Do I need an AES processor

[zella]

Hey guys,

First post.

I am building my first NAS. I want to use it as a file store for pretty much everything, including my extensive collection of blu ray backups. I'm going for expandability but currently only need a small amount of storage.

specs:

2 x WD RED 4TB RAID 1
ASUS B85M-G C2 (cheapest mobo with 6 sata ports I could find)
8GB corsair value select RAM (single stick, so could get up to 32GB on the mobo at a later date)
Intel Pentium G3220 £40
OR Intel Core i3-4130 with AES £85


I want to have full disk encryption with a pair of 4TB drives in raid 1, eventually expanding to 3 pairs of 4tb drives all in raid 1. I have read that full disk encryption with raid can make performance take a real hit, and this can be negated with a chip that has the AES instruction set.

I don't care about slow file transfer rates, I just want HD video to be playable. I think uncompressed HD runs at 60mbps, most of my mkv's are compressed ranging up to 30mbps.
Will the cheaper option be up to the task.
Also a point to consider is that I hope to have a 4K set up in the near future, certainly before I intend on replacing this NAS, so if the better processor will make that viable I would go for that. Can I have your thoughts please.

Thanks in advance

z

 

[zella]

Scrap that motherboard, the chipset doesn't support raid. The question remains the same

 

[jkh]

First, if you're using crypto, you want an AESNI capable processor. The performance difference can be dramatic (several orders of magnitude) and I've heard stories, although I've not verified them personally, that some low-cost processors are so feeble at pure software decryption performance that I/O performance of the pool drops to 1/10th theoretical max.

Second, why do you need crypto if you're just streaming Blu-Ray video off of the box?

 

[DrKK]

The nature of his questions indicate to me that he's way over his head with FreeNAS. His proposed build (which is a FreeNAS nightmare) means he hasn't done one lick of research into this product.

And I'm guessing he wants encryption because his collection is....not legal. :)

 

[zella]

@jkh Will check that out.

@DrKK That wasn't the friendly welcome I was expecting. Apologies that I didn't qualify myself as a total noob.
I would appreciate if you could shed some lights on your comments. I did bother to read the recommended hardware specs and that build seemed to be ok? But if you could take some time to give advice in the second person rather than criticise me in the third, like I'm some kind of deaf retard, it would be most appreciated.

Re the legality of my collection: blurays have DRM, bypassing DRM is illegal, ripping blu rays is illegal, it only just became legal to rip CD's recently: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspe...s-going-to-be-legal-to-rip-your-cd-in-the-uk/
So it is quite simply not possible to have a legal blu ray rip collection, at least not in my country. And to clarify, I used the term bluray backup as a colloquial term for hd quality MKV's, of course my collection is totally legal. I am just becoming more and more paranoid about the security of my data, something which I have a right to.

 

[DrKK]

Zella: On the one hand, yes, perhaps I should not have been so harsh as a matter of diplomacy. So I retract the tone. ***HOWEVER***, sir, there are reasons for the annoyance, that I hope you will comprehend. But by way of explanation, if I may:

You don't owe anybody anything when you use FreeNAS. *EXCEPT* for one thing. These guys that you're asking for help in critiquing your build? They work for free. *YOU*, sir, are wasting their time by proposing a system that, had you actually done any real reading of the materials they curate on this forum, would see doesn't even approach a minimum standard. There is no possible way that had you done any serious reading, research, and playing around with FreeNAS, that you would ever propose this motherboard/RAM combo, for example. Just about the only thing acceptable about this build is the CPU, if you're not using encryption.

So please, take 10-20 hours to read the materials. Take another 10-20 hours to play with FreeNAS in a VM. That's reasonable, isn't it? Then you'll find your reception completely free of nastiness. I know I did. I was a noob just two months ago, but I never said word ONE to any of these guys before I did my work. I had a much different reception.

By the way, the G3220 is the best chip, per dollar, currently manufactured on planet Earth. You will find it up to your requirements---as long as you don't use encryption.

Anyway, I hope this clarifies the reasons for my non-diplomatic engagement on your question(s). But I agree with you, I ought not to have been so nasty. But it is what it is.

 

[zella]

No worries man, sticks and stones right.

Thank you for your response.

I have just had a real good bit of luck; I was telling a friend about my build and he said he had some parts he could sell me. So now I am getting a i5-2300 with AES-NI and an MSI p67A-GD65 which supports RAID. This processor is superior to even the i3 that I suggested and I am getting it for half the price, joy.

With this saving I have doubled up on RAM, for a total of 16GB. This is now surely not a "freeNAS nightmare", what do you think?

I do get your point, but I have no interest in becoming an expert like yourself, I simply don't have 40 hours. If someone had to invest 40 hours research into something before they were worth of expert advice, mankind would have achieved little.

