Unsure if my current hardware will work

[chravis]

Hi all! New guy here. I'm trying to repurpose an old Windows Home Server 2011 system into a FreeNAS system. Originally I saw phrases like "FreeNAS will work on just about anything" or "want to put that old computer to use?" so I figured this would work no problem. I have not actually started anything yet and am trying to do my research before I blow away my WHS (I've already backed up all the data onto an external drive). I guess what concerns me is the discussions I see about ECC vs non-ECC RAM. I'm not real familiar with that, but from what I can tell ZFS really wants ECC RAM. However, I'm pretty sure my basic hardware from 2011 doesn't support ECC but I'm really not sure. I've tried looking at various tech sheets here and there. This is not a very beefy system. Primary use will be file backup and Plex. I have less than 1TB of data and media combined.

Here's the hardware that I have. Should I or should I not use FreeNAS with this hardware? I'm almost certain it will install and run, but am I headed for trouble?

GIGABYTE GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128495

Intel Core i3-2100 Sandy Bridge Dual-Core 3.1 GHz LGA 1155 65W BX80623I32100 Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2000
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115078

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-4GBXL
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231425

 

[melloa]

Some people would say that ECC is not needed. I started with desktop non-ecc builds and run it for years, but after reading about ZFS and understand how it works, I got to the conclusion that ECC is a must have.

Yes, non-ecc memory will work fine, but you can have data corruption.

4GB (2 x 2GB)

Also 4Gb is not enough to run FreeNAS. Check the minimum requirements.

You can for sure get old server's hardware cheap on eBay and build you a good box. For instance, my new FreeNAS is running on X9SRL-F (*) with an E5-1620 (*) and 32 Gb ECC (*), for a total of about $250 plus the chassis and disks, you can have a nice server.

Of you can get a small server like: 2U X9DR3-LN4F+ (*) or Better option (*), for under $600 with shipping.

Take a look at the resources tab above and check the hardware requirements or click here.

(*) I have no association with the sellers. Links are only examples.

 

[chravis]

Some people would say that ECC is not needed. I started with desktop non-ecc builds and run it for years, but after reading about ZFS and understand how it works, I got to the conclusion that ECC is a must have.

Yes, non-ecc memory will work fine, but you can have data corruption.



Also 4Gb is not enough to run FreeNAS. Check the minimum requirements.

You can for sure get old server's hardware cheap on eBay and build you a good box. For instance, my new FreeNAS is running on X9SRL-F (*) with an E5-1620 (*) and 32 Gb ECC (*), for a total of about $250 plus the chassis and disks, you can have a nice server.

Of you can get a small server like: 2U X9DR3-LN4F+ (*) or Better option (*), for under $600 with shipping.

Take a look at the resources tab above and check the hardware requirements or click here.

(*) I have no association with the sellers. Links are only examples.

Thank you so much for the quick response. I should have mentioned that my system now has 12 GB of that type of RAM, so I guess the amount is ok but the type is not. I'll have to put a pause on my install until I figure out what I'm going to do about the hardware.

 

[AndroGen]

I am at very similar stage, and try to grasp as much information from the forum as possible
Gladly, there are plenty of messages giving clear guidance.
You might also have a look on some of them. I like this one - it helped me a lot to get some thoughts cleared:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

 

[Heracles]

Hi chravis,

To increase from 4GB to 12GB was the most important improvement. Doing that, you improved from "asking for trouble" to "should run".

About ECC vs Non-ECC, it is a gamble that you can take, like many other did. As for me, I did not because I want to rely on my NAS for every single bit of data I have. I built myself a private cloud with it and rely on it to host my data, do my backup, offsite replication, etc.

The gamble about ECC vs Non-ECC is a risk for corruption. What can you do if your pool ends up corrupted ? You can rip again your DVDs and re-download everything ? Then a corrupted pool will surely be annoying, but you will not loose everything. The consequences not being that bad, you can take the gamble. Also, be aware that non-ECC memory can corrupt data in any system, not only in FreeNAS and ZFS. The thing with ZFS is depending what will get corrupted, you can loose it all at once while on regular filesystem, the consequence will more likely be a single file or a filesystem that can be repaired more easily.

Up to you to make your mind...

 

[SweetAndLow]

Yes, non-ecc memory will work fine, but you can have data corruption.

Hi chravis,

To increase from 4GB to 12GB was the most important improvement. Doing that, you improved from "asking for trouble" to "should run".

About ECC vs Non-ECC, it is a gamble that you can take, like many other did. As for me, I did not because I want to rely on my NAS for every single bit of data I have. I built myself a private cloud with it and rely on it to host my data, do my backup, offsite replication, etc.

