Conversion from OpenFiler to FreeNAS

[threecrow]

Looking to convert our very large, but outdated Openfiler system to FreeNAS. Given the specifications below (we purchased this custom server between 2014/2015), can I install FreeNAS? Any suggestions to change the system to make it operate faster and more efficiently? The SMB1 configuration and Openfiler in general is making me regret investing in this large capacity NAS. My hope is that an OS migration will fix a lot of the failings of the current system.


Poly C602A16L2 2011p DualXeon MB 6PCIe Slot, 2LAN

2 x Intel Xeon E5-2609 4C/4T 2.4G 10M 6.4GT CPU 80W
Processors: 8
Model: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2609 v2 @ 2.50GHz
CPU Speed: 2.49 GHz
Cache Size: 10.00 MB

Memory: 256GB DDR3 ECC Registered Memory

OS DRIVES: 2x Samsung 840 EVO SSD 120GB SATA-6G 2.5

STORAGE: 72x 6TB 7200RPM SAS 6G/s 3.5" HD Enterprise (432 TB RAW)

4x SAS Multi-Lane to 4xSAS/SATA Cable 0.5M Internal

3x 24port RAID Accelerator SAS/SATA 8x Areca-1882ix

On-Board Dual Gigabit/100/1000T Ethernet

LSI 7104EP-LC SGL PCIe 4G Fibre 1Ch Opt

 

[Ericloewe]

24port RAID Accelerator SAS/SATA 8x Areca-1882ix

You'll need to get rid of those and replace them with LSI HBAs.

2 x Intel Xeon E5-2609 4C/4T 2.4G

Hmm, those are fairly sucky. Upgrading them to something with better single-thread performance might end up being necessary.

Also, very important: What's the workload? SMB narrows it down, but more detail would be nice.

 

[threecrow]

You'll need to get rid of those and replace them with LSI HBAs.

Any complications on the install on those or are they rather plug and play (drivers, internal cabling, etc)?

Hmm, those are fairly sucky. Upgrading them to something with better single-thread performance might end up being necessary.

Suggestions welcome here. I was looking around for an appropriate upgrade, but I want to make sure it’s compatible with the what I have.

Also, very important: What's the workload? SMB narrows it down, but more detail would be nice.

I want to put a 10gb SFP+ card in to match the rest of our facility. We use this and an identical server as active storage for our older media (they are currently full). I’m going to migrate the media off to new Enterprise QNAP SAS storage to match the rest of our facility... but I want to try and eek out as much usefulness as I can from these servers as the storage equals out to almost 900 TB useable. As for workload, we have multiple clients connecting over a switch to access large video files.

 

[Ericloewe]

Any complications on the install on those or are they rather plug and play (drivers, internal cabling, etc)?

Plug and Play, but migrating the old RAID volume, if applicable, needs to happen with the old cards.

Suggestions welcome here. I was looking around for an appropriate upgrade, but I want to make sure it’s compatible with the what I have.

Any Xeon E5 v1 or v2 that fits in your TDP limits should work, but you need E5-2xxx models to use two sockets.

As for workload, we have multiple clients connecting over a switch to access large video files.

That's fairly easy.