sadikhov
Cadet
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2013
- Messages
- 3
Hi everyone. This is my first post here, so forgive me if i am not playing by all rules.
Just wanted to report on my new FreeNAS built and ask couple of questions.
A bit of quick history: I had a desktop/server which was running ESX, but since i no longer needed it, i decided to use some parts that i had for my home NAS/SAN built. The parts that i decided to use from the server were:
HDD: 3x 1TB Samsung 32MB Cache - SATA II 7200rpm
RAM: 2x2Gb DDR3 G.Skill memory
The remaining parts required some online research, so it took me two weeks to decide what i want and where I want to buy it. My key requirements were quiet, small, power efficient, quick network transfer rate, yet having enough power reserve for any future needs... and all under $240 AUD ($250US)
So these are the ingredients that I bought:
Intel G1610 Celeron Processor, 2.6GHz, LGA1155, Dual Core - $46.20
GIGABYTE GA-H77N-WIFI LGA Mini ITX Intel Motherboard - $117.81
Aywun MI-100 Mini-ITX Cube Case, 200W PSU - $47.36
Sandisk 8Gb thumb-drive - $10
Shipping $10
Probably a little overkill for my minimum requirements (as i am finding now), but was well within the budget given that I live in Austripoffalia.
It took me an hour or so to put it all together. FreeNAS booted very quickly. I have built a RAID5 on ZFS and created a CIFS shared folder. Then as a test, I decided to copy one large 1.9Gb movie file. It took only 15 seconds or less with the average writing speed of over 105GB/s. Wow! Then I moved the file back to the workstation and the speed was at around 100MB. This pretty much outperformed my existing Synology 211j NAS by 3 times!
I went as far as underclocking my CPU by reducing the multiplier from 26 to 16. This is as minimum as i could get with the multiplier. Then i enabled all the powersaving features provided by the board. Attempted to do another file transfer, yet as fast as before!
Next thing, out of curiosity I enabled ZFS deduplication feature on the volume and performed another test. The speed fluctuated between 65 and 70MB/sec, which is still impressive, but i disabled it, as capacity is not an issue now.
Both workstation and FreeNAS are connected to Billion 7800N ADSL Router (1Gb).
Now that i am generally happy with my build, i am looking for ways to fine-tune it, so I would appreciate if someone can advise me on the following:
1. Since performance is not a concern now, I'd like to push as much on power saving capabilities now. So, I am planning to further reduce the CPU frequency and see what's the minimum CPU power I can get away with without sacrificing the performance. Any thoughts/advice on how I should pursue this the right way?
2. In the disk properties, i have noticed 3 options HDD Standby, APM and Acoustic level. Currently I have set them to Always On, Level 1 and minimum. Is it optimal setup for minimum power consumption and noise reduction?
3. During FreeNAS boot, I noticed a message saying something like "4GB RAM only therefore, ZFS prefetch is disabled". Will i gain much of this prefetch feature if I double the RAM?
4. Any ways to measure power consumption by NAS?
5. Being a noob in ZFS, my question is, should i expect overall NAS performance degrade over time as I put more data on the volumes?
6. Any step-by-step guides explaining how to configure ISCSI volumes? I got lost in settings and after playing for half an hour I failed to represent a SAN disk to my workstation....
thanks in advance
SS
Just wanted to report on my new FreeNAS built and ask couple of questions.
A bit of quick history: I had a desktop/server which was running ESX, but since i no longer needed it, i decided to use some parts that i had for my home NAS/SAN built. The parts that i decided to use from the server were:
HDD: 3x 1TB Samsung 32MB Cache - SATA II 7200rpm
RAM: 2x2Gb DDR3 G.Skill memory
The remaining parts required some online research, so it took me two weeks to decide what i want and where I want to buy it. My key requirements were quiet, small, power efficient, quick network transfer rate, yet having enough power reserve for any future needs... and all under $240 AUD ($250US)
So these are the ingredients that I bought:
Intel G1610 Celeron Processor, 2.6GHz, LGA1155, Dual Core - $46.20
GIGABYTE GA-H77N-WIFI LGA Mini ITX Intel Motherboard - $117.81
Aywun MI-100 Mini-ITX Cube Case, 200W PSU - $47.36
Sandisk 8Gb thumb-drive - $10
Shipping $10
Probably a little overkill for my minimum requirements (as i am finding now), but was well within the budget given that I live in Austripoffalia.
It took me an hour or so to put it all together. FreeNAS booted very quickly. I have built a RAID5 on ZFS and created a CIFS shared folder. Then as a test, I decided to copy one large 1.9Gb movie file. It took only 15 seconds or less with the average writing speed of over 105GB/s. Wow! Then I moved the file back to the workstation and the speed was at around 100MB. This pretty much outperformed my existing Synology 211j NAS by 3 times!
I went as far as underclocking my CPU by reducing the multiplier from 26 to 16. This is as minimum as i could get with the multiplier. Then i enabled all the powersaving features provided by the board. Attempted to do another file transfer, yet as fast as before!
Next thing, out of curiosity I enabled ZFS deduplication feature on the volume and performed another test. The speed fluctuated between 65 and 70MB/sec, which is still impressive, but i disabled it, as capacity is not an issue now.
Both workstation and FreeNAS are connected to Billion 7800N ADSL Router (1Gb).
Now that i am generally happy with my build, i am looking for ways to fine-tune it, so I would appreciate if someone can advise me on the following:
1. Since performance is not a concern now, I'd like to push as much on power saving capabilities now. So, I am planning to further reduce the CPU frequency and see what's the minimum CPU power I can get away with without sacrificing the performance. Any thoughts/advice on how I should pursue this the right way?
2. In the disk properties, i have noticed 3 options HDD Standby, APM and Acoustic level. Currently I have set them to Always On, Level 1 and minimum. Is it optimal setup for minimum power consumption and noise reduction?
3. During FreeNAS boot, I noticed a message saying something like "4GB RAM only therefore, ZFS prefetch is disabled". Will i gain much of this prefetch feature if I double the RAM?
4. Any ways to measure power consumption by NAS?
5. Being a noob in ZFS, my question is, should i expect overall NAS performance degrade over time as I put more data on the volumes?
6. Any step-by-step guides explaining how to configure ISCSI volumes? I got lost in settings and after playing for half an hour I failed to represent a SAN disk to my workstation....
thanks in advance
SS
