Real-World Performance Question - Home Use

[hispeedzintarwebz]

Greetings all - first time here.

I've been reading up as much as I can about freenas and hardware and RAID configurations, etc., and I have a few questions that I have been searching on Google as well as this forum, and have not yet found an answer that I find satisfactory, so I'm just asking...if there's something I've overlooked, I apologize, and please feel free to point me to an existing thread.

Here is what I've ordered (waiting on case to build):

CPU - AMD Sempron 145*
RAM - 8GB DDR3 1600 (Kingston, I beleive - I'm at work and it's at home)**
HDD - 6x2TB WD Red NAS drives (4 in use in ReadyNAS NV+ currently, other two are new)
Mobo - MSI 760GM-P23
Don't see how the case is relevant really, but its a Nanoxia Deep Silence 4.

Notes:
*Successfully unlocked 2nd core and has so far passed several stress tests, so I'm in all practicality working with a dual-core Athlon X2 @ 2.8 GHz

**Non-ECC RAM - Yes, I've read up on the risks...given that my data would be inconvenient to replace, but not crucial, I've elected to carry forward with regular backups

So here are my main questions:

RAIDZ2 vs. RAID 1+0 - I've been reading a lot about performance issues with RAIDZ2 but how it is safer given the 2-disk parity. I will mainly be using this NAS to stream (and possibly transcode to one client max) DVD/720/1080 rips and store things like disc images and documents. Most of what I read seems to talk about performance from an enterprise standpoint - given that there will be (at the VERY most) 3 or 4 other computers accessing the data, will using RAIDZ2 really hold me back as a home user? I've also read that RAIDZ2 still has good read performance - and I need to read quickly more than I will need to write quickly. (This is the question I had the hardest time trying to find an answer that is suitable for my situation. See poll.)

CPU Choice - I ordered this part before I read about transcoding. If I install Plex (which to my understanding forces me to use ZFS over UFS) what are the chances I can transcode a 1080p rip to my Roku without having to upgrade to a more expensive FX processor? I'd like to avoid this if at all possible, but given that I have unlocked a stable 2nd core I think a <$40 gamble wasn't that bad. (Also had a hard time with this one researching on my own - I got everything from "Core i3 minimum!!!" to "My single-core handles one client just fine!!!" and I'm not sure which is closer to the truth...I'd love to hear your opinions.)

NIC - I just ordered an Intel NIC from Amazon as sort of an insurance policy after reading a few things about Realtek drivers and BSD. I'm assuming I will disable the onboard NIC in BIOS prior to installing FreeNAS?(I've found several threads regarding the NIC, but aside from advice to get an Intel Gigabit adapter, I haven't read much on the BIOS settings...I could have missed it however.)

I guess most of my questions come from the fact that I'm a home user with non-critical data that while inconvenient to replace isn't "wife-left-me-because-I-lost-the-wedding-pictures-grade." Most of the articles and threads I've found are making a big deal out of things that I would estimate would be less of a concern for someone in my situation - and I could be wrong which is why I'm here.

Many thanks!

 

[Nick2253]

First off, the performance issues with RAIDZ2 are not as monumental as you make them out to be. You will saturate your gigabit network bandwidth far before you hit the read/write cap from RAIDZ2, much less RAID10.

Transcoding is a mixed bag. It really depends on your file formats, the number of clients, etc. Your Sempron is probably not up to the task. For comparison, the PassMark score for the Sempron 145 is 807, while the PassMark score for a Celeron G1820 (probably the absolute minimum that can reliably transcode) is 2697.

An Intel NIC is the right choice. I'm assuming you made sure that it was compatible with your motherboard before ordering. You won't *have* to disable the onboard NIC, but I would recommend doing so.

A note on ECC: memory failure in FreeNAS does not generally cause gradual failure. Instead, it causes sudden and almost always irreversible failure. If you choose to run without ECC, that's your choice, but don't just say "I'll get to those backups one day." If you care about that info, back it up RIGHT NOW!

