micro ATX w/ atom CPU for doc only NAS

[CLSegraves]

I'd like to build a small documents NAS to centralize documents on my home network. The idea was to use a micro ATX MB with a dual core atom CPU and a pair of 500Gig drives mirrored. No streaming media, just housing word/excel/pdf/etc. docs rather than keeping them on local desktops.

Is the dual core atom cpu capable of pulling this off or will it be too slow even for this? If the atom isn't the solution, then what is a good low power cpu I can stick on a micro ATX MB to make a low power docs NAS?

Thanks,
Chris


edit: Should have mentioned I have been running FreeNAS on a large home network machine for going on 6 years now and it works flawlessly. It's just that the old machine is a real power hog and was built to stream movies/audio/etc. I no longer do any of that these days (don't even have movie drives in the NAS anymore) and having a big power hog for word docs just isn't something I want anymore.

 

[ser_rhaegar]

What atom CPU and motherboard?

 

[CLSegraves]

Hadn't got that far (still conceptualizing). If you have suggestions, by all means. I'm just trying to run a pair of 500gig, 2.5", 7200RPM drives in a mirror (preferably ZFS but probably UFS due to CPU capacity).

 

[cyberjock]

Well, without actual hardware, you are just talking about nothing.

I will tell you that every Atom before the current gen(which aren't cheap btw) are not appropriate for FreeNAS. Not only do the max out at 4GB of RAM(some do max at 8GB) but they don't support ECC. So you should probably get past the stage of conceptualizing and start actually putting together a shopping list. But, based on the fact you've missed both ECC RAM recommendations as well as minimum RAM requirements you should definitely do more reading before you consider looking at a shopping list. You can't just throw together hardware and expect it to work like you can with most Windows machines.

 

[leenux_tux]

CLSegraves,

As an example, Supermicro do quite a few ATOM based motherboards that support ECC RAM, take a look here "http://www.supermicro.co.uk/products/motherboard/ATOM/".

I started off with a similar thought to you, small system, not going to be used for much. Then, after (in my case) six months or so you get to understand more about what FreeNAS is and the capabilities it has and before you know it, your streaming music and movies all of the house, using it as data store for Virtualization and using it as a backup device for laptops.

I'm not saying you will do all those things but it's worth looking at (if you have not done so already) all the other "stuff" FreeNAS can do and plan ahead.

 

[CLSegraves]

Perhaps I wasn't clear, here is my CURRENT system:

Hostname freenas.local
Build FreeNAS-9.2.2-ALPHA-7e1594b-x64
Platform Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6300 @ 1.86GHz
Memory 8168MB
System Time Mon May 12 07:57:13 MST 2014
Uptime 7:57AM up 11:23, 0 users
Load Average 0.68, 0.83, 0.46

There was a time when I did stream music and movies all over the house and did laptop backups nightly, but is in the past. Today I stream over Pandora, I watch movies off Netflix (when I have time), and I don't even own a laptop. I don't use the NAS for anything more than a network accessible storage drive for documents.

I'll keep the current NAS I have around (not tossing it any time soon), but I don't want to have it running 24/7 anymore burning 240-360Watts per hour (I have a power monitor on the NAS, I KNOW how much power it is using). I'd like to get down to something that pulls ~50-75Watts (100Watts max).