Is FreeNAS the right solution for me?

[blueman]

Hi all,

I was recently looking at a NAS to use to backup my data, and came across this brilliant piece of software! After hours of googling and reading through the forum, Im keen to give it a go but still think my head is spinning a bit from all the research, so I decided to outline what I wanted to use it for, and see what you guys think.

My existing setup is:

1) Main Desktop - used for documents, games, pictures, music, email etc.
2) HTPC - Running Mediaportal for watching movies stored locally

I currently only have a manual backup of emails/documents/pictures/music. I would like a backup of all my data as my video collection is growing quite large and I would hate to lose it all.

Im planning to purchase a HP ProLiant N36L MicroServer with 8GB ram and 4x 2TB hard drives and set them up with ZFS as a Raid-Z config. I would then like to have all my media (videos/music/pictures/emails/game images/documents etc) stored on the FreeNAS and streamed when needed. Now, my questions:

1) Will I be able to stream my movies from the FreeNAS to the mediaportal htpc without any loss of quality/skiping etc?
2) Will I be able to setup separate folders to share individually (ie Pictures, Music, Documents, Videos) aswell as separate sub folders for Mediaportal to see (ie Videos\TV, Videos\Movies) that I can easily point to for it to monitor for new files (ie Local.IP\\Videos\TV)
3) Will I be able to setup my Thunderbird email client on the desktop and keep the profile mail store on the FreeNAS and use that for all emails without storing locally on the desktop?
4) Is it easy enough to send files to and from the FreeNAS from my Windows based desktop with CIFS/Samba without much knowledge of *nux systems or complicated setup?
5) Am I able to stream the videos to my android enabled phone?
6) Finally, is this the right setup for my needs (ZFS in a Raid-z config)? With 4x 2TB drives in this setup I will end up with 6TB of storage available? Is there an easy beginners guide available to setting up in this particular way?

Thanks in advance, I really appreciate your time and help. I think this has a great potential if I can get a good understanding of it :)

 

[marcusmarcus]

1) Yes, I stream from my FreeNAS to my HTPC running XBMC with no loss of quality or skipping (I have no HD videos though, but I don't think that would be a problem)
2) Yes, I have separate folders shared out for my videos, pictures, and documents
3) I think that would be up to Thunderbird. FreeNAS should be able to handle it if Thunderbird supports pointing it to store to a network location (my guess is that it does, but that is just a guess)
4) Yes, I think it is very easy, but "easy" is a perspective term.
5) Yes, I stream videos to my 2 Android tablets with no problem, I would imagine it would be the same for Android phones
6) I have a 4x 2TB RAIDZ setup and it works well. You'll actually between 5-6TB of usable space after drives are configured and formatted

What is the speed of your network? Make sure you are running on gigabit network equipment if you want to be doing all the streaming from the FreeNAS. Also I hear ZFS is very memory hungry so the more RAM you can put into it the better, I only have 4GB of RAM and I get good transfer speeds but maybe it would be better if I could have 8GB in it.

 

[blueman]

I will be buying a gigabit ethernet card for the htpc (desktop has it onboard) and also buying a gigabit router. Otherwise everything looks good and I think this is what I will go with.

2 other questions I have:

1) If I have a folder in windows on the desktop machine, say My Pictures, and I add photos to it, is there anyway FreeNAS can 'sync' with that folder and copy across any newer or modified files without user intervention?

2) I have a digital radio that can also access my music files via windows media player sharing. Is there anyway I can emulate that in FreeNAS so the digital radio can stream the files from it even though it wont have the windows media player?

Thanks!