 

[hispeedzintarwebz]

Excellent info - much appreciated. Will the unlocked core in the Sempron help pick up the slack, or pick up enough slack?

I currently have all of my data on my existing ReadyNAS as well as another set of drives - the other set of drives is what I'm planning to use to schedule regular backups from day one, so I think I'm avoiding it being a "I'll get to those backups one day" situation. I also mirror small files like documents in DropBox, so if I sechedule backups weekly, at the very least I'd be missing out on 2 rips or so. Am I thinking that through properly?

 

[Ericloewe]

First of all, welcome. You say you've analyzed the risks involved in going with non-ECC memory, so I'll spare you the details. Just keep in mind that ECC is not particularly expensive and can save you headaches later (some weird issues have been known to be caused by bad RAM, so it's one less thing to troubleshoot) and save you time if you end up having to re-acquire all your files (even if they're non-essential). You'd also get a relatively safe place to keep important data. Also remember that RSync and ZFS replication will happily propagate data corrupted by bad RAM, destroying your backups, most likely.

Now, RAIDZ2: Generally, unless you're running VMs stored on the server, RAIDZ2 on modern hardware will easily saturate GbE. It's the preferred option since it balances redundancy (any two disks may fail), cost (2 drives' worth, so 100%, 50%, 25% extra for 4, 6 and 10 drives, respectively) and performance (plenty for typical file server use).

CPU: I'm not familiar with most of AMD's lineup, but it should be enough for transcoding one, maybe two streams. Also: UFS is pretty much deprecated by now and will be dropped in the 9.2.2 branch, so forget FreeNAS and UFS. (Why you'd want FreeNAS and not want ZFS is beyond me)

NIC: As you know, Intel will work pretty much perfectly. Feel free to decide whether or not to disable the onboard Realtek, it shouldn't make a difference (but you do have it show up whenever you're configuring something).

 

[hispeedzintarwebz]

Okay, I'm pretty settled on RAIDZ2...a lot of what I was reading made it sound like a deal-breaker...now so far I'm getting a mixed bag on the processor. I guess I'll give it a go and get an FX4300 down the line if necessary.

Which leads me to another question - how well does BSD handle a change in processor? It's been an awful long time since I've swapped one out as compared to making a new build, and even then I haven't used BSD.

And as for the ECC RAM - Aside from reading up on the risk, I also didn't discover the issue until I had already bought and received my motherboard and RAM...Motherboard, from what I can tell, doesn't handle ECC RAM, so I'm sort of stuck. That's about $85 in equipment I already have.

Assuming that a RAM error messes up my backup - is the entire backup gone, or will it only affect certain files/folders? If so, I can live with that. If it ruins the whole backup drive, then I'm going to spend a little more time and possibly money fixing this issue. (Note that my backup disks are not in any pool or array.)

 

[Ericloewe]

Okay, I'm pretty settled on RAIDZ2...a lot of what I was reading made it sound like a deal-breaker...now so far I'm getting a mixed bag on the processor. I guess I'll give it a go and get an FX4300 down the line if necessary.

Which leads me to another question - how well does BSD handle a change in processor? It's been an awful long time since I've swapped one out as compared to making a new build, and even then I haven't used BSD.

And as for the ECC RAM - Aside from reading up on the risk, I also didn't discover the issue until I had already bought and received my motherboard and RAM...Motherboard, from what I can tell, doesn't handle ECC RAM, so I'm sort of stuck. That's about $85 in equipment I already have.

Assuming that a RAM error messes up my backup - is the entire backup gone, or will it only affect certain files/folders? If so, I can live with that. If it ruins the whole backup drive, then I'm going to spend a little more time and possibly money fixing this issue. (Note that my backup disks are not in any pool or array.)

Hardware changes are generally unproblematic. CPU changes in particular should not cause any trouble at all (regardless of OS, if it weren't for Windows' activation checks.).

