Do I need zfs?

[Roy360]

Hello FreeNAS community,

I am looking to move my samba server off my home router and on to a more powerful machine.

I have a HTPC in my house that run 24/7, and would like to give it the job of acting as a server.

Specs:
intel i7 4770k
8GB RAM
3TB storage
1 onboard NIC
120GB ssd for windows
32gb usb key for FreeNAS
3TB for samba
GTX 750Ti for gaming in Windows

My idea is to install ESXi on the machine and then I install windows 7 and FreeNAS as virtual machines.

I plan to setup a raspberry pi with 5TB storage to act as a backup of the samba server in case the drive ever goes down.

Will this setup give me good performance? Do I need zfs or any of the other fancy features for my needs?

Thanks


My other idea is to install debian and install samba server there. I am not sure which gives more performance.

 

[danb35]

If you're using FreeNAS, you'll be using ZFS. And if you care about your data, you should want to use ZFS. Your hardware would be adequate to run FreeNAS, though barely (the 8 GB of RAM is the bare minimum to safely and reliably run the OS, and the lack of ECC support is a negative). If you want to run FreeNAS as a VM on that hardware alongside Windows 7, I wouldn't recommend it.

 

[Roy360]

Please delete this thread.

After doing some additional research, I'm going avoid this whole virtual machine stuff, and install puppy Linux with Zfs.

I'll upgrade my systems memory to 12-16Gb