Help out a FreeNAS 8 newbie

[k3nnis]

Hi All,

I plan to install FreeNAS 8 on vmware esxi.

I will use the share for sharing movies, music etc

I suppose I will have a SMB share so that my WDTV/Windows PC's can pick up the folders/files.

I currently have a HP n40L server with 8GB RAM. But I have windows server 2008 r2 + exchange 2010 running with 4GB assigned to it and a win 7 pro 64 bit with 2 gb assigned to it. i.e I have 2 GB left. Is this enough for freeNAS 8? If not I can reduce the RAM on the exchange server to 2GB. So I can assign 4GB RAM for freeNAS 8.

I have the standard 250GB SATA drive that came with the HP but freeNAS 8 I believe doesn't recognise it. I have since purchased a seagate 2TB which I will use it for data storage.

Later down the track I will probably purchase another 2TB. Same hard drive. My data is not important to me so I don't need to run raid if not necessary.

My question is: should I run UFS or ZFS? Also is it possible to run on a single 2TB HD now and later add an identical 2TB drive and expand the volume to 4TB?
My aim is to maximise storage while having performance.

Cheers,
K.

 

[StephenFry]

Your questions have been answered repeatedly on this forum and are in all FreeNAS/ZFS FAQs.

I recommend you read up on the subject a little bit and if you have any questions remaining, come back and ask for advice.