As for the damaged backups, it depends. If you've got bad RAM (as in, a portion is permanently bad), you may end up with most files corrupted. A single, random bit flip would probably only damage one file - but if it hits the wrong file, it can be really problematic.

 

[hispeedzintarwebz]

Okay, so I determined that I have a family member who can use an internet browsing machine...so I'm going to use the parts I already have to build that for them.

SO I just ordered these:
CPU: AMD FX 6300
Mobo: ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3 (Unbuffered ECC Support)
RAM: Crucial 2x8GB (16GB) Unbuffered ECC UDIMM
All else is the same.

Is this more in line with what I will need? I'm thinking the quad-core CPU will take care of the transcoding, and the ECC (albeit unbuffered) RAM should prevent errors or bit-flips.

Just couldn't pull the trigger on a xeon setup and also wanted to stay with the smaller form factor.

 

[cyberjock]

Frankly, if you are unlocking a CPU for a server you've kind of failed "servers 101". You don't play games with stuff that you are expecting to be a service-in-a-box system.

After reading that I stopped reading the rest of the thread. That idea is so preposterous I really wasn't about to read any more.

 

[Ericloewe]

Okay, so I determined that I have a family member who can use an internet browsing machine...so I'm going to use the parts I already have to build that for them.

SO I just ordered these:
CPU: AMD FX 6300
Mobo: ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3 (Unbuffered ECC Support)
RAM: Crucial 2x8GB (16GB) Unbuffered ECC UDIMM
All else is the same.

Is this more in line with what I will need? I'm thinking the quad-core CPU will take care of the transcoding, and the ECC (albeit unbuffered) RAM should prevent errors or bit-flips.

Just couldn't pull the trigger on a xeon setup and also wanted to stay with the smaller form factor.

Sounds reasonable. Don't worry about it being unbuffered - it'll always be unbuffered in consumer stuff. The only difference is that registered memory has buffer chips (registers, they're called) that allow for more RAM chips to be connected to the memory controller - it's only used in medium and large servers.

 

[joeschmuck]

Your setup is now similar to mine. I've had no issues with it and can hit 90+MB/sec transfer speeds sustained. You could have gone with the FX4300 and saved a few bucks, even that CPU is overkill for FreeNAS but the pricing is very good. Do not underclock it. With the RAM, you were not very specific about it but choose the lowest speed the RAM supports (hopefully 1333 MHz) as this will save you some heat in your case and you will not notice any speed losses. Think air flow when you put your parts into the case, you want to draw air across your hard drives to keep them cool.

 

[hispeedzintarwebz]

Thanks for the input. The memory is Crucial, 2 8GB sticks part CT102472BA160B. It's DDR3 1600, but I plan on running it at 1333, not only because of joeschmuck's suggestion above but because I would have to overclock it to run it any faster. (I've OC'd processors before, but never memory so I'm not very comfortable with that.)

I couldn't pass up the 6300 considering it was only $10 more at the time I ordered it.

But seriously thanks for all the input, and for (mostly) understanding that some of us are doing this for fun, to learn something new and for something to do and build, and are willing to take a few risks. Or that we're asking about unlocked cores because we ordered parts before discovering additional info (i.e. transcoding) and aren't working with vital data.

Looking forward to getting this together this weekend.

 

[joeschmuck]

Also realize that your CPU will sit almost idle all the time and barely look like it's working. I doubt you will ever go over 25% usage unless you encrypt your drives. Just keep this in mind if you ever start to think "Why isn't FreeNAS using all my CPU". Also, when configuring your FreeNAS, enable the tunables as this will optimize your memory allocation and speed things up. I'd also recommend running FreeNAS 9.2.1.3 and waiting for 9.2.1.6 to hit the streets. It's almost there, maybe a few more weeks.

 

[hispeedzintarwebz]

Just out of curiosity, why 9.2.1.3? Why would I rather go from that to 1.6 as opposed to 1.5 to 1.6?

I'll look into tuneables as well.

