FreeNAS 8 CPU requirements?

[openletter]

I've been using an older version of FreeNAS for years now, but I've been increasing my usage lately and storing some data that I would rather not lose. The RAIDz1 sounds interesting to me, but I was wondering about CPU requirements?

I see quite a few discussions on RAM, but nothing on the CPU. I'm only planning on using five 1 TB drives, so I'm assuming that my old board's max 8 GB of DDR2-800 will be acceptable, but I'm not so sure about my Athlon 64 X2 4200+.

Will this be a sufficient CPU? Are users finding considerable CPU loading on this new build?

 

[survive]

Hi openletter,

I ran FreeNAS 8 on an AMD 4850e (2.5ghz) chip for a while and it worked just fine. I was using 6X1TB 7200rpm drives in Raidz with 8Gb of ram and never had any concerns about running out of CPU. Worst case I would see about 60% utilization.

I'd just give it a try with the current hardware & see what you think. What's the motherboard? Are you planning on just replacing the chip if you need more grunt?

-Will

 

[openletter]

The motherboard is an Asus M3A78-EM. It can handle quite a bit more CPU as it's AM2+, but I'm hoping to just get by with what I've got.

I see a lot people posting about building FreeNAS with latest and greatest CPUs, and it's perplexing, so I wasn't sure if maybe the new build required more processing.

Thanks for the info.

 

[survive]

Hi openletter,

Yeah, it kind of stumps me as well, but then I can't judge because I'm running a quad-core Phenom II. It was either put it in the filer or the XBMC box. Of course it's kind of tough to even buy a slow proc these days!

-Will

 

[louisk]

I think the CPU specs are going to be more about how much you're utilizing your NAS than anything else. For example, if you have 2 SMB clients which read/write <1G/day, I expect you could get by with the slowest 64bit CPU you can purchase. If you're going to have 100 clients read/write >1T/day, you probably want at least 4 cores and 2GHz.