and its features like snapshots are nice to have. While moving the data I executed "rm -r ." by accident in the wrong directory on the old NAS. I will have a quick way to undo things like that in the future.

The not so good:

• Monitoring/Logging in the GUI is really missing. There is no way to monitor the CPU or HDD temperatures, to see the logs, to see the outcome and state of latest scrubs or smart tests, the UPS state or the current usage of the device (like who is connected to which service, which files are accessed). FreeNAS can really improve here. (I added a temp monitoring script from someone in the forums, thanks for that)
• No focus on energy usage. I got disk spindown only really working with the millhouse script from here. And I think higher C-States than C1 should be default at least when powerd is enabled. Energy is not everywhere so cheap than in the USA. And even if, I think it is still important to don't use unnecessary resources if possible.
• Related to that, my energy consumpution is higher than expected. I get 24 Watt when idle and discs are off. I was planning with about 15 Watt. With Linux I get 20, with Windows (didn't try) it should be even less. The reason is most likely that FreeBSD doesn't support all energy saving possibilites. I can live with that. (It's like 20 Euro/year more than expected)
• It would be nice to be able to browse the data in the web gui (like on the Synolgy NASes)

I have three issues:

1. I get the following messages every 10 seconds.:

Code:

May  7 21:22:01 freenas ACPI Error: [\_SB_.PCI0.LPCB.H_EC.ECAV] Namespace lookup failure, AE_NOT_FOUND (20150515/psargs-391)

May  7 21:22:01 freenas ACPI Error: Method parse/execution failed [\_TZ_.TZ00._TMP] (Node 0xfffff800075b3900), AE_NOT_FOUND (20150515/psparse-552)
May  7 21:22:01 freenas ACPI Error: [\_SB_.PCI0.LPCB.H_EC.ECAV] Namespace lookup failure, AE_NOT_FOUND (20150515/psargs-391)
May  7 21:22:01 freenas ACPI Error: Method parse/execution failed [\_TZ_.TZ01._TMP] (Node 0xfffff800075b37c0), AE_NOT_FOUND (20150515/psparse-552)

I believe it is some problem with my mainboard/BIOS or something? Everything seems to work fine. Can I ignore it or should i expect problem because of it? Google didn't really help.

2. It is currently using 159 MB of Swap memory. I am afraid that that may wake up my disks. Is there a way to disable swap on my hdds and only have it on my SSD? I mean with 16 GB Ram there shouldn't be a reason to use it in the first place?

Thanks for FreeNAS and your help :)

 

[jgreco]

announcing today's winner of the future magic smoke award: a 150w psu for a platform that can burn ~70 watts all on its own, leaving only 80 watts for 5 drives.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/proper-power-supply-sizing-guidance.38811/

 

[m0nkey_]

As per @jgreco comments, you really need to think about getting a different power supply or you will be releasing the magic blue smoke of death. 150W is not enough to work with, especially with your current configuration. You should be looking at your max consumption, then doubling it to get the appropriate sized PSU. In your case, you should be looking at least 300W.

With regards to the GUI. FreeNAS is not a Synology device. FreeNAS gives you everything you could need to set-up a file server and nothing more. You want more, then create a jail and install your custom software for file browsing, torrents, or whatever.

The error messages you posted relate to power management. They're either firing because there isn't enough power to go around so it's doing something crazy to make sure it doesn't just die, or the BIOS on your motherboard needs updating because it's missing some of the power management features.

 

[danb35]

There is no way to monitor the CPU or HDD temperatures, to see the logs, to see the outcome and state of latest scrubs or smart tests, the UPS state or the current usage of the device

How important is it to watch a graph of CPU and drive temps? Yes, it's nice to see (and I've installed the same scripts), but CPU temp should never be an issue, and SMART can (and will, if you configure it properly) warn you when the drive temps are too high. The GUI will warn you (and email you, if you've configured it properly) of any SMART errors. Scrub results are available in the GUI under Storage/Volume Status. The system log shows in the bottom of the web GUI; if you click on that it will expand to fill the browser window. So much of what you mention here is actually possible.

It would be nice to be able to browse the data in the web gui (like on the Synolgy NASes)

I agree. The flip side is that such a feature is a pretty significant security risk.

 

[jgreco]

I agree. The flip side is that such a feature is a pretty significant security risk.

Yes, but so's having root access. Life's full of risks!

 

[Bidule0hm]

(and will, if you configure it properly)

Not on my server...

 

[danb35]

Life's full of risks!

Certainly. I'm personally kind of torn over whether, on balance, a web-based file manager would be a good thing or not. It would definitely make certain aspects of server administration more convenient, but it exposes another attack surface that isn't likely nearly as well-tested as the base FreeBSD system. And it'd pretty much have to run as root to have adequate file control.

Of course, something like this could be set up in a jail, and the pool(s)/datasets mounted to it as storage, but (1) that's kind of awkward to implement, and (2) it kind of defeats the security benefits of being in a jail in the first place.

Edit: come to think of it, setting it up in a jail could be an interesting project. A quick Google comes up with a lot of options for web-based file managers. Does anyone have any experience with such a project to make a recommendation for or against?

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

web-based file manager

Would it really be any more convenient than a decent SFTP client?

 

[danb35]

Would it really be any more convenient than a decent SFTP client?

You'd have to install the decent SFTP client on whatever client machines you wanted to use it with, but other than that, hard to say...

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I hadn't thought of it like that, yes, more convenient to have a web interface.