Dual NICs for Noobs

[Yellowbeard]

UPDATE:

After reading the stickies, I am going to use a Maximus Extreme Z with as much RAM as I can stuff in it. This board has dual Intel NICs (instead of Realtek or Marvell NICs) so back to the original questions;


Is there any advantage using dual NICs vs a single NIC with FreeNAS using the setup below? Or, is the disk thruput going to be the bottleneck meaning dual NICs would not benefit my setup.

Generally, what is the advantage of dual NICs?

Network is all gigabit

Intel 2500K CPU
24GB+ RAM
6 x Hitachi 2GB HDDs in ZFS RAID-Z2
1 SSD caching drive (assuming the secondary Marvell controller sees it and plays nice)
Alternate controller for caching drive(s) could be a Highpoint RocketRaid 2640x4


Please ask if more info is required to answer the question. Also, if there are already guides or threads out there, links are appreciated.

TIA.

 

[Yellowbeard]

Also, if anyone knows of a way to benchmark the drives/array after it's built, please let me know. I'm not immediately aware of benchmarks with network drive support.

 

[cyberjock]

First, this is the how-to section. If you read the header of the http://forums.freenas.org/forums/how-to-guides.13/ it says "How-tos and guides only. If you have a question, you want the Help & Support Forum instead. I'm moving this topic to the noob section.

Second, the FAQ(and I believe some stickies mention it also) provides info on benchmarking your drives and/or arrays after its built.

 

[Yellowbeard]

Thanks for moving the thread, I'm watching your ZIL/L2ARC slideshow now. I'll check the other stickies also.

Do you have an opinion on any of the hardware above?

 

[cyberjock]

My opinion is to get a Supermicro motherboard and matching CPU and go with ECC RAM instead of what you are planning for. The cost is negligible and the potential to save your zpool if your RAM goes bad makes the change to ECC worth it in my opinion. I actually just explained at http://forums.freenas.org/threads/cpu-temperature-monitoring.2592/page-2#post-64451 that so many people think they are better off with the stuff that isn't in the stickied thread titled "So you want some hardware suggestions." that explains how to smartly buy your hardware. That thread is stickied because its right on the money for recommendations. If you follow that sticky you shouldn't spend a boatload of money on the build, your system should be in the top range for power savings, and will work very well with FreeNAS now and in the future. It really is the "idiots" guide. People who just follow that are guaranteed to be happy with their server. Everyone else is hit and miss.

If you read my presentation you'll also notice that I mention that for ZILs and L2ARCs that they are pretty much useless for home users(as is dual NIC but that's not mentioned in my manual). In short, if you want more than Gb speeds, you will need to buy 10Gb stuff(read: EXPENSIVE).

 

[Yellowbeard]

Thanks for the great info on the presentation. I won't mess with ZIL, ARC, etc.

For now, until I can possibly eBay some stuff I'm limited to the MOBO+CPU+RAM choices I have on hand. I've been using FreeNAS for almost 7 years now and I have not had a hardware failure but that's partly because I rotate gear out every 1.5 - 2 years or so. I'll definitely look into the Supermicro suggestion when I have the cash on hand to do it right.

Thanks again!

 

[Yellowbeard]

I just wanted to say thanks again for pointing me in the right direction for the good resources here. I rebuilt my server today using the ASUS Maximum Extreme Z which has Intel NICs onboard. I ended up with only 16GB of RAM but it's good for now. The network performance is phenomenally improved over the old MOBO which had Realtek NICs onboard.

1 more question. Since I do have dual Intel NICs available now on this board, is there any benefit to the average home user? I searched and could not find a thread that directly addresses this.

 

[cyberjock]

Nope. Because of how LACP works, unless you have more than about 10 computers simultaneously connecting and downloading/uploading data to the server, there is no benefit. Depending on your network hardware you may find that trying to use LACP won't work anyway so its not a matter of whether you want to use it or not, your hardware isn't compatible.