You say the RAM/mobo combo was preposterous. As a noob I would think a reasonable place to start would be the official page on recommended hardware, so I did.

Here is what it has to say about RAM "For systems with large disk capacity (greater than 8 TB), a general rule of thumb is 1 GB of RAM for every 1 TB of storage".

So considering my initial set up is 8TB was I wrong to assume 8GB would do the job? I also said that I had bought a single stick with the intention of upgrading to 32GB over time.

 

[cyberjock]

Nope.. it's getting worse because you are showing that you clearly don't have intention of actually reading the manual and trying to learn for yourself. It's a nightmare that's getting worse every time you post. DrKK was dead serious when he said to spend some time reading the manual and experimenting. i5s don't do ECC, which IS a necessity with FreeNAS, and a motherboard that supports RAID is EXACTLY what you DON'T want.

So yes, go back to the drawing board, stop trying to shortcut yourself and get out the manual and give it a good read, experiment in a VM, THEN start looking at hardware(hint: read stickies in the various forum sections).

Do not even look at spending money on hardware until you FULLY understand what you are getting yourself into. Or you'll be like MANY others on the forum. You'll end up buying 3 systems' worth of components before you actually get a FreeNAS server that functions properly.

 

[omegadraconis]

Welcome zella,

There is no need for your motherboard to support raid and in fact you do not want to use your built in raid controller if you are planning to use zfs (which you should be). When you create a zfs array as RAIDZ2 or RAIDZ1 (RAIDZ2 is recommended see: http://forums.freenas.org/threads/should-i-raid-z1-or-raid-z2.221/) the freenas os will handle the raid, not the hardware.

You would also do well to look into ecc memory if you are at all worried about data integrity see: http://forums.freenas.org/threads/ecc-vs-non-ecc-ram-and-zfs.15449/, since you are planning to only hold ripped blue-rays I would suppose that this could be lost without it causing you much hardship. 8GB would likely do to start with but, 8GB would be the minimum recommended amount of ram.

The i5-2300 should have enough horse power for what your doing but, I'm not sure of ecc support if you decide to go that route.

 

[zella]

@cyberjock, even some new i3's support ECC let alone i5's: http://ark.intel.com/products/77480/Intel-Core-i3-4130-Processor-3M-Cache-3_40-GHz

http://ark.intel.com/products/75468/Intel-Core-i5-4570TE-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_30-GHz
I have just read your post on ECC an I will go back to the drawing board. Thanks.

@omegadraconis Thank you very much for your reply, this place needs some people with your posting abilities. Evidently it's not difficult to provide (and source, thank you!) information in a polite manner.

 

[cyberjock]

@cyberjock, even some new i3's support ECC let alone i5's: http://ark.intel.com/products/77480/Intel-Core-i3-4130-Processor-3M-Cache-3_40-GHz

Yes, I know this. Xeons, some i3s and some of the Pentiums do ECC. I am 100% sure that no i5s support ECC at all, hence my post. I don't even have to look up your CPU to know that you are definitely not considering ECC RAM in your system with that CPU

I can also tell that by just using your model number for your motherboard it has a p67 chipset. Again, that's a chipset that doesn't support ECC at all.

So both of those tidbits told me that you haven't done your research and haven't considered ECC.

The whole list of hardware that does and doesn't support ECC has been discussed to death. Everyone always asks the same question.... what is the cheapest CPU I can get with ECC support.

 

[zella]

http://ark.intel.com/products/75468/Intel-Core-i5-4570TE-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_30-GHz
?

 

[cyberjock]

If you read up on that CPU, you've made 2 errors:

1. That CPU isn't available for public consumption yet. Some places list the Friday before xmas as the release date. There are some rumors that the CPU may not ever be released and that it was meant as a paper-release. Not sure I believe the rumors yet as there's a lot of confusion on the release of Haswell desktop chips being released.
2. That cpu still requires a motherboard that is a server chipset for ECC support. Your board is certainly NOT in that subset.

The reason why i5s have never had ECC support is because Intel provided the i3s/pentiums with ECC support for low power servers that would require ECC support, but as soon as you wanted more than the most meager of processing power you'd be forced to go with the FAR more expensive Xeon(read: much larger profit margin for Intel). What Intel doesn't want is the i5s to cannibalize the Xeon sales, hence the rumors it may never be widely available for public consumption. There's been some rumors that the CPU would only be available when purchased as part of a complete server from large manufacturers such as Dell or HP. That all remains to be seen as far as I know.

I'm not even sure why I'm responding to your post at this point. You need to do more research as has been mentioned by DrKK and myself. You're arguing over minutia when you've made other errors and you undoubtedly need to do more research before making your purchases. I spent weeks of reading trying to figure out what to do and what not to do. You're lucky in that you can use stickies to help you. Many written by myself and other mods around here. Use them.

