n00b to FreeNAS wanting to build one advice needed please

[Giles Cotterill]

Hello to all, this is my first post on here and I have some of the usual n00b questions :) Please humour me and tell me to $%* off if you wish :p

So I am thinking of building a NAS, I currently have 4 NAS boxes, 2 Netgear NV+2 running RAID5 with 3TB drives and another 2 generic NAS boxes with 4 TB drives in on JBOD.

My idea and thinking was to use FreeNAS (well duh, that's why I'm here) with the following hardware:

1 x LSI 9650SE-24M8 PCI-E to SATA II 24 Port HDD RAID Array Controller Card 512MB
1 x MSI Z97 MPOWER Intel LGA1150 Z97 ATX Motherboard
1 x Intel Celeron G1840 Dual Core CPU
1 x 4GB DDR3 RAM

With this setup I would be able to support up to 32 disks to start with and with the option to add another 72 disks if I needed it (laughable but hey future proofing right?). My intention is to use all my existing drives from my NAS' and add a few other drives that I have from old systems (a couple of 1TB and 500GB)

I been told ZFS is the way to go as it is easy to plug in a new disk and 'expand' the NAS?

So my biggest question is will the LSI 9650SE card with with FreeNAS or will I need to fiddle around a bit to get it to work? Also is 4gb RAM enough or would I be better off going for 8gb?

Many thanks for any help and advice you may be able to offer.

Regards
GiGo

 

[danb35]

The hardware you've selected is entirely inappropriate for FreeNAS. Take a look at the hardware recommendations thread and this article from iXSystems for quite a bit more information. You should also take a look at this thread for a guide to how ZFS works.

 

[Giles Cotterill]

The hardware you've selected is entirely inappropriate for FreeNAS. Take a look at the hardware recommendations thread and this article from iXSystems for quite a bit more information. You should also take a look at this thread for a guide to how ZFS works.

Thanks for the links, someone linked me to the hardware thread after I posted, taking a read now :) Cheers :)

 

[jacco hz]

I too am a nOOb to free nas, and really to forums in general.

I just want to plug in a network attached storage device and have it work. I want to use FreeNAS to add storage to a laptop that is currently running GNU/Linux Debian.

I think I'll go back and put more stuff in my profile.

I have read the manual, yes, all 250 pages of it. I also read the post about recommended hardware. I watched the slideshow.

 

[enemy85]

I too am a nOOb to free nas, and really to forums in general.

I just want to plug in a network attached storage device and have it work. I want to use FreeNAS to add storage to a laptop that is currently running GNU/Linux Debian.

I think I'll go back and put more stuff in my profile.

I have read the manual, yes, all 250 pages of it. I also read the post about recommended hardware. I watched the slideshow.

WTF?????

 

[Giles Cotterill]

I assume it's someone taking the piss out of my post.

If so, yes I am new to Freenas, but not forums been using them for almost 20 years, it was a n00b question, which I was going for an answer or guidance on. I have read the slideshow and will be re-reading along with the hardware thread again and again.

My apologies if my stupidly first post was too n00bish. Perhaps I have mistook this forums for a helpful place :(

 

[danb35]

No, I think jacco was just threadjacking your post. We do try to be helpful here, but the help often takes the form of "you can't get there from here".

 

[gpsguy]

Yes, another nOOb hijacked your thread. Given his expectations FN is probably not a good choice.

The forums can be helpful, but all to often new users want to be spoon fed without doing any prerequisite reading. We ask that users review the documentation, stickies, and other resources first - since most of the answers are probably there already. With the limited resources (volunteers) we can either ask that you RTFM or just leave the questions unanswered. Which would you prefer?

BTW, if you find it easier to read the 9.3 docs as a PDF file, you can find a link to it in my signature.


Sent from my phone

 

[jacco hz]

Sorry, I did not mean to thread Jack. Oops. I will go to the thread posting rules section and do some reading there.

Again, sorry. :(

 

[Giles Cotterill]

Sorry, I did not mean to thread Jack. Oops. I will go to the thread posting rules section and do some reading there.

Again, sorry. :(

Fair enough mate, that's the problem with forums at times, they way you read things. You basically summed up what I want, but I know there is no way to just attach it all together and it work.
There is lots and lots of reading to do.

Cheers for the replies people, I am doing lots of reading.