Hi Everyone

[Inxsible]

I built my system quite a while back reading up on a lot of forum posts and followed a lot of good advice on this fine forum. Thank you all for helping me build my system. I thought I'd join the forum now in case I have questions and issues that will arise as I use my system.

Here's what my system looks like:
Enclosure : Fractal Design Node 304
Board : Tyan S5533GM2NR-LE mini-ITX
CPU : Pentium G3240
RAM: Crucial 2x8GB DDR3 ECC Unbuffered RAM
HDD : 6 TB Seagate Ironwolf mirror 0 + 1TB (Samsung Spinpoint 1TB + WD 1TB )mirror 1
Boot disk : HP 16GB usb drive
PSU: Corsair CSM Series CS450M 80 Plus Gold

Currently I don't have an UPS, but I do intend to add one soon. I also intend to add another USB and make my boot disk mirrored. I am wondering however if it's worth using a 16GB drive since I have only used about 750MB in my current USB drive. I might end up using 2x8GB or 2x4GB drives instead.

 

[Stux]

Interesting server board. Only real flaw is that it only supports 16GB RAM as a maximum.

Yes. 8GB is the min recommended boot disk and 16GB is a good size. Having a few gigs available means that you can store multiple previous installs to allow rollbacks if an upgrade goes wrong

 

[Inxsible]

Interesting server board. Only real flaw is that it only supports 16GB RAM as a maximum.

Yes. 8GB is the min recommended boot disk and 16GB is a good size. Having a few gigs available means that you can store multiple previous installs to allow rollbacks if an upgrade goes wrong

Thanks. from everything I read about FreeNAS before committing to that board, 16GB was considered quite a decent amount of RAM. Why do you consider it to be less? Also the reason I maxed out the RAM on my machine from the get go and not having to worry about finding the right ECC RAM later.

As for multiple previous installs -- I do see the sense in keeping 1 previous install to rollback to in case SHTF, but even then, 750MB x 2 = 1.5GB which would still leave plenty of space on a 4GB usb drive for plugins/jails etc. Is there something that necessitates a 8GB usb drive which is why it's the minimum recommended boot disk size?

 

[Stux]

Thanks. from everything I read about FreeNAS before committing to that board, 16GB was considered quite a decent amount of RAM. Why do you consider it to be less? Also the reason I maxed out the RAM on my machine from the get go and not having to worry about finding the right ECC RAM later.

As for multiple previous installs -- I do see the sense in keeping 1 previous install to rollback to in case SHTF, but even then, 750MB x 2 = 1.5GB which would still leave plenty of space on a 4GB usb drive for plugins/jails etc. Is there something that necessitates a 8GB usb drive which is why it's the minimum recommended boot disk size?

8GB will allow two installs of 4GB each. Which means that the install can grow from its current <1GB if necessary.

So you should be fine with 4GB. Just need to trim a boot environment before doing an update if your boot disk starts getting full.

16GB is a fine amount of ram to run vanilla FreeNAS. It would benefit from more for caching, but it will work fine. And if you want to run iSCSI, L2ARC, plex or other VMs it's getting tight.

People have a habit of finding more uses for their FreeNAS than they initially think, and eventually you run out of RAM for more tasks, generally before you run out of CPU.

When that happens, I guess it will be time for an upgrade.

 

[Inxsible]

8GB will allow two installs of 4GB each. Which means that the install can grow from its current <1GB if necessary.

So you should be fine with 4GB. Just need to trim a boot environment before doing an update if your boot disk starts getting full.

16GB is a fine amount of ram to run vanilla FreeNAS. It would benefit from more for caching, but it will work fine. And if you want to run iSCSI, L2ARC, plex or other VMs it's getting tight.

People have a habit of finding more uses for their FreeNAS than they initially think, and eventually you run out of RAM for more tasks, generally before you run out of CPU.

When that happens, I guess it will be time for an upgrade.

Currently I am running vanilla FreeNAS with PLEX, Transmission and CouchPotato. Although I have disabled the Transmission and CouchPotato plugins because I was seeing loads of 15.xx, 15.xx, 15.xx. But that is for a different thread.

If it comes to the point that 16GB is less, then you are right, I might be shit outta luck and will have to spring for a completely new system.