BUILD First time FreeNAS Build - Advice

[pwnerman]

Good point, also made by pwnerman. My mobo has 8 SATA ports and I'll have 7 drives including the SSD. Although the 6 drives are far more than my current backup gets close to. Like twice as much. Should have some room for a while. But still, does make me wonder if I maybe should go USB. Decisions, decisions! :-D

see what I'm talking about now? You are better off with the usb drives man. save that sata port. "Removed because it was a bad idea."

 

[Ericloewe]

Go out and get a samsung 750 on the cheap and use it as a cache drive with that last sata port you saved.

Woah, slow down there.

L2ARC with 16GB of RAM is almost guaranteed to harm performance. It's still dubious with 32GB and only starts to generally be interesting with 64GB.

 

[pwnerman]

Woah, slow down there.

L2ARC with 16GB of RAM is almost guaranteed to harm performance. It's still dubious with 32GB and only starts to generally be interesting with 64GB.

Sorry forgot about that. I'm not an expert either was just trying to help. save that sata port though for something else.

He could also just go get a Dell R510 in the 12 3.5 in bay config. Then he would have plenty of room for those ssd boot drives haha

 

[Matt Tyree]

Curious...how do you mirror two USB sticks BEFORE FreeNAS is even installed on them??? :-D
@Ericloewe I'm curious what your take is on SSD vs USB. I see you have a 120GB SSD on your main rig. Is that what you suggest?

 

[Ericloewe]

@Ericloewe I'm curious what your take is on SSD vs USB. I see you have a 120GB SSD on your main rig. Is that what you suggest?

My opinion is simple: Spare SATA ports? Use SSD. Using SSD would cost you 100 bucks for an HBA? Use USB flash drives.

Note that there are nuances such as using up the last SATA port, which might be otherwise usable for resilvers and stuff. You'll have to decide for yourself if using up the last SATA port is worth it.

In my case, even with the SSD for boot, I have a spare port, which I can use for resilvers, so it was a simple decision.

 

[Matt Tyree]

In my case, even with the SSD for boot, I have a spare port, which I can use for resilvers, so it was a simple decision.

I see that you and I are using the same mobo and similar drive config. I've already ordered the SSD and it's on the way, so I might as well use it. Like you, I'll have one port left.

Thanks, guys!

 

[Stux]

Curious...how do you mirror two USB sticks BEFORE FreeNAS is even installed on them???

Well, you can select two drives to install onto and it will set them up as mirrors.

You can also do it after installation on a running system after the fact