Hello FreeNAS community!
A brief preface if you don't mind:
I am currently using a Linksys E3000 router(tomato firmware) with a 2TB USB hard disk connected to it to serve my family's media streaming needs. We MOSTLY just stream our shows and movies from this hard disk to our family television via an AppleTV2. Occasionally we use laptops from the bedroom or something. Anyhow... I noticed that the max throughput I was able to achieve between this hard disk and our main desktop machine (Gb nic) was 3 MB/s. This is entirely what prompted me to make a standalone NAS box. I no longer want to rely on a router with underpowered hardware to manage our media drive not to mention there is no room for expansion. Moving along, I acquired a Dimension 2400 (P4 model) and began to research two management ideas which seemed to be popular. 1) FreeNAS and 2) Ubuntu server. I had even considered Debian server but mostly just the two aforementioned. Despite the fact that I know ZERO about FreeBSD, I opted to go with FreeNAS because it just seemed like the faster, simpler, mostly turn-key solution. Preface complete.
I have completely gutted this Dimension machine of all drives as I do not need any of them. My idea was to run FreeNAS straight from a 2GB usb stick. So, I pulled out my trusty Mac and flashed the USB stick with the FreeNAS image. I noticed a couple of things as FreeNAS was booting into its server. One thing was something about ZFS file system and a potential issue with kmem or my system memory or something. Although I'd like to ultimately resolve that issue --whatever the issue is-- this post has a deeper question. Is this machine sufficient to run on FreeNAS?
There are two reasons I pose this question:
1) amidst my research prior to choosing FreeNAS over Ubuntu Server, I believe I came across some information indicating that the ZFS file system --while being about the best system you could ask for in a NAS box-- requires significant horsepower from the machine's hardware and, its best to not use that file system if you are using an old x386 machine.
and
2) This kmem memory error didn't sit well with me. Yes the server loaded and yes, I logged into the gui and yes, everything SEEMS fine. But what about down the road? I'm watching a movie and playback becomes choppy, all to find out my server is running out of memory, etc... that's just a totally made up scenario based on pretty much nothing, but its for argument's sake.
Here are some brief specs on my machine as configured:
DELL Dimension 2400
1024MB DDR 500mhz RAM
P4 @ ?
Thanks for the input everyone!
A brief preface if you don't mind:
I am currently using a Linksys E3000 router(tomato firmware) with a 2TB USB hard disk connected to it to serve my family's media streaming needs. We MOSTLY just stream our shows and movies from this hard disk to our family television via an AppleTV2. Occasionally we use laptops from the bedroom or something. Anyhow... I noticed that the max throughput I was able to achieve between this hard disk and our main desktop machine (Gb nic) was 3 MB/s. This is entirely what prompted me to make a standalone NAS box. I no longer want to rely on a router with underpowered hardware to manage our media drive not to mention there is no room for expansion. Moving along, I acquired a Dimension 2400 (P4 model) and began to research two management ideas which seemed to be popular. 1) FreeNAS and 2) Ubuntu server. I had even considered Debian server but mostly just the two aforementioned. Despite the fact that I know ZERO about FreeBSD, I opted to go with FreeNAS because it just seemed like the faster, simpler, mostly turn-key solution. Preface complete.
I have completely gutted this Dimension machine of all drives as I do not need any of them. My idea was to run FreeNAS straight from a 2GB usb stick. So, I pulled out my trusty Mac and flashed the USB stick with the FreeNAS image. I noticed a couple of things as FreeNAS was booting into its server. One thing was something about ZFS file system and a potential issue with kmem or my system memory or something. Although I'd like to ultimately resolve that issue --whatever the issue is-- this post has a deeper question. Is this machine sufficient to run on FreeNAS?
There are two reasons I pose this question:
1) amidst my research prior to choosing FreeNAS over Ubuntu Server, I believe I came across some information indicating that the ZFS file system --while being about the best system you could ask for in a NAS box-- requires significant horsepower from the machine's hardware and, its best to not use that file system if you are using an old x386 machine.
and
2) This kmem memory error didn't sit well with me. Yes the server loaded and yes, I logged into the gui and yes, everything SEEMS fine. But what about down the road? I'm watching a movie and playback becomes choppy, all to find out my server is running out of memory, etc... that's just a totally made up scenario based on pretty much nothing, but its for argument's sake.
Here are some brief specs on my machine as configured:
DELL Dimension 2400
1024MB DDR 500mhz RAM
P4 @ ?
Thanks for the input everyone!
