Minimal RAM

[jjmaia]

Hello,

I'm building my first NAS with FreeNAS.

I'm using the following hardware:

GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H
AMD ATHLON X2 4850E (2.5GHZ) BOX SKT AM2
2GB + 1GB RAM DDR2
Disco 250GB SP

They recommend minimum 4GB, is that really necessary?
I would want to avoid to spend more money...

Thank you for your help.

 

[gpsguy]

The minimum amount of RAM for ZFS on FreeNAS is 8Gb. 1Gb is far too little. Either upgrade the RAM or use a different OS.


Sent from my phone

 

[jgreco]

ITYM 3GB

 

[Ericloewe]

http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/

Why would you think that you can get away with less, if it's a minimum requirement (which is way too minimum at that...).

 

[jjmaia]

Because i can't understand why would i need so much RAM for a NAS server...
It will only provide file access to one user (me) and backup mu PC.

I want to spend the minimum possible, because I'm using old hardware.
I have this setup:

GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H
AMD ATHLON X2 4850E (2.5GHZ) BOX SKT AM2

I have 2GB of RAM, but i can buy more since it's no expensive. I have already bough a good PSU.
The Data is 2 2TB discs, so 4TB total. This NAS will backup my PC witch also has 2x2TB. I also want to acess the NAS when i'm out of home, but it's only one user.

Thanks for the help.

 

[pirateghost]

It sounds like freenas is not a good fit for you then. Typically, at this point, I recommend you try another NAS appliance software: nas4free and openmediavault are really your best bets.

 

[jgreco]

Because i can't understand why would i need so much RAM for a NAS server...
It will only provide file access to one user (me) and backup mu PC.

It doesn't matter if you can't understand it. It still requires it.

At one time Bill Gates understood that 640K of memory would be enough for anyone. Turns out it isn't.

ZFS is a system that was designed from the ground up to require gobs of resources, but when given those resources can do some amazing things. Unfortunately it does not scale down well. FreeNAS has been designed to target the higher end of the open source NAS software market. If you can't or don't want to resource your FreeNAS box appropriately, there are other choices, some of which require far fewer resources. No one here will think less of you for wanting to be able to recycle hardware and not being able to run FreeNAS on your platform of choice.

 

[jjmaia]

The thing is that i came to freeNAS because they said it was the best option, even for recycled hardware...

 

[jgreco]

Who is "they"?

 

[cyberjock]

"They" are wrong. The old FreeNAS project from 5 years ago was. But the current FreeNAS is not. If you read the requirements in the documentation for FreeNAS....

FreeNAS® with ZFS requires a minimum of 8 GB of RAM in order to provide good stability regardless of the number of users or size of the pool.

I'd say that requirement is pretty clear that you need 8GB of RAM regardless of anything you may have heard from "them".

 

[jjmaia]

Who is "they"?

Variously articles...
I'll look at the other suggested NAS then:

Thank you.