General Questions, new to this

[Kortex]

Hello. I've been looking to build a NAS for quite a while. I came across FreeNAS and I've been reading quite a bit about the hardware requirements. I'm not really sure if FreeNAS is right for me, so I'll try to summarize what I want. I want a place to store all documents, music, movies and pictures.

What I want:
4-6TB Redundant "fail-safe" storage
Plex Server
bit torrent client
1-3 users

What I will spend:
~$1000 (4x3TB HGST drives, motherboard, case, psu, ram, other hardware)

Tech Level:
I've used windows, mac, linux and worked in IT support. I consider myself fairly tech savvy.

Do you guys think FreeNAS is right for me? Which type of ZFS should I select? Other thoughts? I have done some reading, but some things I read I don't understand...so I just wanted to ask. Thank you!

 

[Ericloewe]

Sounds like you'd do well with FreeNAS.

To learn what you need to know about ZFS, read Cyberjock's guide (link is in my sig).

If you post your prospective hardware selection, we can nudge you in the right direction, if needed.
You've probably noticed that builds don't typically stray much from two or three basic configurations - those are the ones we're familiar with in the forums and people are generally satisfied with them.

 

[BigDave]

Reading your very brief description of needs, I can say that FreeNas will fill your wants.
Use the search feature in the forums (most noobie questions have been covered before)
and we can help you get a grasp on the unfamiliar.

 

[joeschmuck]

When you are looking for a NAS solution and doing a cost comparison, take the hard drives out of the equation because if you are building the same capacity with proper redundancy then the cost would null out. Look at features and bandwidth and you will see FreeNAS is hands down a better bargain for your money. The down side is it's not just plug and play, you do need to learn a little bit to get it up and running and then when a hard drive fails.

You have me slightly confused though, you listed 4-6TB hard drives, is that four 6TB drives? If so it conflicts with what you are willing to purchase. Use the RAIDZ calculator in my signature and select RAIDZ2 (for redundancy) and select the number of drives and drive sizes you want to figure out your usable storage.

I recommend 16GB RAM, you would never need more based on your requirements. Buy a good MB with IPMI support, it will be a blessing. Look at many of the recent builds and come up with a listing of requirements you need, this will really help out.

 

[gpsguy]

I *think* the OP was looking for 4 to 6GB of storage and thinking of using 4x3TB HGST drives.

you listed 4-6TB hard drives, is that four 6TB drives?

 

[Kortex]

When you are looking for a NAS solution and doing a cost comparison, take the hard drives out of the equation because if you are building the same capacity with proper redundancy then the cost would null out. Look at features and bandwidth and you will see FreeNAS is hands down a better bargain for your money. The down side is it's not just plug and play, you do need to learn a little bit to get it up and running and then when a hard drive fails.

You have me slightly confused though, you listed 4-6TB hard drives, is that four 6TB drives? If so it conflicts with what you are willing to purchase. Use the RAIDZ calculator in my signature and select RAIDZ2 (for redundancy) and select the number of drives and drive sizes you want to figure out your usable storage.

I recommend 16GB RAM, you would never need more based on your requirements. Buy a good MB with IPMI support, it will be a blessing. Look at many of the recent builds and come up with a listing of requirements you need, this will really help out.

Thank you for the calculator. Purchasing 4x3TB drives would net me 5.5TB usable storage using RAIDZ2. Thank you for the other advice as well!

Sounds like you'd do well with FreeNAS.

To learn what you need to know about ZFS, read Cyberjock's guide (link is in my sig).

If you post your prospective hardware selection, we can nudge you in the right direction, if needed.
You've probably noticed that builds don't typically stray much from two or three basic configurations - those are the ones we're familiar with in the forums and people are generally satisfied with them.

I tried to read that guide. That's a lot of information. Maybe freeNAS isn't right for me. I do enjoy getting very technical but my time is rather limited. I don't know if I can dedicate the time to this if it's that complicated :(.

Reading your very brief description of needs, I can say that FreeNas will fill your wants.
Use the search feature in the forums (most noobie questions have been covered before)
and we can help you get a grasp on the unfamiliar.

Thanks

I *think* the OP was looking for 4 to 6GB of storage and thinking of using 4x3TB HGST drives.

Correct


Guys thanks so much. Work got in the way so I was away for a few days. I'm not sure if this is right for me--it seems complicated. Unfortunately, all of my data is stored over 7 or 8 drives with zero redundancy, so I'm ripe for failure. I don't want to purchase a pre-built solution, because it will probably suck, but this seems so complicated. Maybe I'll review the presentation again tomorrow. Thanks!!

