First FreeNAS Home Server

[unplugme71]

I'm looking to build a FreeNAS Home Server like most of us here. However, speed is definitely important for data transfers as I plan to have 2-3 devices streaming content at any given time with other computers accessing documents, photos, etc. I have two Apple TV's, iPhone, iPad, 2 Mac's, and 2 PC's. I would like to use AFP and SMB. I believe AFP is a better protocol for Mac's in terms of speed, but I could be wrong.

Here's the build I plan to do:

Intel Core i3-3220 (3.3GHz)
ASUS P8Z77-M PRO
2 x 4GB DDR3 Memory
1 x 128GB SSD (OS) - already have this SSD
8 x 3TB WD Red (Data)
430W EarthWatts PSU (is this enough for 8 drives?)

1) Should I create two Vdevs of 4 x 3TB in a Z2 config? Or just leave it as 1 Vdev?
2) Would 8GB Memory be sufficient? Would upgrading to 16GB actually gain any performance?
3) The motherboard doesn't support 9 SATA drives. Which add-on cards do you recommend?
4) Does this Intel NIC work with FreeNAS (Intel EXPI9402PT PRO/1000 PT Dual Port Server Adapter) ? Can it be teamed in FreeNAS? Can I use the onboard strictly for management login?

Thanks for your help!

 

[travalon]

Put the os on a thumb drive. If you put it on the ssd it will use up the entire drive. Waste of space. Os only needs a couple of gigs.

 

[cyberjock]

I'd get more RAM. I have only slightly more disk space than you and I was forced to upgrade to 20GB just to be able to stream a single video while doing anything else on the server....including just looking for a file in a directory!

You 'should' have 6GB + 1GB for each TB of disk space. From my experience it seems that for home use you can usually get by if you just max it out at 16GB. In my case I had 12GB and the smart choice was to get an 8GB stick.

 

[sqwob]

I have only slightly more disk space than you and I was forced to upgrade to 20GB just to be able to stream a single video while doing anything else on the server....including just looking for a file in a directory!

You seriously need 20gb of ram to stream 1 videostream & have concurrent activity on the NAS? What bitrate movies are you talking about? blu-ray raw video + DTS sound ?

This comes somewhat as a shocker to me that a machine with those specs (they are high enough for a domestic NAS) isn't capable of delivering that...

 

[cyberjock]

You seriously need 20gb of ram to stream 1 videostream & have concurrent activity on the NAS? What bitrate movies are you talking about? blu-ray raw video + DTS sound ?

This comes somewhat as a shocker to me that a machine with those specs (they are high enough for a domestic NAS) isn't capable of delivering that...

ZFS relies heavily on read and write cache to provide good performance. If your cache is having a high turnover your performance will tank.. badly. The biggest mistake noobies to FreeNAS make is not having enough RAM. This happens so frequently I don't even respond to threads where people are so ignorant they complain about poor performance and don't have at least 8GB of RAM. I know I'm not alone in ignoring people, but the manual gives its thumbrule and I meantion it in the noobie guide no less than 2 times because its so frequent its pathetic. The first 6GB is just to run FreeNAS. Everything after that pretty much becomes "everything else"... zfs cache, jail, etc. 2GB is not much when you have lots of directories, metadata, etc.

So yeah, need LOTS of RAM. ZFS was designed to provide great performance by maximizing RAM. Give it RAM or suffer the wrath of poor performance, perhaps unusable performance. In my case just trying to navigate directories would cause a SD streaming video to pause for 5-10 seconds despite having a 6 second buffer. I couldn't believe it until I saw what the additional RAM did to my performance.

Read section 1.4.2 of the manual....

 

[sqwob]

guess i'll be ordering another 8gb so i have at least 16 ;)