Freenas for one user and disk

[nojones]

Hello :)

I'm quite experienced pc-builder with no experience in servers or linux. Now I have some spare stuff to use on a project :

Hidable case with external PSU and room for one 3.5"
D510MO + 2GB RAM
1.5TB disk
2 x DGE528T Gbit LAN cards
wireless N card for desktop

What I would like the thing to do :

Primarily torrent + backup. Webinterface would be practical.
Playing 720p movies and browsing internet. Getting of this chair in front of the screen would be a plus.
Webserver would be plus in the future. Will the presented HW be enough?

Actually I would like to sell that 1.5 and buy a 3TB instead. Run OS from thumbdrive and use 3TB for data?
What would be the fastest physical data-transfer solution between server and workstation? I have a TG789N wireless N router + loads of cables.
Speed really is no dealbreaker. Idea of using this server as an extra "sampledisk" just fascinates old builder. Beats that noisy external disk as an temp solution :o

So. Does that hardware and my expectations meet with FreeNAS 8? If not. Where should I look?

Thanks for reading

 

[ben]

You will be able to do some of what you want, barely, and not all at once.

First of all, you don't browse the internet on FreeNAS - FreeNAS' only user interfaces are the shell and the configuration web UI, it doesn't have a desktop.

2GB of RAM is at the lowest end for a stable FreeNAS installation. You will absolutely want to use UFS as your filesystem.

A single disk can't even come close to saturating gigabit ethernet. Additionally, trying to do that many things with one disk at once will probably cause disk contention - you may not even be able to maintain the speed to stream media. "Fastest physical data transfer solution" is irrelevant if you have a setup like that - it won't be fast, the disk would limit you. That will be true no matter what you use to manage it.

A "backup" on a single disk is no backup at all - if you're willing to shell out to upgrade the one disk, just buy two matching disks instead so at least you can have RAID 1 protection, it's better than nothing.

 

[nojones]

TY Ben for swift answer :)

Workstation is just cable away from flatscreen so browsing or mediaplayer at service should I have desktop powered. This low power solution could have saved maybe 2 to 3 hours uptime worth per day. That is not plus enough to shell out money at this point. I did not mention stream media or such if it means decoding media at the server end. If windows can see the server as a drive and I can play the file with client it is enough streaming for me. Also somekind of mediaplayer plugin and the server connected to flatscreen could work? I understand that with the resources at playing 720p video probably means something else has to be put out of service. Maybe I did not was clear enough that this server would have only one client. Previous also means that I do not have need for several copies of my files. Disk space is expensive in money and heat production. One copy of my files on the server is enough. I tell some more of my situation so You understand. I have a DAW. At times it is requirered to load whole lotta small files at the same time my disk configuration looks like this :

SSD - OS and software
HDD1 - samples on fast outer part / data1 on slower inner part.
HDD2 - samples on fast outer part / data1 BU on slower inner part.
HDD3 - samples on fast outer part / data2 on slower inner part.
HDD4 - samples on fast outer part / data2 BU on slower inner part.

When in DAW use I turn bittorrent client off. I would like to keep it on. Why not 24/7 with this solution. Plus whole lotta more data storage.

I asked about "Fastest physical data transfer solution" because last time (couple of years ago) I read about people getting ridiculous low transfer speeds (it was more like one tenth not half of the disk performance) over gigabit connection. Must've been something else. Now I can sell networking hardware and put the money in the disk upgrade? WD Red 3TB has some price premium but it had nice review on SPCR. The tiny enclosure is not really sound proof. HDD presents very low seek times to put in server tho. I still do not know will software or hardware accept this or any 3TB disk.

2GB of RAM is the lowest end? Do I really need more for software? Most of that must go to disk caching and such RAM hogs? This would be a one disk solution.

Put it short the minimum I expect is 24/7 bittorrent client and backup with one client. Access to (media)files.

 

[ben]

If all you want to do is play a file over CIFS, that's probably fine. However, plugins such as bittorrent have a bit more overhead (both in system memory and disk activity) than you might expect, due to the sandboxing FreeNAS employs. I'd imagine with a single disk and 2GB of RAM, you'd be best off treating "stream over the network" and "bitorrent" as mutually exclusive (and by that I mean turn the plugins service off entirely when you want to stream). Obviously backup will also be slow unless you turn off bittorrent. Trying to do too many things at once could absolutely lead to very low performance - I emphasize that the bandwidth of a single disk in ideal conditions is insufficient to saturate gigabit.

And I say again, use UFS - with a single disk and limited RAM, ZFS will do more harm than good.

 

[nojones]

I do not understand this UFS vs ZFS thing. Is it related to 3TB drives?

That sandboxing (= virtual machine for each plugin?) sounds heavy on HW. I understand it is good for the reliability of server having "extra" software sandboxed and crashed there. Still. It will load whole system and once more over data disk that has been the bottleneck here. For example. With resources at hand XP or W7 would run no probs. I suspect that the services I am after have been provided with less resources. According to (really superficial 2min) googling 2 core ULV is no slouch compared to Pentium IIIs or 4s espec multithreaded. WD red is semi-industrial series. FreeNAS would run from flash memory.

What about WHS? Would it be lighter on resources than FreeNAS? Some other software that has or has not been designed for server purposes? Is there a lighter solution out there considering my needs compared to FreeNAS? I will manage with less reliable server if reliability means zeroed functionality with the resources at hand :)

 

[ben]

ZFS has significant system memory overhead. FreeNAS uses a single jail for all plugins, not one for each, but with already limited resources that might make a difference. FreeNAS can do each of the things you described, but doing them from a single disk, at the same time, over the network is asking too much, and I suspect that would be true of any system you go with.

 

[nojones]

OK. I'll have it a go. One more thing I need to know before proceeding on this project : Will the system support the coming 3TB drive? I'll test the thing 1st or second week of Septemper if upgrade to 3TB is possible. Rapport here offcourse :p

 

[nojones]

One more thing. I've got OCZ Rally2 and ST Pico thumbdrives here. Choose whether or not in between these?

 

[ben]

3TB drives should be supported just fine. For USB, go with something reliable, cheap, and secure (ie unlikely to fall/be knocked out of position).