iXsystems FreeNAS Mini vs DIY

[Amin Alhashim]

I read through many threads about building your own NAS with the top recommended parts for maximum reliability and performance. Also, I read reviews about the iXsystems FreeNAS Mini and many recommend it. Which option should I go and why? Do both options have comparable performance and reliability?

 

[SweetAndLow]

Price, warranty and number of disks would be the differences that jump out to me. The mini costs a little more than a dyi but you get a easy warranty to work with. You also are limited to 4 disks with that case and don't people want 10+ disks. Performance is great on the mini and most dyi are about the save spec.

 

[jgreco]

The mini has the added benefit that you're supporting iXsystems and therefore helping pay for development (at least a little).

 

[Ericloewe]

The mini has the added benefit that you're supporting iXsystems and therefore helping pay for development (at least a little).

And stickers. You get stickers.

 

[anodos]

Price, warranty and number of disks would be the differences that jump out to me. The mini costs a little more than a dyi but you get a easy warranty to work with. You also are limited to 4 disks with that case and don't people want 10+ disks. Performance is great on the mini and most dyi are about the save spec.

I agree. Last week I had to RMA about half a dozen different things with newegg, amazon, and a few other vendors (thankfully I didn't have to deal with an OEM). I probably spent over an hour on the phone arranging stuff. Having a single point of contact for hardware problems is awesome.

 

[jgreco]

And stickers. You get stickers.

"Posted over 6000 times on the FreeNAS forums and I didn't even get any stickers!"

 

[anodos]

"Posted over 6000 times on the FreeNAS forums and I didn't even get any stickers!"

Well you've been stickied a lot. That's basically the same thing. And eric's rate of posts-per-day makes me think that he outsources his forum account to at least 3 underlings.

 

[jgreco]

That's today's funniest post, for sure.

 

[cyberjock]

Well you've been stickied a lot. That's basically the same thing. And eric's rate of posts-per-day makes me think that he outsources his forum account to at least 3 underlings.

ROFL

 

[jgreco]

ROFL

I was actually going to respond to that along the lines of "I sticky my own posts" but I thought that might be going a little too blue. ;-)

 

[Ericloewe]

And eric's rate of posts-per-day makes me think that he outsources his forum account to at least 3 underlings.

There's actually 6 of us working two shifts, with a third empty shift so as to not arouse suspicion. Be sure to tell us what tipped you off, so we can fix that. There's a door around here that says "Private - management only", behind which we hear some ominous screams. We're split 2-3 on whether it's really haunted or just a scare tactic. Sixth guy says the door is a fake. Either way, we'd really like to not find out for sure, so let's pretend this didn't happen.
We're already betting that this post will get lost among 5.6k+ posts. His monitoring has been a bit lax, so we should be ok.

This post has been removed from public view by jgreco. Reason: shhh, dummy, don't let Cyberjock know we're slowly catching up with him!!

 

[cyberjock]

You don't have that many posts.. 54!?

 

[jgreco]

WOW! Talk about big brass ones...

 

[Amin Alhashim]

Thanks all for your advice. What is the maximum storage that I'll get if I install 4x4T HDs and use the most reliable setting (RAIDZ, I guess)?

 

[anodos]

There's actually 6 of us working two shifts, with a third empty shift so as to not arouse suspicion. Be sure to tell us what tipped you off, so we can fix that. There's a door around here that says "Private - management only", behind which we hear some ominous screams. We're split 2-3 on whether it's really haunted or just a scare tactic. Sixth guy says the door is a fake. Either way, we'd really like to not find out for sure, so let's pretend this didn't happen.
We're already betting that this post will get lost among 5.6k+ posts. His monitoring has been a bit lax, so we should be ok.

This post has been removed from public view by jgreco. Reason: shhh, dummy, don't let Cyberjock know we're slowly catching up with him!!

I call shenanigans on cyberjock's post count. Bots that troll noobs about hardware choices shouldn't count.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

What is the maximum storage that I'll get if I install 4x4T HDs and use the most reliable setting (RAIDZ, I guess)?

The most reliable setup for 4 drives would be RAIDZ2, which would yield about 7.3TB of raw storage, and a bit less than 6TB usable if you stay below 80% full as recommended.

 

[Jailer]

And eric's rate of posts-per-day makes me think that he outsources his forum account to at least 3 underlings.

 

[diedrichg]

Thanks all for your advice. What is the maximum storage that I'll get if I install 4x4T HDs and use the most reliable setting (RAIDZ, I guess)?

Check out this spreadsheet I created for everyone to use. Add you can see, you get almost double the storage with 6 disks vs 4.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/38092/