 

[cyberjock]

I tried to read that guide. That's a lot of information. Maybe freeNAS isn't right for me. I do enjoy getting very technical but my time is rather limited. I don't know if I can dedicate the time to this if it's that complicated :(.

That guide is only the tip of the iceberg too.

This is a new OS so you have to learn it unfortunately. There are plenty of ways to lose your data suddenly and unrecoverably if you don't know what you are doing. Often you won't know what you screwed up until it is too late and the data is unrecoverable. We see it here in the forums regularly too. That's why I said what I said in slide If time is at a premium, you are probably better off with a different product (or buying a system directly from iXsystems and let them provide the support for you).

 

[joeschmuck]

To be fair, if you are creating a simple NAS which is what it looks like you want, and you are adding a few simple plugins, FreeNAS is actually simple to run and maintain. First of all you need to setup email notifications so you will know when something goes wrong (unless it's a catastrophic failure of the system) such as a hard drive failure. If you use RAIDZ2 then you have a safety net against two drive failures which is better than most home NAS solutions. I think the real trick is to treat it as a NAS and not a FreeBSD OS. I say that because if you go into it only doing specific things to it and you are not trying to be a power user, things will be easier to fix. Your data will be at the same risk using a pre-built NAS or using FreeNAS, meaning hardware may fail, drives will fail. You just need to understand what to do if/when a failure occurs. If you stick with one version of FreeNAS and only upgrade when there is a feature that benefits you becomes available, then you run into less issues by far. I think most of our seen problems occur after an upgrade or just because someone is goofing around with the system. And ensure you have a good UPS which is no different from a normal NAS system.

Keep anything valuable backed up on separate media, I prefer DVD-R media to save off my family photos and financial data. My backups of my computers or any movies I may have, well if those go away because of some terrible thing, I can easily live without them. This is the same thing you should do with any NAS.

If you are unable to build a PC from the ground up then maybe this project isn't for you but if you can, there are many easy steps to purchasing the required hardware. The big thing is to know what your requirements are and fully understand that you cannot easily just add a new hard drive to expand your storage capacity of a previously existing pool.

Last note... If you want to treat FreeNAS as just a NAS and you have no plans to become a power user, which is fine, then maybe you should create a simple instruction guide like the one I attached here. This is for FreeNAS 9.2 version and I have not verified if it is 100% true for 9.3 but I did create this for myself. I have this printed out and placed inside one of those plastic document page covers and taped to the outside of my FreeNAS machine. What this does is gives me immediate access to instructions to replace my hard drives when they fail, and they will eventually start to fail. I don't want to look up the instructions to do this, I want them handy. I will update this for FreeNAS 9.3 for my own use. You could make something similar. And you are better off just reading the entire user manual at least one time.

 

[DifferentStrokes]

I tried to read that guide. That's a lot of information. Maybe freeNAS isn't right for me. I do enjoy getting very technical but my time is rather limited. I don't know if I can dedicate the time to this if it's that complicated :(.

Don't let that keep you from using FreeNAS if that is what you really want. I do electrial work for a living. I don't even touch computers at work. More like pliers and screwdrivers. I'm sure if I can do it you can too. You can always threw it in a VM right quick and test drive it first.

 

[danb35]

The big thing is to know what your requirements are and fully understand that you cannot easily just add a new hard drive to expand your storage capacity of a previously existing pool.

Quoted for emphasis. Actually, you can easily add a new drive, you just can't easily and safely add a new drive.

 

[joeschmuck]

Quoted for emphasis. Actually, you can easily add a new drive, you just can't easily and safely add a new drive.

Well I got a laugh out of that one because it is so true. You can definitely add a drive that you should not be allowed to do. Has that ever been fixed to give a stern warning before making such a stupid move? I know many of us proposed it as a change last year.

 

[danb35]

A stern warning has been there since at least the early days of 9.2, and you have to switch to manual mode in the Volume Manager to bypass it. Despite that, people still somehow manage to stripe a single disk into their pools, thinking they're replacing a failed disk.

 

[Ericloewe]

A stern warning has been there since at least the early days of 9.2, and you have to switch to manual mode in the Volume Manager to bypass it. Despite that, people still somehow manage to stripe a single disk into their pools, thinking they're replacing a failed disk.

The worst part is when they claim they got no warning.

 

[danb35]

I do think there's room for improvement in the UI here, though. I don't know how, but this seems to happen often enough to suggest that things aren't quite as intuitive as they could be (cue @cyberjock: "It's in the manual, and there's a warning, what more could they want?"). Admittedly, I haven't seen a thread recently where this has happened (though there was one in the last few days that I thought was headed in that direction), but for a while it seemed like we were seeing one every week or so.