First time running freenas

[justusiv]

Just found out about freenas and am excited to do a build.
If i am going to do a 4X2TB for typical home use would an SSD cache be advisable?

 

[ben]

ZIL (write cache) only really helps with synchronous writes (NFS, iSCSI under some circumstances.) L2ARC (read cache) can help for all reads, particularly random, but your money is probably better spent on more RAM. 4GB absolute barest minimum, 8GB recommended, 16GB ideal. If you're never streaming more than one video at a time, your ARC (RAM cache) will never overfill anyway (with 16GB) so a read cache would be useless. On top of that, you might be limited instead by network or CPU power, depending on your build. I suggest posting more details of your build and your use situation.

 

[justusiv]

Thx for the info.


Follow up question
I have a perc 5i and am wondering if this information is still relevant.
http://tech.mikeal.com/blog1.php/freenas-8-troubleshooting-dell-perc5
Looks easy enough but i am a windows guy so it looks slightly foreign

 

[pirateghost]

my perc 6's work without any of that

 

[JaimieV]

Remember not to use the RAID functions of the Perc controller if you want the best from your ZFS. Read cyberjock's stickied presentation at the top of the Noobs forum (and the manual!) for details.

8gig RAM will be fine for a domestic one-user FreeNAS with that setup. You should get faster than GigE speeds out of the disks in a RAIDZ without any trouble.