Freenas for me? And best configuration.

[rdownes]

I am looking for an expandable storage solution. Truthfully I haven't dealt with putting together hardware in the last 5 years but prior to that use to build all my own computers. So much has changed.

This is my current configuration and what I'm looking to accomplish. I have been taken to the dark side and have two Macs, one iMac and one MB. The iMac is our normal use computer. My wife is getting into photography and we travel a lot so have many many many photos. Also I have a collection of files I need to share with my Samsung TV, I have been looking into building a Raspberry Pi media Center I would like to connect too unless you have better suggestions.

Our internet connection and router is located downstairs with everything on that floor hard wired (TV, Apple TV, etc etc.). I located a switch where the TV is so I only have one cable from the router. However we live in a completely concrete house and our main computer is upstairs so it is currently using wireless through a booster. I may look at running a wired connection but it would likely be 100-150ft of cable as its a concrete house and a rental so can't just drill anywhere. The modem can not be moved as the phone cable comes into one location in the house and it is dead Center in the middle of the house.

So there in lies the problem. I need a solution where my computer storage has decent speed for Photo Editing etc, but also where my TV has decent speed to be able to stream media etc from it. We don't do much Video Editing.

Suggestions or any help would be appreciated.

 

[gpsguy]

Here's a sticky for hardware recommendations: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/

Welcome to the forums!

 

[anodos]

You need a wired connection for your freenas box. This means running cable or putting your freenas box in the living room. You can always design the photography workflow to work around the slow WiFi link. Edit on client then automate copying to a cifs server. SMB2 supports server-side copy within same share. Once it's on the server, organizing photos should be quick (as long as you don't move data between shares). You should try to find a way to increase your signal strength without repeaters... or just suck it up and run cable. :D

 

[cyberjock]

SMB3 supports server-side copy within same share.

FTFY.

 

[anodos]

FTFY.

https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Server-Side_Copy
"Samba 4.1.0 was the first release to ship with support for server-side copy operations via the SMB2 FSCTL_SRV_COPYCHUNK request. "

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/releasenotes/HardwareDrivers/RN-SMB/
SMB2.1 client on OS-X supports Server Side Copy on OSX/Windows SMB servers. It's unclear from documentation whether it is supported on samba servers, but my guess that the OSX SMB2.1 client behaves similar to the unix smbclient and windows SMB clients.

 

[cyberjock]

Umm.. something weird is going on here. Windows 8/Server 2012 use SMB3 and SMB3 has server-side copy. Is that a typo?

server-side copy has long been talked about (even before we had SMB3 support in FreeNAS) and it was *always* a feature waiting on SMB3 for implementation.

This just leaves me with even more questions. Haha.

 

[anodos]

Umm.. something weird is going on here. Windows 8/Server 2012 use SMB3 and SMB3 has server-side copy. Is that a typo?

server-side copy has long been talked about (even before we had SMB3 support in FreeNAS) and it was *always* a feature waiting on SMB3 for implementation.

This just leaves me with even more questions. Haha.

Server side copy is a part of SMB2.1 (I'm not sure about SMB2.02/Vista, but no one actually uses Vista, right?), but Windows explorer in W7 lacks the ability to utilize this part of the spec. Robocopy on W7 can utilize it. OSX and Linux over an SMB2 connection in theory should be able to do it as well. I probably should do a level 10 diagnostic (or whatever samba people call it) to see if it really works that way, but not that much free time.

For reference see here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc246740.aspx.

 

[cyberjock]

Yeah, I kind of pieced together exactly what you said. I'm in the denial phase right now because everything that has ever been said in this forum has been about SMB3 supporting it. So I'm like 'wtf?' right now.

 

[Ericloewe]

Yeah, I kind of pieced together exactly what you said. I'm in the denial phase right now because everything that has ever been said in this forum has been about SMB3 supporting it. So I'm like 'wtf?' right now.

I think Samba 4 was the first to support server-side copy, hence the association with SMB3, even though it was an SMB 2.1 feature.