Is this setup likely to work...?

[jlparsons]

I've built a server which I will use for small-hours backups and media streaming on a small home network, nothing strenuous so it's built to be quiet and have low power consumption. Psu and cpu are fanless and the case has one very large fan I'll have running at low RPM just to keep some air moving through it without much noise. Not too bothered by HDD noise. My lan is gigabit and I guess it would be nice to make use of that potential but performance really isn't much of a necessity.

My original plan was to run debian/ubuntu headless and administer via SSH which I'm very comfortable with, but having looked at FreeNAS it looks like this will do everything I need with less setup time and a nice web gui. My question is - am I likely to have issues getting it to run on this system? I have lots of experience with linux, limited windows experience, no freebsd experience whatsoever.

Build is made up of some stuff I bought for it but mostly stuff I had already;

• Western Digital 3.0TB for media
• Western Digital Red 1TB for backup (will see once-daily use and be powered down the rest of the time, might RAID it with a 1TB partition on the other drive for redundancy)
• LiteOn 128gb SSD (was going to be used for system partition and swap)
• StarTech 2 Port PCI Express SATA 6 Gbps
• MSI J1800I ITX Motherboard with integrated Intel Celeron J1800
• 8GB non-ECC ram
• Seasonic 400W 80Plus Platinum Fanless PSU

Services I need are;

• nfs shares (can get away with samba)
• DLNA/UPNP media server
• Possibly bit-torrent client, not too worried.
• Auto-upload to dropbox or ftp backup offsite

Anyone see any obvious showstoppers or issues? I'm happy to do a little messing about to get things working, but if there's a big workload needed to get it going I'll probably fall back to my linux comfort zone. :D

 

[m0nkey_]

The main issues for me is the motherboard; integrated CPU, RealTek NIC and lack of ECC support. What you have is great for a Ubuntu server, but in terms of running FreeNAS, I'd advise against it because you will have headaches down the road and there would be no guarantee your data would survive on it. You will also likely find it hard to get support too.

 

[jlparsons]

"no guarantee your data would survive on it" - now that is scary... think I'll stick to what I know. :)

 

[tvsjr]

FreeNAS simply forces people to use hardware that they should be USING ANYWAY for any sort of storage system where you expect real redundancy, data protection, and performance.

It doesn't matter if you put FreeNAS, Windows, Linux, or whatever on that box. The facts are the facts. You have a desktop-grade system with no ECC memory, and little to no drive redundancy. If you value your data, wish to prevent bit-rot, and want it to survive drive failures, you need better stuff.

If it's just your pr0nz collection, where a loss of data simply means you have to redownload a few torrents, then who cares.

The big question is - what's your data worth to you?

 

[BigDave]

I'm happy to do a little messing about to get things working, but if there's a big workload needed to get it going I'll probably fall back to my linux comfort zone.

With the hardware you have, FreeNAS is not going to be the best choice.

 

[jlparsons]

FreeNAS simply forces people to use hardware that they should be USING ANYWAY for any sort of storage system where you expect real redundancy, data protection, and performance.

Redundancy and data protection - for the data that actually matters (work stuff) I have periodic offsite backups on server space with a third-party supplier as I wouldn't want to trust a box in my house for that. I'll use this box for incremental local backups nightly (more to prevent lost work due to minor cockups rather than as a backup in case of catastrophic failure) and I'll only need 1TB for that at the very most, so was planning to go raid1 using the 1tb drive and a 1tb partition on the other. They're WD Red drives, so hoping they'll last. The smaller one will only be turned on half an hour a day or so, so I think that hope is not too forlorn. The bigger one will be running media streaming so more likely to fail sooner but two together will still have a longer expected life so still worth raid1 setup I think.
Performance - not an issue for me really. Most strenuous thing the system will do is stream media. What I have now is waaaay slower than this will be, and is still fast enough.

 

[pirateghost]

If you plan on using partitions in your zfs setup, look elsewhere. Freenas doesn't support that configuration.

 

[m0nkey_]

If you insist on ZFS, take a peek at NAS4Free. It still supports UFS and has ZFS too. The requirements are a little lighter and you might be able to get away with it.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

two together will still have a longer expected life

A pair of drives does not have a longer life expectancy than a single drive. On the contrary. The purpose of mirroring is to increase the likelihood of being able to access data after a single drive failure (at which point the failed drive can be replaced), not to increase overall life expectancy.

 

[jlparsons]

A pair of drives does not have a longer life expectancy than a single drive. On the contrary. The purpose of mirroring is to increase the likelihood of being able to access data after a single drive failure (at which point the failed drive can be replaced), not to increase overall life expectancy.

Two drives will have a higher mean time to second failure than either component drive's individual mean time to failure, which is relevant to my stated usage (mirroring).

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

second failure

Right, my post essentially says the same thing.

 

[jlparsons]

Right, my post essentially says the same thing.

The first and second halves of your post don't agree with each other, just thought I'd help!

 

[jlparsons]

Well folks, looks like I won't be dipping my toe with this fine project (linux and btrfs are going to be all I need I think, think freenas may be more appropriate for the grade of storage I'm currently keeping offsite rather than the cheap incremental nas and media server I need in house) but I wish you all the best of luck and thanks for your help! :)

ttfn