First build - HP gen8

[greensf]

Hello,

I'm new to FreeNAS, so I spent last weeks reading documentation, forum posts and playing with FreeNAS in a VM. I feel like I'm starting to understand FreeNAS and also ZFS.
I'm building this mainly to store media collection, systems backup with borg and some qcow2 images. I think everything will be accessed via NFS. I may run a few jails but no VM.

About the build, it's an HP Proliant Microserver Gen8 with :

• Intel Celeron G1610T - 2.3 GHz - 2-core
• 8GB ECC UDIMM DDR3 (not HP SmartMemory)
• RAIDZ: 4x 2TB WD RED NAS
• BOOT: 120G Crucial SSD (or 2x USB if I can't boot from SSD)
• APC Back-UPS BX700UI (haven't bought yet, not sure about it)

I know 8GB of RAM is not ideal but I already had those around. If it's not enough I can make it 16GB in a few months.

About the storage controller (HP Dynamic Smart Array B120i), I did

• enable SATA AHCI Support in Embedded SATA Configuration
  
• disable Drive Write Cache

Is this enough ? How can I make sure it is properly configured for FreeNAS ?

I'm looking for any advice or suggestion about this build and the HP microserver itself.

Also thanks for all the resources and guides available around, it really does help.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Hello and welcome.

For the B120i controller, it's essentially an Intel SATA controller rebranded to HP - you shouldn't need to do anything beyond the AHCI change. For the write cache though you should be able to Enable it, since ZFS will control the drive cache flushing, and you'll have a UPS as well.

For the qcow2 images accessed over NFS, it might depend on your VM host's mount options but you may need an SLOG device to ensure that writes inside your VMs are both fast and safe - otherwise you may have to pick one based on your tolerance for data loss.

16GB of RAM is definitely going to be a necessity for good VM performance as well as jails. FreeNAS has a bit more overhead than a hand-rolled ZFS config so the 8GB really is a "bare minimum" amount.

The HP Microservers are fairly popular for their small size and low power consumption, so you should be about to find a couple other members to chip in helpful comments as well.

 

[greensf]

Thanks for your answer, HoneyBadger.

I didn't know I should enable write cache, will do.

I just read a bit about SLOG, it's interesting, thanks for pointing it out. I'll make sure to dig in the day I store qcow2 on FreeNAS.
For now, I will leave those qcow2 images on the KVM host until I get money for more RAM, and why not an SLOG device.

Thank you.