16GB or 32GB for home server?

[guermantes]

Hello!
I am gearing up for the purchase and building of my first ever server. Its purpose is to be storage for my RAW photo collection and serving the same for RAW editing, home to my work files (web development), flac music collection storage+streaming the same over LAN, Nextcloud calendar server accessible only over LAN.

X11SSM-F (probably)
i3 6100
ECC RAM
4x4TB HDD probably in RAID-Z2

The main reason why I am doing this is to use ZFS error checking and scrubbing to provide a fault-free source to create off-site backups from. So I will be scrubbing and letting ZFS do its thing.

Is there any point in getting 32GB of RAM rather than 16GB?

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

You'll be fine with 16GB.

Nextcloud recommends 512M RAM. If you're using Plex to stream that's 2GB RAM. There'll be some overhead on both these installations so let's call that 4GB total. That leaves 12GB for FreeNAS. Which, for a home user with just 8TB of storage, is plenty.

The X11SSM-F has four RAM slots. If you buy two, 8GB sticks for 16GB RAM, you can always toss in another two sticks to get to 32GB if you increase the number of VMs your running or want improved performance.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[guermantes]

Thanks Matt!
Actually, and as you hint at, because I am new to all this and find it difficult to gauge my future RAM needs, I am thinking of buying 1x16GB on purpose, in order to be able to upgrade RAM two times, without throwing out any sticks.

The X11SSM-F user guide says it can run on one stick but I would then loose the interleaving speed increase from running a pair of sticks. I am used to install RAM in pairs, but that user guide sentence got me thinking.

Do you, or someone else, have an opinion on whether it would be advisable to get 2x8GB rather than 1x16GB ? (an obvious downside would be having a future max of 48GB rather than 64MB).

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

Are two 8G sticks less expensive than one 16G stick? If so, I'd go with the two eights. For your use case I can't imagine why you would need more than 32G of RAM.

That said, I don't think you'll notice a performance difference between a single 16G stick and two 8G sticks. So, if you really do think you'll need to get to 64G, I can support getting a single, larger stick.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[gpsguy]

I would go with the 1x16GB route, for the reason you mention.

Although you may not need more than 32GB in the foreseeable future, if your needs change, you will have the flexibility to go up to 64GB. Your X11 mobo will probably be usable for 5+ years.

 

[Inxsible]

I'd go with whatever is the cheaper option. The performance difference is likely to be so miniscule in a home server application that you wouldn't even notice it. Save the money. As for "future" needs, I have seen many people buy more hardware than they will ever use.

I am in the boat of "Use my hardware to the fullest". I don't like to purchase extra hardware and wait on the need to arise so I can use that hardware.

Agreed, that it is difficult to foresee everything and you may make a misstep here and there but at least you use what you have to the fullest and if something needs to be replaced, well you can always sell it on ebay.

Consider this: If you buy something that you think you may use some time down the line, that hardware is just sitting there rotting without giving you its full advantage. By the time you "need" to use that additional capability of the hardware

1. the hardware might be quite old by the then standards.
2. Even if it can still be used, consider the fact that it was being used all this while and so might have developed other issues due to old age and might be on the verge of failing which would mean you need to buy relatively older hardware at that time to support your new need.

TL/DR; Buy what you need now and use the hardware to the fullest capability.

 

[Chris Moore]

Consider this: If you buy something that you think you may use some time down the line, that hardware is just sitting there rotting without giving you its full advantage. By the time you "need" to use that additional capability of the hardware

Except that ZFS will use all the RAM you give it from day 1. It will not go to wast or rot, the system will use it.

 

[Huib]

TL/DR; Buy what you need now and use the hardware to the fullest capability.

I kind of agree with this with one remark....
freenas 11 is going the route of bhyve for "plugins" as I understand. That means that for every plugin you are using now you might need to install them in a vm in the future.
The nice thing about jails is that they are very light weight. VM's unfortunately not so much as you have to dedicate recources to them. So what you can do with a couple of jails or plugins now, could be much more resource heavy in the near future.

However with the usage you are describing, I still agree that you realy don't need much ram. At home I have 16 GB for 15 GB raw storage. I'm running plex, nextcloud and a jail for openvpn. For testing purposes I run a linux vm from time to time that takes one core and 4 gig of ram. I stream movies (mostly 720P) to 3 devices at a time sometimes and never had any problem.
All of that on a Intel I3 :P

 

[Chris Moore]

4x4TB HDD probably in RAID-Z2

I fully endorce RAID-Z2, but the configuration you are thinking of will only allow you to use about 5.5TB of storage. You should consider how much storage you are consuming now and your expected expansion over the next five years. Drives tend to last for about five years, so you should plan to replace them around that time, but it is likely that other hardware will last longer. A new server board could easily last 6 to 10 years depending on how demanding your usage is. With regard to the drives, you want to be able to either add another set of 4 drives to expand your pool (case size) or choose a drive count or drive size that would preclude the need to expand the pool. I have chosen to use 6 drive vdevs and I currently have two vdevs in my storage pool. You can always add a vdev to expand the pool, but you need to have room in the chassis to add the additional drives.
If I were buying a system today, I would get this one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/292252408126
It needs a few more parts to make it complete, but there is plenty of good stuff right there to start with.

