sremick
Patron
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2014
- Messages
- 323
Figured this was the best place to post since I don't need help (yet). :)
Did lots of research, reading. Set up a laptop (with hardware that'd make Cyberjock cry... although it did have 8GB RAM) just to test out FreeNAS and Plex to see if it was something I liked and that would be of value/interest to me to invest in it as a serious project. Eventually threw out my entire hardware shopping list and redid it based upon stuff I learned in this forum. End result can be found in my sig. I know I went with the less-popular ASRock instead of the house-favorite SuperMicro however it had the perfect set of hardware specs (I can use all 6 on-board SATA ports and not need an M1015).
Happy to say that as a result my first attempt has been a success. Computer booted on first try and it runs very cool and quiet. Ran a barrage of stress tests based upon many things I found in these forums and elsewhere. I even switched to using Plex in a jail instead of the plug-in for the sake of the PlexPass version and easier upgrades (I have lots of past experience managing FreeBSD anyhow so no big deal). System runs great, no performance issues yet. Turned off IDLE3 on all 6 drives. I've set up email reporting, scrub schedules per Cyberjock's recommendation, SMART notifications... trying to do everything right. Hats off to all of you with your posts and stickies which helped a lot. You get a lot of complainers and people who don't read so I figured you deserved to know that your efforts do pay off for a certain percentage of new users who perhaps tend to remain quiet because they end up not having any problems.
Things still pending:
Did lots of research, reading. Set up a laptop (with hardware that'd make Cyberjock cry... although it did have 8GB RAM) just to test out FreeNAS and Plex to see if it was something I liked and that would be of value/interest to me to invest in it as a serious project. Eventually threw out my entire hardware shopping list and redid it based upon stuff I learned in this forum. End result can be found in my sig. I know I went with the less-popular ASRock instead of the house-favorite SuperMicro however it had the perfect set of hardware specs (I can use all 6 on-board SATA ports and not need an M1015).
Happy to say that as a result my first attempt has been a success. Computer booted on first try and it runs very cool and quiet. Ran a barrage of stress tests based upon many things I found in these forums and elsewhere. I even switched to using Plex in a jail instead of the plug-in for the sake of the PlexPass version and easier upgrades (I have lots of past experience managing FreeBSD anyhow so no big deal). System runs great, no performance issues yet. Turned off IDLE3 on all 6 drives. I've set up email reporting, scrub schedules per Cyberjock's recommendation, SMART notifications... trying to do everything right. Hats off to all of you with your posts and stickies which helped a lot. You get a lot of complainers and people who don't read so I figured you deserved to know that your efforts do pay off for a certain percentage of new users who perhaps tend to remain quiet because they end up not having any problems.
Things still pending:
- I'm not convinced everything I'm doing on a share/dataset level is kosher/best-practice. I worry that I'm making some horrible mistakes but hopefully nothing that can't be fixed.
- Eventually would like to enable some AFP datasets for Time Machine backups for 2 Macs
- Would like to set up Crashplan for off-site backup of the FreeNAS server
- Wondering if the FN9.3 upgrade upgrades the USB stick from UFS to ZFS? I know a fresh 9.3 install will make it ZFS.
- I have CPU cycles to spare, so I contemplate what other value I could set up this server to provide.