NAS Consideration

[Jason B]

I've checked out NAS servers and I am considering buying QNAP TS-453A. The reviews are good and I wouldn't have to do much to set it up. On the other hand its not cheap ($700 for the box and another $200-$400 for disk drives). I have also checked out building my own and I like what I've read about FreeNAS. So I am also considering building my own. I see that the Lenovo Thinkserver TS140 has better processing power than the QNAP and quite a bit cheaper (less than $300 plus disks and another 12 GB RAM, maybe $500-$700 total). Of course the Lenovo would need FreeNAS. What are your recommendations on these two considerations?

 

[Spearfoot]

I have no experience with them myself, but the Lenovo TS140 is recommended as a good entry-level system by many here on the forum. NewEgg has a Xeon E3-1226v3 model w/ 4GB of RAM on sale for $300 right now. Add a Crucial 16GB RAM kit for another $100 and you have a nice system for ~$400.

Assuming you're considering a 4-disk QNAP vs. a 4-disk FreeNAS system, disks are a wash when comparing the two, 'cause you have to buy 'em either way, right?

You could boot from a USB flash drive and have 4 HDDs in a RAIDZ2 array or a pair of mirrors.

Do some serious thinking about how much storage capacity you need. And think about how comfortable you are installing and configuring software vs. using something more 'Plug-n-Play' like the QNAP. This forum has a tremendous amount of information; spend some time digging here before you write FreeNAS off.

The decision is yours, of course. Good luck!

 

[Jason B]

I have no experience with them myself, but the Lenovo TS140 is recommended as a good entry-level system by many here on the forum. NewEgg has a Xeon E3-1226v3 model w/ 4GB of RAM on sale for $300 right now. Add a Crucial 16GB RAM kit for another $100 and you have a nice system for ~$400.

Assuming you're considering a 4-disk QNAP vs. a 4-disk FreeNAS system, disks are a wash when comparing the two, 'cause you have to buy 'em either way, right?

You could boot from a USB flash drive and have 4 HDDs in a RAIDZ2 array or a pair of mirrors.

Do some serious thinking about how much storage capacity you need. And think about how comfortable you are installing and configuring software vs. using something more 'Plug-n-Play' like the QNAP. This forum has a tremendous amount of information; spend some time digging here before you write FreeNAS off.

The decision is yours, of course. Good luck!

Thanks for the quick response. I'm quite comfortable configuring hardware and software. I've built a couple systems and bought some pre-configured ones over the years. Also, I develop software for a living. Right now the issue is more about time. I don't have a lot of it at home and way too many interests outside of work.

Anyway, I was already leaning toward FreeNAS. You just provided the nudge. So, next question. The ThinkServer comes with two possible processors Xeon E3-1200 series or the Core i3. I like the processor power of the Xeon but I think for this purpose I would prefer the low power of the i3. What is your take this? Question 3. I noticed on the hardware requirements page that the hardware RAID is not recommend. For goodness sake, why not? Does FreeNAS implement some sort of software RAID?

 

[Jason B]

One more question. I was thinking to use 4 Hitachi Ultrastar 2GB disks. Whats the best RAID configuration to use to get more than 2GB of storage with parity, RAID 5?

 

[SweetAndLow]

Thanks for the quick response. I'm quite comfortable configuring hardware and software. I've built a couple systems and bought some pre-configured ones over the years. Also, I develop software for a living. Right now the issue is more about time. I don't have a lot of it at home and way too many interests outside of work.

Anyway, I was already leaning toward FreeNAS. You just provided the nudge. So, next question. The ThinkServer comes with two possible processors Xeon E3-1200 series or the Core i3. I like the processor power of the Xeon but I think for this purpose I would prefer the low power of the i3. What is your take this? Question 3. I noticed on the hardware requirements page that the hardware RAID is not recommend. For goodness sake, why not? Does FreeNAS implement some sort of software RAID?

Power usage is exactly the same when the processors are idling. One just gives you more performance when you need it. Ignore everything you think you know about power usage it's probably miss guided.

Zfs is a software raid type system. Hardware raid combined with zfs is not going to work.

With 4 disks you should use raidz2 or mirror. This will get you ~4TB of usable storage if you have 4 2TB disks.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[Chris Moore]

Anyway, I was already leaning toward FreeNAS. You just provided the nudge. So, next question. The ThinkServer comes with two possible processors Xeon E3-1200 series or the Core i3. I like the processor power of the Xeon but I think for this purpose I would prefer the low power of the i3. What is your take this? Question 3. I noticed on the hardware requirements page that the hardware RAID is not recommend. For goodness sake, why not? Does FreeNAS implement some sort of software RAID?

FreeNAS is based on BSD Unix and implements a file-system named ZFS that has support for several types of mirrors or RAID levels. The advantage of doing it in software is that the operating system can monitor the health of the drives, scrub the data and send you email reports (among other things) and it saves the need for some fancy and expensive hardware RAID card. Do some reading on ZFS, you may find that you like it.

 

[darkwarrior]

Thanks for the quick response. I'm quite comfortable configuring hardware and software. I've built a couple systems and bought some pre-configured ones over the years. Also, I develop software for a living. Right now the issue is more about time. I don't have a lot of it at home and way too many interests outside of work.

Anyway, I was already leaning toward FreeNAS. You just provided the nudge. So, next question. The ThinkServer comes with two possible processors Xeon E3-1200 series or the Core i3. I like the processor power of the Xeon but I think for this purpose I would prefer the low power of the i3. What is your take this?

Hi there,

the real question is: Will you need the CPU power of the Xeon ?
If not, you could check out the HP Microserver Gen8, as a little alternative to the ThinkServer,.
Quite a few members on the forum are using it happily , and I'm currently thinking about getting one for myself as a backup system.
Build HP Microserver Gen8

It :
- is a bit compacter / smaller compared to the Lenovo machine
- has 4 hotswap bays
- has integrated ILO/IPMI fo headless and painless operations
The entry model comes with a Intel Celeron G1610T CPU and 2/4GB of RAM for around 200€ (+ $$ for the RAM upgrade).

The box is Powerfull enough for most use-cases, when just serving up files and not thinking about VMs, bhyve or heavy plug-ins/Jails like Plex.
Of course you can find the Gen8 equipped with a Xeon, but I don't know if the price is getting closer to the TS140...

Have fun :)

 

[Spearfoot]

@Jason B, here is a reading list that ought to help you better your understanding of FreeNAS and ZFS and will probably answer all of your questions, too:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/zfs-primer.38927/
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/comprehensive-diagram-of-the-zfs-structure.38865/
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/building-burn-in-and-testing-your-freenas-system.17750/
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-to-hard-drive-burn-in-testing.21451/