Just set up a small test system.

[CAlbertson]

Just found out about FreeNAS last night. Stayed up to 2:00am to install it on my tiny little Atom server box and then used it with Apples "Time Machine" to back up my Macbook Pro. It worked

The system has a 1.6MHz Atom, 4GB RAM (the most RAM allowed on this motherboard.) The system boots off a 4GB USB thumb drive and the data is on one 2.5" notebook size 500GB drive. It is just a single ZFS volume, no raid as I have just one disk.

It took some reading to get it set up. But I have 20+ years experience as a software developer, much of it with Solaris (and SunOS before that). I understand the concepts. (But I never really got into Solaris sys admin.)

This is a was a test, now I'm ready to set up a "real system". So I'm looking for advice. Here is what I want

1) This FreeNAS system will mostly be used for backups, not primary storage. Mostly it will be used by Apple's Time machine. So speed is not super important.
2) I care a lot about saving electrical power. I'm using the Atom now. But it only allows 4GB of RAM. What is the next step up after Atom? Can I live with 4GB? and still ZFS. I do not want to move from a 6W CPU to a 100W CPU just so I can have more RAM. IS these a 10W or 12W CPU
3) What disks? Again power usage is importance and the #2 priority is price per TB. Maybe I can have the disks spin down?
4) I need about 8GB minimum to start with and my needs might grow to 16TB.
5) would be nice to find a server low cost server case that hold 6 to 8 drives in trays with air flow between each drive

If this is written up some place let me know how to find it.

 

[joeschmuck]

You should search on the ATOM board you have, I have read that although some support 4GB on paper that they actually will work with up to 8GB RAM. Maybe you have the same board and you could get lucky there.

As for drives, if speed is not a requirement then you could go with the WD Red drives, five 2TB or four 3TB drives to hit your minimum storage requirement. If power is a concern then I'd shoot for the 3TB drives and run a RAIDZ1, that is the absolute minimum number of drives. My personal opinion is to go with four 3TB drives up front. If you do plan to up your storage to 16TB then you will likely need more RAM but if this is an incremental upgrade then you can buy a new MB and CPU later because the hard drives will be a hard hit to any wallet.

Good luck