Need Advice for my Freenas Box

[InGenetic]

Dear all,

I'm trying to make freenas box on my office, using dual core pc and 6gb ram,
is it ok ? or not good ? or not recommended ? i need some advice .
i'm planning to change from dual core to i3 and 8gb ram .. but for now .. i'm running with this spec.
This freenas will be accessing for 60-80 user . with data direct load from freenas, the data mostly is excel file and some drawing file like .dwg.
please give me some advice
system information and reporting's attached .

Thanks n regards,

 

[Ericloewe]

60-80 users without even meeting minimum requirements? That's insane. It sounds like you're not planning on ECC either, which is equally insane in an office setting.

At the very least, you're looking at a variation of the typical i3 43xx, Supermicro motherboard and 16GB of ECC RAM as an absolute baseline. Even then, performance may be unacceptable.

 

[L]

I would work towards getting to upgrade as soon as possible. Even though you have 60-80 users, how many would be simultaneous? Excel docs are usually pretty tiny, but if you have all 80 trying to access the same file at the same time you might run into trouble. But ... If you have 5-10 users hitting different files and those files are on the small side(less than a MB) you should probably be ok until upgrade is possible.

You should be able to predict your working set size by seeing how many open files, and what size.. Those will want to stay cached in ram.

 

[cyberjock]

Well, considering you aren't even meeting the minimum requirements, it's "not good"....

If you read the hardware requirements section of our documentation it says 8GB minimum, regardless of pool size and/or the number of users.

Edit: With 60-80 simultaneous users you are certainly going to want 16GB at the minimum, and perhaps more. With 60-80 simultaneous users I'd recommend nothing less than 24GB of RAM, with 32GB of RAM being a better option.

 

[leenux_tux]

inGenetic,

If your having between 60 and 80 concurrent users it may be worth thinking about going for a proper "purchased" system with support from IX Systems (http://www.freenas.org/for-business/).

 

[InGenetic]

Here, mostly ,every users hitting different files and those files are on upto 5mb , except for dwg file.. it could be upto 10-20mb,
i've just read about the hardware recommendation last night (http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/) ,
I think as i'm still noobs for freenas, i would plan to make a small system first for trial error while learn how to set the best permission setting in here.

and i see the supermicro motherboard is mostly people use for freenas, unfortunately. in my country it's not so easy to get that brand , just a little people provide supermicro and i don't know if any service center here for supermicro, because i need to get support quickly if something happen with that board, if don't any service center here, i'm affraid if i have to wait for a couple days or weeks to get the the new motherboard to replace it. different with other motherboard brands like gigabyte, asus, msi , ecs, intel , they have also a service center here.

and the other reason is because i just try to learn and build freeenas box, making a small system working good.. i plan to build it with low cost budget first.
before i build it for big freenas system.

and if i'm not going to upgrade the processor to i3 and add more ram on my small system that i have now, i plan to build with this spec :

motherboard :intel DBS1200V3RPS intel Socket 1150
Processor : still don't know .. any idea ?
Ram : 1x V-GEN 8Gb PC 12800 / 1600 ECC Register Memory
HDD : 2 x Seagate Constellation ES SATA III 2 TB 7200 RPM for server Harddisk ( mirror )
Case cpu : still have no idea ..

i need more advice about that specification ..

Thanks n regards,

 

[Ericloewe]

No LGA 1150 processor takes registered memory...

You can't just throw stuff together and expect it to work, especially with such brands as V-GEN (seriously, I'd never heard of such a brand - this alone should scare you away from it).

The hardware recommendations sticky details the cheapest system you can assemble that will still work - and it's not much more expensive than a similar desktop system.

 

[gpsguy]

If this is the case, consider buying two motherboards, so you have a spare, if needed.

I did that with my latest desktop replacement. If the mobo dies, I've got an exact spare on hand.

and i see the supermicro motherboard is mostly people use for freenas, unfortunately. in my country it's not so easy to get that brand , just a little people provide supermicro and i don't know if any service center here for supermicro, because i need to get support quickly if something happen with that board, if don't any service center here, i'm affraid if i have to wait for a couple days or weeks to get the the new motherboard to replace it.

