How much memory

[pookieman]

Hi

I've looking into building a new NAS, my current readnas 1.5tb is full after 10 years, still going strong though. But for the future I have bigger plans, so the use case(s) are as follows:

Shared File server (data/media)
Host OpenHab/Hass.io in VM (ubuntu)
Host Zone Minder in VM (ubuntu)
Host Raspberry Pi server VM for various satellite Pi’s which can boot off this instead of having SD cards everywhere (raspbian)
Host Plex in VM (ubuntu)
Host DLNA in case I want to use that (ubuntu)
Any other service that needs to be running 24 x 7

I was thinking originally to have 32mb ECC, the array will probably be 6 x 4tb (to begin with). I know more memory is generally considered better. So am I being unrealistic to have all these VMs running as still have decent performance? The VMs won't be super busy but they need to function. Maybe better to get 2 x 16gb instead of 4 x 8gb and then I can buy more if I need it.

This is a long term investment - can't believe my readynas is used everyday is rock solid, 700mhz RISC processor with 1gb of mem.. of course it's not doing a lot apart from files/rsync

Thanks for any advice

 

[Chris Moore]

Host OpenHab/Hass.io in VM (ubuntu)
Host Zone Minder in VM (ubuntu)
Host Raspberry Pi server VM for various satellite Pi’s which can boot off this instead of having SD cards everywhere (raspbian)
Host Plex in VM (ubuntu)
Host DLNA in case I want to use that (ubuntu)
Any other service that needs to be running 24 x 7

Sounds like you need to learn about the features of FreeNAS because you shouldn't want to do that much full system virtualization with FreeNAS.

I was thinking originally to have 32mb ECC,

You will need a lot more than that if you want to do all that virtualization on FreeNAS.

I know more memory is generally considered better.

Because ZFS uses RAM for the basic function of the file system. The MINIMUM requirement is 8 GB for FreeNAS with a bout 1 GB more per TB of storage. Add to that more memory for each virtual machine.

So am I being unrealistic to have all these VMs running as still have decent performance?

Yes.

The VMs won't be super busy but they need to function. Maybe better to get 2 x 16gb instead of 4 x 8gb and then I can buy more if I need it.

No, you will probably need to start with 64 GB and leave room to expand to 128 GB.

can't believe my readynas is used everyday is rock solid, 700mhz RISC processor with 1gb of mem.. of course it's not doing a lot apart from files/rsync

There is NO comparison between FreeNAS (based on Unix) and the operating system of a ReadyNAS which is based on a customized version of Linux that does not use ZFS and ZFS is one of the biggest reasons to use FreeNAS.

 

[Jailer]

16x2 GB would be a good place to start, you can always add more later. Also you should research what services you can get away running in jails as opposed to a full VM (Plex, DLNA) so as not to tie up unnecessary resources from the host system.

 

[pookieman]

Sounds like you need to learn about the features of FreeNAS because you shouldn't want to do that much full system virtualization with FreeNAS.

Thanks for your comments, admittedly my knowledge of FreeNAS features are mostly based on blog reading and youtube videos. But my understanding was that (VMs/Jails) are a feature that should suit my use cases. Is there a specific place you suggest I can get a better understanding? No point in picking the wrong solution for my VM needs. It seems to me as I need somewhere to host these services as well as replacing my current ReadyNAS - FreeNAS is a good all in one solution.

There is NO comparison between FreeNAS (based on Unix) and the operating system of a ReadyNAS which is based on a customized version of Linux that does not use ZFS and ZFS is one of the biggest reasons to use FreeNAS.

Agreed it was just a comment.

 

[pookieman]

16x2 GB would be a good place to start, you can always add more later. Also you should research what services you can get away running in jails as opposed to a full VM (Plex, DLNA) so as not to tie up unnecessary resources from the host system.

Thanks this is useful. I appreciate that Jails are leaner versions of a full VM. Do you know of a guide for discovering the services that can run in a Jail vs a full VM?

Wondering if there is way that I can tinker with FreeNAS in a sandbox environment.. guessing running it VirtualBox is a no starter :p

 

[Chris Moore]

guessing running it VirtualBox is a no starter

No, you can run it in a VM, just don't plan to do that in production. Here are some links to threads where others have done it:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/freenas-virtualbox.46693/

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/share-directory-in-virtualbox-freenas.69134/

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...s-on-virtualbox-problem-with-disk-size.43551/

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...reenas-in-virtualbox-for-test-practice.40408/

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...11-in-vmware-player-nic-unconfigurable.60059/

So, have fun and learn lots. Also, read as many as possible of the links in my signature because there is a great deal of good info there, which is why I saved the links to begin with.

 

[pookieman]

No, you can run it in a VM, just don't plan to do that in production

Great! So had a fun hour or so .. configuring a Virtual Box FreeNAS installation on my Kbuntu host.. Install was easy. I create a couple of virtual disks set them up in a ZFS Pool (RAID configuration) ;).. then started playing with the installation.. Tried to create a Ubuntu VM in my FreeNAS VM

Was going pretty well until Virtual Box is complaining that I don't have Virtualisation support enabled .. this was starting to feel like Inception.. :p

Wonder if there is a way to get Virtual Box to spoof this somehow.. getting late here, might save this for another day. But so far so good.. the interface is pretty snazzy. I'm now thinking that perhaps I can do all the things with Jails alone without virtual box. I think OpenHab needs java as if I can install that in a jail and it can have it's own IP address that should be enough.