 

[joeschmuck]

There are some bugs in 9.2.1.4 and 9.2.1.5 that you might not like. I think there are about 6 items left to fix in 9.2.1.6 as of 2 days ago so you could hold out for that or do like I have and use 9.2.1.3 which seems to work for the most part. It's not problem free depending on what you are doing but for my simple purposes it is. It's just some friendly advice, not slamming FreeNAS or anything. If you find that 9.2.1.3 is causing some issue for you, you can very easily upgrade to 9.2.1.5 if you like.

 

[tio]

Greetings all - first time here.
ECC RAM - Yes, I've read up on the risks...given that my data would be inconvenient to replace, but not crucial, I've elected to carry forward with regular backups

I guess most of my questions come from the fact that I'm a home user with non-critical data that while inconvenient to replace isn't "wife-left-me-because-I-lost-the-wedding-pictures-grade." Most of the articles and threads I've found are making a big deal out of things that I would estimate would be less of a concern for someone in my situation - and I could be wrong which is why I'm here.

Many thanks!

The one big issue you've neglected here is if you run backups, what if the backup data is corrupted due to having crap RAM not safeguarding the ZFS data?

ZFS relies blindly on having good RAM. There is no real time saving way to check to see if each one of your files is going to be ok.

Weigh up the time, vs the amount in money to get ECC RAM, hell even 2nd hand RAM in 4GB sticks is piss cheap on eBay with little to no difference over conventional un ECC RAM.

Just as an example. I host a media centre on my FreeNAS box. I have 18TB (12TB usable) in a Rz2. For me to rerip every single one of my own blurays and DVD films would take me nearly 6 months, i invested in ECC RAM and called it a day.

The question here is your time worth so little?

 

[joeschmuck]

@tio
You should read the entire thread before posting.

 

[hispeedzintarwebz]

Okay, everything seems to be up and running pretty well (knock on wood). I've gotten Plex working, and I'm in the process of scanning all my movie rips now.

I've scheduled scrubs, and I was starting to schedule SMART tests, but from what I can find it takes a long time to run the tests and that they shouldn't be run often...that being said, since I got my email working and sent a test message successfully, and with SMART enabled on all 6 drives, is there anything else I need to do to have errors reported to me automagically?

Also, I'm having an issue with my ASUS motherboard - @joeschmuck you have the same one maybe you can point me in the right direction - even with "removable devices" first in the boot priority, I have to press F8 and go to the boot menu to boot off the USB. Not a huge issue right now considering I have it up and running and won't have to reboot often, but should I lose power or something of the sort (I'm in the process of selecting a UPS for this machine - I've never used one before) I don't want to have to reconnect a monitor and keyboard to boot the NAS.

Which brings me to another question: If I lose power without a UPS (which I will remedy soon) will my volume become corrupt, or will it piece everything back together when I reboot?

 

[joeschmuck]

Well there is a lot of questions there... Lets see...

1) The SMART Tests in my opinion should be setup to run the Short Test each night. You just need to pick a time and set it. The Long Test should be run once a week, and I feel it causes more drive wear if you run it more frequently than that. Setup the testing so the short and long do not overlap. Typically the short test will take 2 minutes so while a long test could take a few hours depending on your specific drive. If you have other things like a scheduled backup of a computer system, it is best practice to reduce any overlapping. Attached is how my SMART Tests are scheduled. I run computer backups starting at the beginning of a day (12 AM).

2) The USB Boot Priority, I'm conducting an extended test on 9.2.1.3 and am 69 days up and running, no reboots. I have one issue which I reported and I'm waiting to see if the problem comes back, which means I won't be shutting down my system to see if there was something unique about my BIOS setup, although if you do get hung-up where your system isn't working properly, I will abort the test. So lets quickly talk about the USB connectors on this MB... First, only use the USB 2.0 connectors (*not the blue USB 3.0) and I have used the ones below the RJ45 jack without issue. I am currently using a USB 2.0 header inside the machine so I could tuck away my flash drive and it won't get broken off when someone (probably me) walks past it and hits the flash drive. The one quirky thing I noticed is if you remove the USB Flash drive and power on the MB, you affect the Boot Priority as the MB doesn't see the flash drive now. Reinserting the flash drive will not restore the boot priority so you have to set it up again. If you leave the flash drive installed then you should have no issues with this. My unit is headless as well and sits in a nice cool basement.