 

[mjws00]

The Intel mobo is a safe bet. It just costs more than the supermicro and has no free ipmi. I bought mine for the instant local support as well. An ASUS server board would be my second choice. In all cases you still should buy memory and cpu's off their HCL. Good luck.

 

[messerchmidt]

You do not need to buy a truenas implementation unless you want the support,etc.
if it is just excel,etc - almost everything will be overkill. Better to have more than not enough.

an i3+supermicro+16gb ecc+WD RE harddrives (&seasonic power supply) is more than enough.

Run a raid-z 2 or 3 for redundency, and ALWAYS do a backup off site on a regular basis.

 

[Ericloewe]

You do not need to buy a truenas implementation unless you want the support,etc.
if it is just excel,etc - almost everything will be overkill. Better to have more than not enough.

an i3+supermicro+16gb ecc+WD RE harddrives (&seasonic power supply) is more than enough.

Run a raid-z 2 or 3 for redundency, and ALWAYS do a backup off site on a regular basis.

For 5 users? You're right.
For 60-80 users? It's the bare minimum. The RE HDDs are probably not worth the money, though.

 

[anodos]

You'll want a motherboard / CPU that will support registered memory. This is because with 80 users, CIFS, and lots of small files you may find yourself in a situation where you need lots more RAM than you anticipated. It's better to have room to expand in case you vastly underestimate your needs. You may also want a setup with multiple vdevs (depending on number of concurrent users, how people use the shared folders, what programs you're using, etc.)

 

[9C1 Newbee]

Will you be using a single Gb interface? How much data will you serve? How many files? Is this system strictly storage, or will it be running plugins and stuff like that?

 

[InGenetic]

Will you be using a single Gb interface? How much data will you serve? How many files? Is this system strictly storage, or will it be running plugins and stuff like that?

for now i'm using 1 Gb interface NIC, how can i use more than one single gb nic ? coz i'm not understand it.
for data right so far still around 800gb . and this freenas only will be a storage . no plugins or else .

Regards,

 

[InGenetic]

Dear all,

Can i have a recommendation hardware to built a freenas pc with low cost budget ?
using motherboard with brand like : Asus - MSi - Gigabyte - Intel - Asrock - Biostar - Foxconn because it's hard for to find brand supermicro here.

Regards,

 

[cyberjock]

Not really, because those aren't true "server grade".

As soon as you want to exclude Supermicro, you are pretty much on your own at that point.

 

[gpsguy]

Look at joeschmuck's signature for his build. It's an Asus desktop mobo. You'd need to add a PCI/e NIC.


Sent from my phone

 

[cyberjock]

I'm gonna laugh at all the people that use that board when 10.x comes out and it won't work. Not saying I have evidence that is the case, I'm just expecting it to suddenly go badly for a lot of people.

 

[9C1 Newbee]

for now i'm using 1 Gb interface NIC, how can i use more than one single gb nic ? coz i'm not understand it.
for data right so far still around 800gb . and this freenas only will be a storage . no plugins or else .

Regards,

I just wanted to make sure there wasn't something significant we were missing.

You can team up NICs for higher network throughput. Or you could have gone with a 10Gb NIC. If you were doing either one of those, you might need better hardware.

800GB is really kind of small. So no issues there.

Not using plugins helps a bit as well.

Also, anodos has some really good questions. Part of me thinks if you went with the mandatory minimum (8 GB ECC, etc) you might be ok. But with 60-80 users it could become not ok very fast. After all, the NIC is probably the weak link. So if you think a Gb NIC can do the job, then I would think a small but proper system could do it.

If it were my money, and my business, I'd go with a solution I KNOW would work. I have already been burn't going the "cheap" way. Please let us know what happens. I'm curious to see how this goes.

 

[InGenetic]

is there any other option motherboard that using ECC RAM for low/middle budget, with intel processor ??

Regards,