Is FreeNAS suitable for my needs?

[gregor3000]

I am checking various options with GUI user interface to setup a small home server. The server would serve about 8 clients of which 3 are not in the same LAN. Server would be used for some/occasional data sharing, weekly data backups, and possibly to use it as VPN server.

I am a bit short on cash so i was thiking of getting HP micro server N54L. It has an AMD Turion 2,2 GH dualcore CPU (maybe slightly more powerful than Intel's Atom D2700) and 4 GB ram.

I planned to run the OS from USB stick and populate the server with 2x2TB hard disks (for start).
I planned to set up VPN (there is a service to set it up right?)
I was also thinking of adding OwnCloud for any file sharing between clients. it seems you can run it in jail.

now i read that ZFS needs min 8 GB ram (which is max for this board). But i do not plan to add the ram. I also read that it is possible to run ZFS or UFS with much less RAM but certian files need to be tweaked.

the quesiton is - is this FreeNAS too heavy for this small server? or would it work better if i used another file system?

The thing i noticed is that Synology NAS devices have an even weaker CPU and much less ram (most lower price have 256 or 512 MB ram far from 8 GB). So compared to them this is a beast. surely i can make it do what i want. But perhaps i need another OS?

i like the fact this one is made to run from USB (so in this part it feets my needs) and that there are plenty of guides available for setting it up. but the system requirements worry me a bit.
i am hoping to use virtualbox to give it a go to see how easy it is to setup things inside and such. and to see for my self if menues are complicated or not.

 

[Ericloewe]

now i read that ZFS needs min 8 GB ram (which is max for this board). But i do not plan to add the ram. I also read that it is possible to run ZFS (...) with much less RAM but certian files need to be tweaked.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!

It's called a minimum requirement for a reason. Anything less and nobody here will have much patience for troubleshooting issues that may arise, which go up to complete and total data loss.

FreeNAS and ZFS are in a completely different league to the crappy NASes you mentioned. They have completely different design goals.

If you absolutely want to use that server in its current condition, I recommend you look around for different NAS OSes. NAS4Free is typically said to have lower requirements, but I don't know any specifics.

UFS can work with the 4GB, but it's deprecated and misses the big advantage FreeNAS has: ZFS.

 

[gpsguy]

If you do buy it, I'd buy one 8Gb stick of ECC RAM to go with the original one. Down the road, if you need more RAM, you can replace the original one, with another 8Gb stick.

I'm running 16Gb in my N54L. I put the original 2Gb stick on the shelf, from the start.

 

[gregor3000]

FreeNAS and ZFS are in a completely different league to the crappy NASes you mentioned. They have completely different design goals.

Ah so this is more of an enterprise system then. I don't need something to big or bloated. What made me ask this question is the tweak thread linked in hardware requirements page on wiki as well as a report from user running freenas well on 512MB ram for longer time not knowing why the 8GB limit. I wonder if perhaps they use nas4free which is a different OS.

I'm running 16Gb in my N54L.

so this little thing can handle 16 Gb ram as well as freeNAS? hmm interesting. I will think about it once I check the costs and all.

else I will setup something easier like simple raid or something. or maybe normal disk and do weekly copies to the other disk as backup.

I do not plan to have many uploads (dynamic files) but rather more or less static files. i.e. when we go on some holidays we do some pictures and then upload them. uploads from camera to PC now are done maybe 2 or 3 times a week and then not changed. which is why I though that it would work with less ram since it's not making constant snapshots as there is no need for that. Weekly snaps would be more than enough.

is there any other less demanding file system that can be used with FreeNAS or is FreeNAS primarily or maybe only configured for ZFS?

I still plan to try it out in virtualbox at least to see how it works, how menues are set, if it's easy enough to use etc. and then based on that to get something more stronger, increase RAM or use another OS altogether.

 

[cyberjock]

ZFS is it. ZFS is the reason why 95% of our users want FreeNAS, so we decided to go full-on ZFS and get rid of UFS. This also helped spend developer resources more wisely.

There is the old FreeNAS project, which may or may not have worked with 512MB of RAM. But 1GB of RAM won't even run our installer without it crashing (I did this the other day in a VM on accident). But its as people above said, unless you plan to go with 8GB minimum you don't want FreeNAS.