3) UPS... You can see what I use in my tagline. The USB cord from the UPS also plugs into the USB port above the RJ45 connector. If you loose power without the UPS there is a possibility your data could become corrupt, that it true for any computer system with a hard drive and the risk is no different. If you have reliable power then you will probably not have any issues. I would however turn off your system during severe weather.

* I don't have anything bad to say about the USB 3.0 connections, I just haven't used them and honestly see no need to use them at this point in time.

 

[hispeedzintarwebz]

Thanks for the info - please don't abort your test...the machine is running very smoothly, and I don't see any reason to reboot it.

I also opted to not use the USB 3.0 ports, and I'm just using one of the ports under the PS/2 mouse/keyboard connector. I've noticed the issue I was having both when I shut down the machine with the USB in and when I add it after the fact, the latter of which made sense to me why I didn't see it in the boot priority.

It's like the MB doesn't see the USB at boot unless I force the boot menu...whether it was still in when I shut it down previously or I inserted it just prior to booting, the MB seems to bypass it and go straight to "please insert suitable boot media" or something similar...which I've never had a problem with except this MB. I even used the same USB flash drive in the previous MB to boot FreeNas with no issues.

It's definitely not a huge deal, although if I lost power or had to reboot it for any other reason, I would have to reconnect the keyboard and a monitor to be able to force the boot menu. Luckily I don't plan on doing that often at all.

Thanks for the advice about SMART testing. I'll set that schedule up in addition to my scheduled scrubs. Aside from SMART tests and scrubs, are there any other scheduled activities you suggest?

My UPS should arrive Wednesday. Once I get that installed I'll feel pretty good about the reliability of the setup. When I first set out on this that wasn't a huge priority, but this has definitely gotten a little more serious over the previous week. I'm assuming FreeNAS knows (via USB) when the UPS kicks in and shuts down accordingly?

Thanks again for taking the time to answer my questions.

 

[joeschmuck]

There is a minor setup you need to do for the UPS but it's fairly easy. If you post which model you have ordered, someone should be able to tell you which setup to use.

I tried to use the USB connectors where the keyboard/mouse are typically located but during a reboot it would fail (if memory severs me correctly.) So I recommend that you hook up your keyboard and monitor to your system and play around with it until you can get your system to reboot properly. You will need that for when you need to reboot your system. A reboot will occur for any software upgrades or power failure or just because you are troubleshooting a problem and you need to reboot it. It's best to fix it up front. I do however wish I had a KVM over IP adapter but those things are very expensive. I wonder if I could adapt a Raspberry PI to do that, be a KVM over IP adapter. Hum....

Since 9.2.1.6 is about to hit the streets, I'll drop my server and bring it out of the basement and let you know of the exact BIOS setup I have that way you have it setup correctly. Yea, I've never seen a BIOS boot priority quite like this one before either, it's unique but once it's setup it will function fine. Also, are you running the latest BIOS version? You probably are but just thought I'd ask.

As for setting up any other routine tasks or whatnot, nope. If you turned on the tunables and setup SMART and setup your Network and email configurations, you pretty much have it all done. The email will toss you an email whenever there might be a problem because lets face it, we don't all log into your NAS to check on how it's working each day. You are likely to get a few emails in the beginning but afew a few days you should not see any emails unless there is something to note. Right now I periodically get a Plex warning message which I can ignore but it's when I get the message about a drive failure that I want to take action on right away. The email can save your butt.

BTW: Nice tagline, somehow it looks so familiar. ;)