Need advice on FreeNAS setup

[Jason Ceballos]

Hello all,

I have a few questions about setup of my Lab and NAS at home. I am currently running FreeNAS 9.0 with this setup...
Cooler Master Case
AMD Athlon X2 AM2 Chip 2.4Ghz Dual Core
ASUS Mobo w/ Built in Gigabit LAN
8GB RAM DDR2
Added PCI Gig LAN Card for LAN Aggregation
Running FreeNAS off of a 4gb USB Drive from Micro Center
(2) 1TB Seagate Barracuda SATA Desktop HD's (7200 RPM)
(1) 320GB WD Desktop Drive (7200 RPM)
(2) 500GB WD Desktop Drives (7200 RPM)
(1) Samsung 120GB SSD

I did some research initially when setting this up and have it setup this way...
ZFS with the two terabyte drives striped, the 320 as a spare, and the SSD as the ZIL Cache drive. And finally I have the two 500gb drives setup as an iSCSI mount for a ESXi host
(A Dell Optiplex 790 w/ a Sandy Bridge Core i7 w/ HT)
128GB SSD
320GB Seagate SATA HD
8GB RAM

so I can run my VM's datastore through it. What I would like to know is what would you guys recommend for a better setup? I basically want some room to install some VM's (which I have) and make use of all the storage the best I can. My ESXi machine has a Qlogic iSCSI PCI-e card I configured to mount the iSCSI target on boot for the ESXi server.

I just ordered a Intel Quad NIC PCI-X card for the FreeNAS server and will do the same for the ESXi Dell server as well. Any suggestions on a better way to handle what I am asking would be greatly appreciated.

 

[cyberjock]

You should absolutely look at more RAM. RAM is serious business for ZFS. You have what we define as the bare minimum to function. Notice I didn't say "to perform well".

And of course, if you want more RAM you are looking at going DDR3, which means a new motherboard and CPU too(at least I believe that is true for AMD), and you are also looking at getting rid of that PCIX card you just ordered since PCI-X died years ago when PCIe was created.

So what I'm really saying is you should just trash the whole system and start over. You can reuse the hard drives, but everything else is useless.

 

[Jason Ceballos]

You should absolutely look at more RAM. RAM is serious business for ZFS. You have what we define as the bare minimum to function. Notice I didn't say "to perform well".

And of course, if you want more RAM you are looking at going DDR3, which means a new motherboard and CPU too(at least I believe that is true for AMD), and you are also looking at getting rid of that PCIX card you just ordered since PCI-X died years ago when PCIe was created.

So what I'm really saying is you should just trash the whole system and start over. You can reuse the hard drives, but everything else is useless.

Okay, so what would you recommend? I'm not saying I have a top end budget but I was thinking maybe a pentium dual core or an i3? How much RAM? 16GB?

 

[Jason Ceballos]

Okay, so what would you recommend? I'm not saying I have a top end budget but I was thinking maybe a pentium dual core or an i3? How much RAM? 16GB?

The best thing is the case I have is awesome I can squeeze the 6 drives I have in there perfect and still have room for fans to keep it cool. I still want it quiet as well you know! ;)

 

[cyberjock]

Okay, so what would you recommend? I'm not saying I have a top end budget but I was thinking maybe a pentium dual core or an i3? How much RAM? 16GB?

Go with a Supermicro X9SCM-F, Pentium G2020, and 16GB of ECC RAM(2x8GB sticks). 16GB is a good start and you can max it out later if you need to buy buying 2 more sticks of RAM.

Total cost for all 3 of those should be about $500 at the most extreme cost range. My guess is that $350 is probably about right. You get dual Intel Gb LAN, ECC RAM, 10 SATA ports I believe, and IPMI. If you need more RAM drop in 2 more 8GB sticks later. If you need more CPU power drop in a full fledged Xeon later.

 

[Jason Ceballos]

Thanks for the recommendations. I saw the link in your sig for hardware recommendations and I see what you mean. Here is where I am. I want to build a server for home use and also have it available for file sharing and running VMware products so I can practice for the VCP-Data Center Virtualization certs. The way I am running everything now with the old unit as you said is pretty much a done deal. The ESXi Host machine I am currently running (Dell Optiplex SFF 790 w/ i7 2600 and 8gb ram, 120gb ssd/320gb hdd) still works great for me. Using the recommended parts you mentioned sounds like a good place to maybe build a Windows Box and run FreeNAS inside of it in a VM? Then I can still use it for other purposes as well. And maybe get a nicer CPU in it? Sorry if I'm rambling on about this but just want to get a a decent setup. My first VMWare host was a Dell Latitude e6510 w/ a first gen i7 1.6 Ghz/2.5 Turbo w/ HT and 8gb RAM w/ 120gb ssd. I still have that laptop here as well that maybe I could use as another server again? What are your thoughts?

 

[cyberjock]

No. Don't run FreeNAS in a VM. See the stickies....

 

[Jason Ceballos]

Oh I see. Wow. Okay then. I think I will go with the parts you recommended. Thanks for your help!

 

[underpickled]

Go with a Supermicro X9SCM-F, Pentium G2020, and 16GB of ECC RAM(2x8GB sticks). 16GB is a good start and you can max it out later if you need to buy buying 2 more sticks of RAM.

Total cost for all 3 of those should be about $500 at the most extreme cost range. My guess is that $350 is probably about right. You get dual Intel Gb LAN, ECC RAM, 10 SATA ports I believe, and IPMI. If you need more RAM drop in 2 more 8GB sticks later. If you need more CPU power drop in a full fledged Xeon later.

So speaking of IPMI... I've looked around but haven't found any IPMI software. Is there a site or program you'd recommend to quickly and easily access a server via IPMI?

 

[Dusan]

So speaking of IPMI... I've looked around but haven't found any IPMI software. Is there a site or program you'd recommend to quickly and easily access a server via IPMI?

For Supermicro boards you can get IPMIView directly from Supermicro (ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/utility/IPMIView/). However, you don't really need it. You can just point your browser to the IPMI IP and you can control everything directly from the browser -- it even gives you an Java applet for the KVM.

 

[underpickled]

For Supermicro boards you can get IPMIView directly from Supermicro (ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/utility/IPMIView/). However, you don't really need it. You can just point your browser to the IPMI IP and you can control everything directly from the browser -- it even gives you an Java applet for the KVM.

Thanks! I actually figured it out once I got home (I posted that at work)... had a few hiccups but I got the hang of it now.