 

[Huib]

Except that ZFS will use all the RAM you give it from day 1. It will not go to wast or rot, the system will use it.

That depends on your definition of going to waste IMHO (read as a home user)
Freenas will use all mem for your arc. But if you are simply streaming movies and music files your disks can keep up with demand. So yes, Freenas will use the ram, but you won't feel the difference between a 16 or a 32 gig arc (take the system ram requirements) if you are not hamering the system.

I would love to be corrected on this one!
I noticed that a lot of advice is "add more ram", even if the use case does not seem to warrent that advice. My arc takes several days to fill up after a reboot and I don't notice a performance loss in those days... So that leads me to beleive that in my usecase 16 GB is already over provisioned.....

 

[Inxsible]

Except that ZFS will use all the RAM you give it from day 1. It will not go to wast or rot, the system will use it.

Right, but we are talking 2x8GB or 1x16GB. Either way it's only 16GB total.

 

[Inxsible]

freenas 11 is going the route of bhyve for "plugins" as I understand. That means that for every plugin you are using now you might need to install them in a vm in the future.

That's the first I am hearing of this. But I could just be uninformed.

If it is true, then that would be a shame because I do agree with you that jails are pretty good at what they are for and work just fine. So I don't see the need to change the whole concept and have them changed over to VMs.

 

[Chris Moore]

Right, but we are talking 2x8GB or 1x16GB. Either way it's only 16GB total.

Not sure, I think someone suggested that the extra money would be wasted because he doesn't need the memory.
I think it is better to have the option, especially when you are looking to run a VM or some Jails.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[Huib]

That's the first I am hearing of this. But I could just be uninformed.

As far as I understand it (no I'm not an expert) the plugins are not that hot because they are bsd specific. Docker is more accepted and thus better supported/maintained, but it has the disadvantage that it can not run in a jail. You need to create a vm for it.

I am quite sure that before the freenas coral fiasco I saw some posts that docker and VM's was considered the future for freenas "plugins" by the development team but I can't vouce for the current philosophy.

that said, If you know what you are doing (I don't) I would guess you could still use jails if you are capable and are willing to to put the time into cofiguring your system using jails with the risk they will break from time to time.

 

[Ericloewe]

As far as I understand it (no I'm not an expert) the plugins are not that hot because they are bsd specific.

That's not the problem. The problem is that management sucks. That's what 11.1 is supposed to fix with iocage.

 

[danb35]

freenas 11 is going the route of bhyve for "plugins" as I understand.

You understand incorrectly. That was more true of FreeNAS 10, but it's dead and buried (and good riddance to it). You might be confusing iohyve (which is used to manage VMs) with iocage (which is used to manage jails); the latter is supposed to be taking over jail management with a later FN11 point release. GUI Docker management is also supposed to be coming Real Soon Now, but with @jkh's departure, I think the "Docker all the things!" management approach is gone.

Edit: I seem to have missed the sentence following what I quoted--it was never the plan, even with Corral and "Docker all the things!", that each jail-equivalent would require its own VM. Each jail-equivalent would require a Docker container, all of which (ordinarily) would run in a single VM. You could certainly set up multiple Docker host VMs, but the default arrangement would only use one. But again, @jkh is gone, and jails are back (apparently to stay).

 

[Huib]

Thanks for the corrections guys! Although the docker possibility is nice I really like the light weight jails so hearing they will be improving that concept is music to my ears!

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

for every plugin you are using now you might need to install them in a vm in the future.

Another option would be to create one VM then run all harmonious applications inside that single VM. That way you only have the operating system overhead once instead of once per application.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[guermantes]

Thanks for all the discussion! I think I'll go with 1x16GB then since that seems to be more readily available here in Sweden (and for the same price as 2x8GB).

@Chris Moore why only 5.5 TB usable? Would it not be 8TB usable from 4x4TB in RAID-Z2?

 

[gpsguy]

Drive manufactures use TB, the OS use TiB. So, after crating your volume, you would only see about 7TiB available. For general use, FreeNAS recommends that you don't use more than 80% of the volume size. If you exceed 90%, performance starts to tank and if you accidentally go to 100%, things get ugly. You can fix the latter, but it's not intuitive for most users.