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[Nuno Leitao]

Hello FreeNAS users,

I've read thru the specs and features, looked at youtube videos and all looks pretty good. I need central storage for my household for we all to put our digital life into it, for it to be safe. Also I need to have the freeNAS storage area to stream HD video with plex. Also I would love to learn how freenas works.

I plan to have 4 x 3TB WD red organized in raid5 (I know zfs is so much better but I have not money or inclination really to spend my money on what I think is unnecessary for my needs)

So I made my shopping list as follows:
CPU: Intel Pentium G3420
MoBo: ASUS H81M-K
RAM: 2 x ZEPPELIN 4GB DDR3 1600MHz CL9 GOLD
power supply: Seasonic SS-400ET-T3

I would like your help for 2 main questions:
.1 - Do you foresee any installation problems with the latest version of freenas?
.2 - Do you think the cpu will be able to handle the streaming of HD video?


I know that RAID 5 is not secure enough (better than raid 0 :)) but even if I had ZFS enabled hardware I would still implement daily backup. So I guess I will be safe even if the RAID blows into smithereens.

Thank you for your help!
Nuno

 

[danb35]

If you're not going to use ZFS, how to you plan to implement the RAID5 array? It's also said that UFS support will be going away in the next version (9.2) of FreeNAS, so you won't have security patches available once that is implemented. Your system meets the minimum requirements for ZFS, although the lack of ECC RAM is a negative.

As to your specific questions, I wouldn't expect a problem with installing FreeNAS on that hardware. I don't see an issue with streaming HD video either, though transcoding might be a question.

 

[Ericloewe]

Without ECC, your data will not be safe.

If you don't want ZFS, respectfully, why the hell do you want to use FreeNAS? UFS support will be dropped soon, so you won't even be able to upgrade after that.

 

[Yatti420]

You don't need boards with USB 3 or SATA 3 etc..

 

[Nuno Leitao]

Thank you for your answer. very helpful.

 

[Nuno Leitao]

Hello Eric,

Data safe is data that is backed up, not data that exists in ZFS, perhaps it is safer there than in UFS but that is another story.

But good point, if I don't have ECC enabled hardware and you all tell me that without that I should not use ZFS without it and if UFS is going out of support that it is not a good option for me to have freenas. Could you recommend what are my main options?
I will make up my mind but just if you want to share that...


Regards
Nuno

 

[Lordadmiral Drake]

Your options are:
1. Go the extra mile and buy server-grade hardware
2. Use another OS

 

[cyberjock]

I'm just gonna step in on this. I think it's important to understand something with ECC RAM vs non-ECC RAM. I do *not* advocate that everyone run ECC RAM. Do I think they should? Absolutely! The reason why I advocate ECC RAM is that bad RAM is one thing that can and has been shown to kill your pool as well as your online backups. Most people consider their backups to be "safe" since they are on a different machine. This isn't true with regards to failed non-ECC RAM and is why I advocate so hard for ECC RAM.

Now, if you understand this risk and think the cost is not worth the effort feel free to use non-ECC RAM. In fact, feel free to ignore as many of our pro-tips that we have as possible. But, if you lose your pool and the backup location due to bad RAM it is 100% your fault for the choices you make. Additionally if you ignore our other pro-tips and later have problems don't be surprised if we give you the "we told ya so!" speech and leave you hanging with no clue what you should do next. Its really that simple for us.