newbie saying hi

[Andy Holmes]

Hi there,

Im a unix engineer who is finally biting the bullet and getting a decent nas setup for home use (media sharing, plex, mysql, pc/mobile backups and some virtual hosts). I asked at work and they havent a spare netapp available for me, so im building one from scratch based on an i3-2100 cpu and probably 12Gb ram (non-ECC sorry). I have a 4tb external USB drive which im hoping to use as a backup to my nas. Unfortunately I only have one WD 4tb red drive so ill have to initially configure as a single disk stripe, it appears. Hopefully ill upgrade to a second drive soonish so ill get another drive of the same model and create a mirrored pair, without having to recover from my external usb.
Prior to doing all of this ill make sure any valuable files are stored in multiple places on my home network.

Does this all sound *sane* please?

Also, at some point im going to use freenas to allow some iscsi attached virtual vmware servers, one of the key things for me choosing freenas.

Thanks in advance :)

 

[hugovsky]

Welcome. If you value your data, things like "...(non-ECC sorry)..." are not what you should be saying. Seems like you need to read a lot before you decide to do anything. You can start here:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?forums/new-to-freenas.5/

Read thru, at least, the 2 first topics.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Welcome Andy.

I would take a look at cyberjock's "Hardware Recommendations" thread if you plan on building from scratch:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/

Non-ECC RAM is very strongly discouraged here due to the inherent data integrity risks. If you're willing to risk permanently losing data by not using it, it begs the question of "why are you using ZFS or any redundancy in the first place?" So we don't go there except maybe on systems that are for testing only.

If you're looking for an economical place to start, the Lenovo ThinkServer TS140 offers four drive bays, 4th-gen Intel chips, and support for up to 32GB of RAM. Excellent choice for the home user looking to store media and backups.

iSCSI and virtualization, on the other hand, is one of the hardest workloads for any shared storage to handle because of the random I/O and low latency requirements. You definitely can't host VMFS from a bare-minimum 8GB/two-disk FreeNAS setup and expect it to run smoothly. If those VMs are going to have extremely light use (home lab testing, experimentation) then you can probably make it work with something like 16GB/4-disk; otherwise, you might be better served with local disk in the ESXi servers themselves.

Of course, you can always build your "home use" server on the TS140, and then when you decide to go for iSCSI, design and build a bigger beast there.

 

[Andy Holmes]

Thanks for the replies guys, i was sort of expecting that ;). This is all going to be purely home use stuff, so any files can be lost with some heartache (re copying by blu-ray/dvd/music library) form my original purchased media. The only data I cherish is my family photo library and that is and will remain in multiple (read all) my home pc's. Any playing with virtualisation will purely be light workloads, indeed, its more a case of learning by doing the various technologies, so again, no requirement for performance its just a scratch lab I will need so its pure functionality.

Saying all of this, I do believe I will move to a new build at some point ideally based on an itx sized 4 disk unit that can quietly sit under my stairs as currently I only use 900gb of storage..

 

[HoneyBadger]

I'd still consider something like the TS140. If you're in the USA, US$250 buys you the i3-4130/4GB version, then all that's needed on top of that is an additional 4GB or more of RAM, and then add hard drives.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F6EK9J2/?tag=ozlp-20

Considering the cost of buying even a desktop i3, motherboard, case, and power supply - the TS140 is very close if not ahead, and it's a proper server with ECC support.

 

[DataKeeper]

Agreed on the TS140 at least. If you look for support here running non-ECC ram you'll mostly be ignored. Yes, it's that important with FreeNAS. It doesn't matter if it's for corporate use or home use. If you're not willing to use it I'd suggest you look at alternative NAS software suites like open media vault (Debian based) with ext4 file system. It honestly would be a better/safer match for you.

 

[HoneyBadger]

ECC should be used wherever critical data is at play, not just in FreeNAS or ZFS-based systems. We're just a little more insistent about it around here.

 

[Andy Holmes]

Ok, ok.... I hear you guys :)

I cant find a TS140 but I can find an TS200, will that suffice please?

 

[DataKeeper]

Ta-Da! :D

 

[Andy Holmes]

I live in the UK though, so another Ta-Da :)

Im pretty certain I have 32Gb of ECC ram I can slot in, although id probably only use 16Gb as ill be starting off with only 4TB.

 

[Andy Holmes]

ok guys, ive just bought a new TS140, arrives in a few days :)

This will land at the same time the PC i originally bought to act as my NAS, so it will be going straight back on Ebay.... PP&PPPPP (Proper Planning and Preperation Prevents Piss Poor Performance)

The memory I have is the correct type for the TS140, but it is too slow alas, mine is PC3-8500 rather than PC3-12800E so ill have to buy more memory. Ill try and see if it works first however.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Just make sure that your RAM is "Unbuffered" and not "Registered" - the TS140 may be able to run the memory at a lower clock if it can find a common SPD setting across all sticks.

 

[Ericloewe]

I'd aim for DDR3-1600 at 1.35V. It's the best officially supported stuff in most cases, but will run slower if needed or at 1.5V if needed.

 

[Andy Holmes]

hhhm, i thought id start playing with an acer veriton and some old drives i have no need for. Im struggling to install, i think its a freenas image issue but i dont know how to get around it, it indded i can.
I take a new sancruz 8gb usb pen and install freenas to it from another usb stick with the iso on. It wont boot as the bios does not allow it as a bootable device, so i swap the procedure with differnet usb sticks, same issue. I then take both usb pens and boot my games pc up, voila, both times freenas starts. Clearly its a bios issue on my 3yr old veriton machine not understanding the GPT partition table created during the process. good job....... I cant think of a way around this issue unfortunately, ive even put the latest november 2012 bios in place and still the same. I think ill have to wait for the T140 to arrive.

 

[Andy Holmes]

Just an update really. I've received and built my first FreeNAS on the TS140 using a new tiny 16gb SanDisk stick.
Currently it only has a single WD Red NAS 4Tb drive and 4Gb of RAM, however Amazon are delivering another of the same drives and an additional 8Gb additional RAM as my 4off 8Gb DDR3 PC3-10600 Registered ECC 1.5v sticks didnt work :( Back in the draw or Ebay then I think.

As my storage requirements aren't huge, a 4tb mirror will suffice. Ill just issue a "zpool attach disk_tank gptid/d2c3b48e-fd7f-11e4-83e8-4439c453d786 'whatever the new device is'" then i'm safe. Im going to get a pair of SSD drives next month and create a ssd_tank zpool mirror with them for jails and and esx hosts I build. Which leads me on to a mistake i've made, I bought the TS140 with the g3220 cpu which will not allow hardware passthrough so this is not ideal for virtualising freenas and esxi hosts on the same server, ill keep my eyes out for another xeon 1150 chip at some point, but for now ill run vmware on a crappy i3 pc i have with 16gb of ram.

The most important thing at this point however is now backing up my nas so that I can use it with confidence, i have a 4tb external usb drive that im hoping i can create a use with zfs and im thinking I can send snapshots of my nas to, as i said, I need to read up on this.

Thanks again and sorry for boring you :p