Capabilities of a freenas server

[penfold1992]

Hello all,

I just wanted to ask a few questions before I make a final decision on my build.

1. Is it possible to run the freenas box as a printer server? If I connect my printer via USB, can I somehow establish a printer server? I dont have a great printer but if its possible, Id be interested
2. I am planning to either hardwire the box into the router OR connect it via powerline adapter. Will speeds be fast enough to stream music from that box to a laptop or would I have to perform some sort of buffering?
3. I am thinking of having 4tb of space to start with...
   1. is it possible to run 2x2tb hard drives in raid 0?
   2. is it easier to start with 3 3x2tb hdd's and have striped and mirrored data to reach 4gb (I am not exactly sure how this works... I am new to "raid")
   3. how easy is it to upgrade to bigger memory?

Thanks in advanced,
Penfold

 

[danb35]

To take your questions in order:

1. It's certainly possible, but it's something that would have to be configured manually within a jail; FreeNAS doesn't have any built-in print server capabilities. If you're reasonably familiar with *nix command line work, you should be able to sort out how to install CUPS. If you've never worked with a *nix shell, this may take some learning on your part.
2. You shouldn't need more than 250-300 Kbps for music, so I wouldn't expect streaming music to be a problem with either arrangement (though powerline ethernet adapters are said to suck pretty badly).
3. ZFS is powerful and flexible, but correspondingly somewhat complicated. The short answers:
   1. Yes, it's possible to run two disks striped (aka RAID 0), but it's not recommended. If either disk fails, you lose all your data (which is true of any RAID 0 arrangement; it isn't unique to ZFS or FreeNAS).
   2. It isn't "easier", but it's safer, to use 3 x 2 TB disks in a RAIDZ1 (similar to traditional RAID 5) arrangement. This will give you some redundancy; if a single disk fails, your data will be protected, and you can replace the failed disk to restore your redundancy. Of course, you give up some disk space to gain the redundancy--you're using three disks to get the capacity of two of them.
   3. If by "memory" you mean RAM, trivially easy--put in in your box and go. If you mean disk capacity, it isn't difficult, but there are limits. You can't, for example, turn your 3-disk RAIDZ1 pool into a 4-disk RAIDZ1 pool without backing up the data, destroying the pool, rebuilding it with four disks, and restoring the data.

On the filesystem stuff, @cyberjock has put together a pretty comprehensive guide to how it works, and what you can and can't do with it, here: https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

 

[Ericloewe]

I'll add that my experience with powerline adapters has been the following:

The old 200Mb/s stuff was useless between circuits and was worse than Wi-Fi at the time (we're talking about 802.11g, so it's a rather big statement - imagine now). The newer stuff works fine within a room - it's good enough for an IPTV set top box.

 

[DVitoD]

I have some powerline adapters, 100 mb, they stream X264 fluently. Mileage may vary depending on quality of adapters and quality of cabling in the house.

 

[cyberjock]

I helped a friend with some powerline adapters. We looked around and picked the best ones we could that weren't outrageously expensive (there are some industrial grade adapters that are $200/each and are apparently pretty amazing). In every situation we tried (which wasn't expecting much) they either wouldn't connect to each other at all or they would connect but the performance was terrible. We had better wifi speeds.

When powerline technology first came out someone explained it as "Two people trying to have a conversation on opposite sides of the stadium while the stadium is packed". This isn't too far from the truth either.