 

[Yatti420]

http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Hardware_Recommendations

 

[zella]

@cyberjock yeah dude I know about my motherboard, I'm not intending to by that chip not to mention it's the wrong socket?

I am sorry to say that I won't be joining you and the others in the ECC master race just yet. I don't have the money. I was just brining to your attention that there is in fact an i5 with ECC support. But of course you meant all i5's but that one when you said i5's don't have ECC!

I have been reading through this forum enough to know your views now: do it the right way, or don't bother. But the thing is it's not the right way; its the best way. And considering that most people don't have any kind of data protection/back up I think your time would be better spent advising people for a given situation, rather than condemning them for not being able to join you. I think every informed person, if they had the means would use ECC kit, but they don't, simple. I think you would spend a lot less time with your knickers configured to twisted if you accepted that ;)

There are many stops along the way from an isolated NTFS hard drive in a laptop, and RAIDZ array with ECC gear. Just because it isn't the ideal doesn't mean it's not a worthwhile improvement.

 

[cyberjock]

That's fine. We can agree to disagree. I'm definitely not alone in the philosophy of how to do FreeNAS the best/right/only/whatever way.

The simple truth is that alot of assumptions are made with ZFS. It was build and designed with the expectation that your data was so valuable you'd pay the price for the appropriate hardware(ECC, server grade, etc.). If you want to ignore the design considerations that the ZFS engineer's had, that's totally your prerogative. But virtually all of the people with a firm understanding of ZFS would dismiss your comments and assume you really don't have a clue regarding the side you are trying to argue.

In fact, let's take 2 examples just to show you something:

Example 1: NTFS on a laptop, non-ECC RAM, runs whatever Windows OS makes you comfortable. The only way you can expect to lose your entire drive's worth of data is if your drive actually fails completely. If your RAM goes bad you'll potentially lose a few files to corruption that have been recently opened. You may have to run a chkdsk on the partition to get it back in good shape. But you'll be able to take that disk and put it in another machine and get most(if not all) of your data back. Even a worst case scenario there's plenty of tools like Ontrack EasyRecovery DIY Software that will work for NTFS and you can expect to have a reasonable chance of getting most(if not all) of your data back. You can also call those data recovery professionals and for 4-figures they might get your data back from a failed disk.

Example 2: ZFS on a laptop, non-ECC RAM, runs FreeNAS. You can lose your pool in multiple ways.
1. If the drive completely dies(obviously).
2. Based on prior uses that have had non-ECC RAM fail you'll reboot to find your pool unmountable. This means your data is gone. There is no data recovery tools out there for ZFS. NONE. It's ALL gone for good.
3. What about the fact that you used those non-server grade parts? Guess what, they can also trash your pool and make it unmountable. The outcome is exactly the same as #2. You just lost all of your data because the pool won't mount.

The problem is that NTFS has tools like chkdsk to help fix file system errors(and might potentially corrupt some files). You also have plenty of options for software recovery with utilities like Ontrack EasyRecovery DIY Software. But, no matter how much searching you do, there is no ZFS recovery tools out there. You are welcome to call companies like Ontrack for data recovery. I know one person that did, and they spent $3k just to find out if their data was recoverable. Then they spent another 15k to get just 200GB of data back.

So tell me which example you'd rather fall into? #1 where you have fewer opportunities to lose everything and have recovery options. Or #2 where you have quite alot more opportunities to lose everything and have zero recovery options to boot? I'd rather be in scenario 1 than scenario 2. I can't imagine you'd want scenario 2 either.

So when I say it's "all or none" I'm not just making this up. I'm really serious as it really does work that way. ZFS either works great or doesn't work at all. That really is how it works. Don't like it, be one of the few that "stick it to the man" with non-recommended components. It's your win(or loss). But you will get absolutely no sympathy when you show up and your pool doesn't mount like many people that think they can build a cheap system and get away with it.

And if you PM me asking to recover your data I'll happily charge you for my time. I'll definitely want payment up-front and I'll definitely make it clear I can't guarantee you'll ever see any of your data again.

Still think your argument is valid? If so, good luck to you. I'll expect to see you as a statistic on this forum.

 

[zella]

Thank you very much for that reply, it was very helpful. I now understand.
I guess I will stick with UFS and hardware for now.
And just to say that yours isn't the only forum where idiots rock up and ask the same question again and again :)
Thanks for the help

 

[cyberjock]

Just as a warning, UFS support is being removed after 9.2.0. So you're going to end up stuck with 9.2.0 forever...

 

[zella]

lol :(
Like I said, I intend on joining the ECC master race as soon as fiscally possible!
Can you recommend any decent and popular parts that would be easy to pick up second hand? Motherboard mostly, as those seem to be the hardest to come by.
Thanks

 

[cyberjock]

Second-hand really depends on what's locally available for you. There's no good worldwide recommendations except to check out stuff locally and try places like ebay or craig's list.