New to FreeNAS and have some questions

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

I am new to FreeNAS and I want to replace the current NAS that I have as I am just unhappy with its performance. Currently I have a WD MyCloud EX4 and it doesn't have a linux kernel to support an updated plex media server so I am stuck with using a old version and not to mention half my movies and TV shows don't want to play on my mobile device but play on my TV just fine.

Regardless, how important is it to use ECC RAM? I've watched a few videos of setups and configurations of FreeNAS and people are using basic computer setups with non ECC memory but another video I just watched involved a guy redoing his build because commenters in his video warned him that not using ECC memory may cost him dearly as ZFS can have a lot of memory errors resulting in data loss. Granted this particular video was posted in 2014. Is this still a common issue?

I was debating on doing a low end ryzen (8C/16T) build for my NAS and I am waiting for version 10 to be released.

So is ECC memory still the way to go? And also side question; how easy is it to setup plex on FreeNAS 10? Do I have to use a VM setup?

Thanks for the help guys.

 

[Jailer]

So is ECC memory still the way to go?

If you value your data, absolutely.

 

[Huib]

ECC is highly reccommended.
It's not that FreeNAS is such a piece of crap that it has a lot of memory errors. That's just not the case.
It's that FreeNAS has data integrity and bitrot protection as their highest priority. If you use non ECC memory you basically lose the additional protection. In that case you could just as well use some linux (without zfs) or windows distro.

in simple terms (as in not extensive):
FreeNAS does a lot of checksum checks. These are calculated. If the checksum differs from the data, it tries to repair the errors. But if you have memory errors (yes they occur) how can FreeNAS (or zfs) be sure what is wrong? The data or the checksum? This is most critical when you are replacing a failed drive and the new drive has to be re-silvered (the data has to be recreated based on data from the other disks you have).

You could argue that if you make a lot of backups this is less of an issue but that might not be true. If your data corrupts (due to bitrot) on your FreeNAS and you back up that data, the backup will also be corrupted.

Regarding plex, you have to install this in a jail or install it as a plugin. You can not install this directly into the root system.
It is not as easy as doing it on windows or linux but it is doable. If you don't like to "tinker" with this kind of stuff (as in read posts, try to understand them and then troubleshoot it if it doesn't work the firts time) you might want to try something else.
Some command line stuff is needed in most cases.

This might however change in FreeNAS 10 as this supports docker. I didn't play with this yet but from what I've read this will be much easier!

As a last remark, I'm not sure if ryzen will be supported from the start.
It would be wise to try to get that confirmed before you buy that platform.