The gamble about ECC vs Non-ECC is a risk for corruption. What can you do if your pool ends up corrupted ? You can rip again your DVDs and re-download everything ? Then a corrupted pool will surely be annoying, but you will not loose everything. The consequences not being that bad, you can take the gamble. Also, be aware that non-ECC memory can corrupt data in any system, not only in FreeNAS and ZFS. The thing with ZFS is depending what will get corrupted, you can loose it all at once while on regular filesystem, the consequence will more likely be a single file or a filesystem that can be repaired more easily.

Up to you to make your mind...

This is all incorrect. Not having ecc will not corrupt your data. Zfs without ecc is exactly the same as any other filesystem without ecc. Ecc is great and mostly provided a super stable system with higher up time. Ecc is also the standard for any system that most of the people on this forum will suggest to build because those motherboard are actually good.

The gigabit motherboard you have is a gamble. It's a very poor quality board, it has audio that is unneeded, HDMI that is unneeded and the network chipset is realtek. Realtek nice are absolutely terrible and are very slow if they even work at all. You can always buy a pcie Intel nic for $30. You should see if it boots and play around. Making a boot usb takes a couple minutes and then your are off to have fun.

 

[Heracles]

Hi SweetNLow,

Not having ECC will not actively corrupt the data, but will leave accidentally corrupted data as is, corrupted.

As long as the non-ECC RAM does not accidentally corrupt any data, the non-ECC and ECC are equivalent. But when an accident happen with non-ECC RAM, the random corruption that happened in RAM will be propagated in ZFS and depending of what ended up corrupted, consequences can be major. When such a random corruption happen in ECC RAM, ECC will fix it / flag it, protecting the ZFS and preventing that corruption to reach the ZFS pool.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Hi SweetNLow,

Not having ECC will not actively corrupt the data, but will leave accidentally corrupted data as is, corrupted.

As long as the non-ECC RAM does not accidentally corrupt any data, the non-ECC and ECC are equivalent. But when an accident happen with non-ECC RAM, the random corruption that happened in RAM will be propagated in ZFS and depending of what ended up corrupted, consequences can be major. When such a random corruption happen in ECC RAM, ECC will fix it / flag it, protecting the ZFS and preventing that corruption to reach the ZFS pool.

Incorrect the scrub of death concept is not accurate. Zfs will not corrupt your data

 

[AndroGen]

you might have a look on a nice collection to read in addition (nicely provided by @SweetAndLow
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/i-am-noob.45825/#post-311007

 

[l@e]

Hi SweetNLow,

Not having ECC will not actively corrupt the data, but will leave accidentally corrupted data as is, corrupted.

As long as the non-ECC RAM does not accidentally corrupt any data, the non-ECC and ECC are equivalent. But when an accident happen with non-ECC RAM, the random corruption that happened in RAM will be propagated in ZFS and depending of what ended up corrupted, consequences can be major. When such a random corruption happen in ECC RAM, ECC will fix it / flag it, protecting the ZFS and preventing that corruption to reach the ZFS pool.

The risk during one time access is the same apart of that single bit that can be corrected and not pased to zfs pool, but if you care of the data you might want to set scrubs of the pool periodicaly, and that’s is where the ecc should be a must.
During scrubs data will be checked for consistency and if you do at least once or twice monthly, using non ecc will have greater risk of corrupting the data stored. Zfs is not like other filesystems so you can not say it is same as any pc without ecc ram.

 

[chravis]

Wow lots of great replies. Thank you so much! I think I'll do the work of convincing my wife I need new hardware. I don't know how long this will take, and I was really excited about getting the server up and running, so bummer! But I'd rather have a system I can depend on and not take my chances. I think my tower (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352010) is still suitable and will provide me with plenty of room to upgrade. Now on to figure out which components to look into (and do alot of reading in the hardware requirements document).
Thanks again everyone!

 

[melloa]

This is all incorrect. Not having ecc will not corrupt your data.

So, keep me honest here, wouldn't ZFS use the memory to store in flight data? Without the correction provided by the ECC memory, wouldn't that data temporarily stored stored have the risk of getting corrupted? Appreciated your guidance as you have must more experience than I :)

 

[l@e]

So, keep me honest here, wouldn't ZFS use the memory to store in flight data? Without the correction provided by the ECC memory, wouldn't that data temporarily stored stored have the risk of getting corrupted? Appreciated your guidance as you have must more experience than I :)

And also there are a lot of studies over the web that explain the math after that.
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/35162.pdf

Also a qoute from the web:
A two-and-a-half year study of DRAM on 10s of thousands Google servers found DIMM error rates are hundreds to thousands of times higher than thought — a mean of 3,751 correctable errors per DIMM per year.

