Hardware upgrade and Migration from latest NAS4free to Freens 8.3.1 in one go

[mnemonic]

To the Freenas Hardware Experts,

I'm trying to upgrade the Hardware my NAS and going "back" to Freenas 8.3.1 in one go. Some years ago I build a NAS using Freenas 7 using ZFS+GELI. But then Freenas developers set other priorities when developing Freenas 8 so I had to move to NAS4free.

Now I've seen that *finally* they reintegrated GELI encryption that could be used "below" the ZFS. This allowed me for the first time to try Freenas 8. Additionally to that fact I wanted to upgrade the hardware of my NAS since it is a system without AES-NI . Mainboard is Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 with an AMD Athlon 245e. Now I want to use a Gigabyte GA-F2A85X-UP4 with an AMD A10-5700. System currently has 8GB RAM. RAID-Z1 with 3x3TB WD "Greenline" 4k sectors + one spare hd + 64GB SSD cache. An Intel server network card is in use. System is booted from an 8GB USB stick.

The system is doing o.k. though I which I had the "Redline" of the WD HDs, but they were not available when I bought them. But I plan to upgrade to them sometime later. I'll use the greenline then only for backup purposes. One hardwarequestion ahead of that: I'm planing to buy an addional SATA-Controller. At least for the dvd-rom and for the SSD-Cache. I'm looking into a device with a Marvell 88SE9130 chipset but it seems most likely unsupported. Can anyone recommend a SATA-3-Controller that is cheap, stable, supported by FreeBSD and is available in europe? Seems like mission impossible.

Well what I would like to know: The AMD board with the A85X chipset is brand new. Does anyone know if I will run into problems? I need SATA and AES-NI on the CPU working. The chipset is able to boot from an USB3 port. I know that works with Win8 but will that work with good old FreeBSD?

Additionally some software questions: Is GELI+ZFS on Freenas 8.3.1 stable enough to be used "in production"? Then I'm not sure about swap partitions. Currently I'm using nowhere any swap. Not on the usb, not on the ZFS. Do I need it on Freenas? I heard Freenas forces the use of swap partions when setting up a ZFS Pool. Is that right? But why?

Best regards,
mnemonic

 

[joeschmuck]

Is AMD A85X chipset a problem for FreeNAS? A: You apparently have not searched this forum for "A85X" so I'll stop here and you can do some of your own leg work. I'm sure if you wanted to, you could answer all your questions with simple searches in this forum because I know all the info is there.

 

[mnemonic]

Yeah, you got me, I forgot to search. I did that now and it seems A85X is seems to be working even with USB3 when xhci is enabled. On the other questions I didn't get so clear results. Well, if no one is willing to tell me I'll test it out myself. If it doesn't work out I'll stay on NAS4free and migrate at a later date.

Best regards,
mnemonic

 

[joeschmuck]

I'm sure it will work fine based on what I've read to date on the FreeNAS 8.3.1 system. The only real advice I'd give is to buy lots of RAM, 16GB at least. And read this thread about performance benchmarks for AES http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?12157-Encryption-performance-benchmarks

-Mark

 

[mnemonic]

Thanks Mark,

that advice helps. That was one of the points I was unsure of. Currently I got Kingston ValueRAM 4x2GB 9-9-9-24 1333. I would replace two of them with 8GB, same Speed and Timing. So then I'll have 20GB in total. It'll cost me 100€ but if you think it's worth it I'll invest that. Would you recommend me to get higher speed RAM like 1600Mhz? Price is not much higher but first I'm not sure if there is any relevant performance gain and second I would get mixed timing 2x1333 and 2x1600. I'm not sure if that is a good idea.

Freenas is currently based on Freebsd 8.3. Nas4free runs on 9.1. Freenas looks more so sophisticated but since the OS is older I'm not sure if it's a step forward.

I'll do the upgrade next weekend. I hope until then there is fixed version for the serial number bug out.

Best regards,
mnemonic

 

[ProtoSD]

FreeNAS based on FreeBSD 9.1 is expected sometime around June. We'll probably see some betas coming out in a few more weeks if there aren't any other problems with 8.31.

 

[joeschmuck]

I know the pains of replacing all your RAM but I cannot recommend the 1600 over 1333 from a performance perspective in your situation unless the price just isn't a determining factor. My personal opinion is, if you think you will use this computer elsewhere and the price for faster RAM in small, I would buy the 1600 RAM just for future use, but it's all about the cost. One thing to note, hopefully you will remember it, if you have 16GB of RAM or more, turn on the Autotune option in the advanced settings. This will speed up your throughput considerably.

Good Luck

 

[mnemonic]

I have ordered 2x KVR1333D3N9H/8G. Then I'll have 20GB in the NAS. The old 2x2GB Ram will be reused in my htpc. I'll activate autotune.

Thanks for the advice,
mnemonic