FreeNAS 11-RC dependable?

[phoanglong]

Hi guys,

When it comes to FreeNAS, I am considering myself no better than a first-grader, cause I have been reading, researching a lot of information on setting up, configuring etc... and the more I read, the more I think of myself as a complete newbie. There is just an overwhelming number of issues needed to address, such as hardware and software incompatibilities . So please excuse me with two things, my English (as it is not my first language) and second would be my questions.

I have been running my HomeLab on XPEnology (Synology ported OS) for nearly two years with a minimum hardware (like core i3-3240, 4gb rams etc..), it has been serving me well, but recently it started to go haywire, disk plugged in and out without any external forces, restart 3 - 4 times a day without power lost, etc...

I think it is the time to put an end to my old hardwares. Then I go and do my research, found out about FreeNAS 10 (Corral), so excited that I have been ordering new parts to replace my out of date system. Suddenly FreeNAS 10 is no longer in production and I must say, I really like the new UI and VMs capabilities.

My configuration:
1. MOB: Supermicro X10SAE
2. Chip: Xeon E3-1225 V3
3. Ram: 8GB ECC UDIMM Kingston (will upgrade to 16gb maybe 32gb and eventually replace Kingston brand)
4. HDDs: 5 x 4 TB (2 x Seagate Desktop HDDs, 1 x Seagate Surveillance HDD, 2 x Western Digital RED)
5. SSDs: 2 x Transcend 250 gb (for cached)

What I want to do with my system
1. Streaming movies, music (using Plex), enough for 2 transcoding streams

2. Files & cloud server (currently running Synology Cloud Station but I guess by switching to FreeNAS, I have to ditch it and go for NextCLOUD or OwnCloud)

3. Photo Station (currently running Synology Photo Station, can't seem to find a replacement software) for automatic photos backup from 3 iphones, 2 androids, 1 GoPro, few cams

. 2 x Virtualisation with PCI Pass-through
- First VM will be equipped with either Radeon RX 480 or GTX 1050 for gaming (such as Streetfighter V, PES etc... playing with my Son and my Wife), 4k movies, 5.1 home theatre, etc... in Windows 10 environment.
- Second VM will serves as VOIP server, running Elastix (separated NIC)

So my question really is should I wait for the official stable Release of FreeNAS 11 or the RC is enough for now and upgrading to FreeNAS later on will not effect my current configuration?

Will my system configuration is good enough for what I intended to use?

Thank you so much for all your help.

 

[danb35]

SSDs: 2 x Transcend 250 gb (for cached)

These won't help anything, and will probably hurt performance. Once you're up to 32 GB, you might have some use for L2ARC, but even then it's unlikely.

Virtualisation with PCI Pass-through

Others here will probably know better than I, but I don't think PCI pass-through is supported.

 

[j0hnby]

- First VM will be equipped with either Radeon RX 480 or GTX 1050 for gaming (such as Streetfighter V, PES etc... playing with my Son and my Wife), 4k movies, 5.1 home theatre, etc... in Windows 10 environment.

I don't see how you can make this happen - the VM would possibly only run in a remote session, which would be pants for any decent action (FreeNAS doesn't have a local graphical frontend - unless I am really missing something)

The RC is just a candidate, if you want stable - wait, if you want proper stable, wait more.

 

[phoanglong]

These won't help anything, and will probably hurt performance. Once you're up to 32 GB, you might have some use for L2ARC, but even then it's unlikely.

Thank you for pointing it out, got confuse with unRAID requirements. FreeNAS is storing cached in RAM i guess! (this sound so wrong)

Others here will probably know better than I, but I don't think PCI pass-through is supported.

I don't see how you can make this happen - the VM would possibly only run in a remote session, which would be pants for any decent action (FreeNAS doesn't have a local graphical frontend - unless I am really missing something)

The RC is just a candidate, if you want stable - wait, if you want proper stable, wait more.

If PCI-Passthrough is supported (and after searching, I guess FreeNAS does not support at the moment), it would be quite easy for you to pass graphical to either a monitor or through streaming (something like SteamOS will do).

Something like this has been done on unRAID, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXOaCkbt4lI&t=197s

 

[j0hnby]

If PCI-Passthrough is supported (and after searching, I guess FreeNAS does not support at the moment), it would be quite easy for you to pass graphical to either a monitor or through streaming (something like SteamOS will do).

Of of course! Very cool idea. I forgot the whole point of passthrough for a second then....doh

 

[danb35]

FreeNAS is storing cached in RAM i guess!

Yes, and any other OS will do this as well, at least to a degree. FreeNAS probably does it more than many. You definitely can use an SSD as a cache device, but then some of the RAM that would be used as a data cache now is used to index the SSD cache. Because of that, 32 GB RAM is about the minimum to make good use of an L2ARC device.

 

[melloa]

3. Photo Station (currently running Synology Photo Station, can't seem to find a replacement software) for automatic photos backup from 3 iphones, 2 androids, 1 GoPro, few cams

I did like xpenology concept and UI, but don't like to be attached to any specific "vendor", so try to use whatever is available independently of been attached to any Appliance.

In my case I'm using OwnCloud to automatically upload pictures and videos from my phones and tablets (androids). I do have a hand full of iPads but don't use them, but there is a paid application for OwnCloud on the iTunes store; and created a photo library in Plex to browse them.

Good luck with your researches!

[]'s