And this was published 10 years ago, imagine now with the size of DIMMs.
So good luck using FN and zfs without ecc.
I use FN prior to version 7 and still using on production,

 

[SweetAndLow]

So, keep me honest here, wouldn't ZFS use the memory to store in flight data? Without the correction provided by the ECC memory, wouldn't that data temporarily stored stored have the risk of getting corrupted? Appreciated your guidance as you have must more experience than I :)

No actually it would not, zfs will never return data to the user that does not match the checksum stored on disk. This includes data that sits in memory(arc).

So good luck using FN and zfs without ecc.

FN and zfs will work just fine on non-ecc. Users will have more issues with lower quality motherboards since most non-ecc boards are usually lower quality. There will also be a much higher chance that the entire system crashes from a memory error. But that will not impact the validity of the data.

 

[chravis]

Thanks again everyone. So I've been doing a lot of reading, including the Hardware Recommendations Guide (which is awesome), as well as other posts where people are asking for recommendations. I gather that people get tired of being asked that question, so I hesitate to keep prodding here, but I still have a few questions. As I mentioned before, my old system is a Windows Home Server 2011 that has been running great for 7 years now with pretty much zero problems. But all that hardware is consumer grade and probably not the best for a nice FreeNAS system. I don't mind spending some money (but definitely on a budget) but what I'm concerned about are the finer details. I'm not a hardware guy (so why am I doing my own build you ask? I guess just for the nerdy adventure) and I get confused with all the nomenclature and people spitting out numbers and versions and what not. I read one post where the guy got some recommendations but then people were talking about the bios version didn't match and flashing this and that.
I am not a power user and have less than 1 TB of data right now and probably won't double that before I kick the bucket (but who knows I guess). I'll mainly just use it for file backup, photos, and media with Plex. Is there a motherboard, cpu, and RAM that can be recommended (and found today in 2019) that don't require flashing things and upgrading bios versions and stuff? (Or are those kinds of updates not all that hard?)
I appreciate the insights. You guys are very helpful.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Thanks again everyone. So I've been doing a lot of reading, including the Hardware Recommendations Guide (which is awesome), as well as other posts where people are asking for recommendations. I gather that people get tired of being asked that question, so I hesitate to keep prodding here, but I still have a few questions. As I mentioned before, my old system is a Windows Home Server 2011 that has been running great for 7 years now with pretty much zero problems. But all that hardware is consumer grade and probably not the best for a nice FreeNAS system. I don't mind spending some money (but definitely on a budget) but what I'm concerned about are the finer details. I'm not a hardware guy (so why am I doing my own build you ask? I guess just for the nerdy adventure) and I get confused with all the nomenclature and people spitting out numbers and versions and what not. I read one post where the guy got some recommendations but then people were talking about the bios version didn't match and flashing this and that.
I am not a power user and have less than 1 TB of data right now and probably won't double that before I kick the bucket (but who knows I guess). I'll mainly just use it for file backup, photos, and media with Plex. Is there a motherboard, cpu, and RAM that can be recommended (and found today in 2019) that don't require flashing things and upgrading bios versions and stuff? (Or are those kinds of updates not all that hard?)
I appreciate the insights. You guys are very helpful.

Well what is your budget? The pre built systems like Dell t20, Lenovo ts140 and hp are the cheapest and impossible to beat. They can even be found with Xeon CPUs for extra horse power. The draw back is limited case and hdd bays. With your low storage needs that's not a problem. Get 2x4tb and mirror them and call it a day.

 

[chravis]

@SweetAndLow Thanks for the reply. Something prebuilt like that could probably work. I guess the only reason I haven't gone that route is because I have a big tower case already that I was hoping to reuse, and I have a PSU (although the PSU is from 2011 so it may or not may be what I want/need? It's this one - https://www.amazon.com/Power-Cooling-Semi-Modular-Performance-OCZ500MXSP/dp/B001EZMEZO). But if the cost of a prebuilt ends up being lower, I don't mind getting that. ~$600 is the number that comes to mind, although it's kind of just a number based on what I think I can get my wife to agree to.

 

[chravis]

Well I may have answered my original question as to whether or not my hardware will work. I attempted to install FreeNAS on it anyways, just to see it and play with it, and it wouldn't even install from the USB boot disk. It started then reported some errors and said I needed to press any key on the console to reboot. I haven't had time to investigate if the errors are because of my hardware or something else.