Freenas with ZFS on a HP MicroServer N40L

[Caliber]

I recently bought an N40L cheaply. List of hardware.
It's just been sitting there collecting dust, because I'm not sure how it would handle Freenas with ZFS. So I decided to come here and ask you good folks.

I've briefly tried Freenas and Amahi, without a RAID, and I'm very tempted to go with Freenas with ZFS and preferably with encryption.

I intend to use 5x3GB WD Red drives in RAID 5 or RAID-Z. Am I correct in understanding that I'd need 2x8GB RAM? Would 4GB+8GB suffice (it would cost me half as much since I already have a 4GB stick)? Is the frequency of any significance?
If I was to use ZFS with encryption, would the CPU be able to handle it? Roughly how much would the performance decrease? (are we talking 5% or 50%) Would the CPU be the bottle neck?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[cyberjock]

Your CPU will definitely be the bottleneck. Someone yesterday posted numbers for their share with encryption at about 10MB/sec... lol

 

[Caliber]

Your CPU will definitely be the bottleneck. Someone yesterday posted numbers for their share with encryption at about 10MB/sec... lol

Yikes, that's a lot worse than I thought. Would the CPU be an issue without encryption?

 

[cyberjock]

It will be your limiting factor. Speed will depend on many factors.. but I'd expect 20MB/sec to about 50MB/sec

 

[Caliber]

Ok, so similar to USB 2.0 then. I guess that's manageable.
Is this data rate due to ZFS/RAID-Z being so CPU intensive, or would I get similar rates with other filesystems & software RAID5?

 

[cyberjock]

it's due to the CPU being underpowered....

 

[gpsguy]

At the end of the day, the CPU, especially for CIFS, will be the limiting factor.

That being said, there are a FreeNAS users (myself included) using the HP Microservers.

Is your 4Gb RAM ECC? If not, replace them both with 8Gb sticks.

Kingston 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333
ECC Unbuffered Server Memory Model KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G

With sufficient RAM, I'd expect to see speeds from ~40-50MB/sec

Note, in order to use more than the 4 drive bays for SATA drives, ie. using the CD-Rom and/or eSATA connection, you'll need to run a hacked BIOS.

 

[Caliber]

Thanks to the both of you for replying. It's been very helpful.

Is your 4Gb RAM ECC? If not, replace them both with 8Gb sticks.

According to the hardware specification, the included memory is "PC3-10600E Unbuffered DDR3 ECC @ 800MHz". I haven't checked myself yet since that little box is packed and seems like a nightmare to fiddle with. (Edit: my bad, the included memory is 1x2GB ECC). Would it be sufficient to combine the existing 4GB ECC RAM with an 8GB or is it much preferable to go to 2x8GB? KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G would cost more than the entire N40L (without drives), but I'm willing to do it in order to not gimp the NAS. 40-50MB/sec would be prefectly fine!

Note, in order to use more than the 4 drive bays for SATA drives, ie. using the CD-Rom and/or eSATA connection, you'll need to run a hacked BIOS.

Yup, I've already done that and enabled AHCI and bought the necessary adapters to use the CD-Rom as a HDD bay.

 

[iposner]

I have the N36L Microserver (slower clock speed). I have 8GB RAM and 4 x 2TB disks in RAID-Z config. It works fine for serving files via CIFS but that's it. Initially I created 2GB of swap space on each drive, but if I want to run the streaming media plugins firefly and minidnla, they crash during the initial scan reporting insufficient swap space.

The Microserver is really only suitable for low CPU intensive tasks. I wouldn't enable encryption on such a machine, nor anything else that gobbles CPU.

On the plus side, the internal USB socket on the motherboard is ideal for the USB stick to boot the OS from, the build quality is excellent and it's a pretty quiet device.

 

[Caliber]

Thanks for your input. How much swap space would you recommend?

 

[iposner]

Well my 8GB of total swap wasn't enough - try doubling the RAM you've got

 

[Caliber]

Well my 8GB of total swap wasn't enough - try doubling the RAM you've got

I've been putting this project on hold while gathering hardware. Now I'm all set, with 5x3TB WD Red HDDs, 32GB Usb Stick for OS and 16GB ECC Unbuffered DDR3 SDRAM.

However, when creating the ZFS volume (I haven't been able to do this in practice before due to lack of drives), I was never asked about swap space. How do I allocate swap space? I read a few forum threads, but none explains how to.

Edit (clarification): I installed the system by burning an IMG file to the USB stick using Win32DiskImager. I booted the NAS with the USB stick in and the installation was automatic. Should I have done it in a different way?

 

[gpsguy]

When you do the work via the GUI, it'll automatically create a 2Gb swap file on each hard disk.

btw, 32Gb is overkill for the OS. 4Gb would have been plenty. You can't use the extra space for anything else.

 

[Caliber]

When you do the work via the GUI, it'll automatically create a 2Gb swap file on each hard disk.

btw, 32Gb is overkill for the OS. 4Gb would have been plenty. You can't use the extra space for anything else.

Ah, ok. But how do I increase it? Do I need to delete the current volume and create a new one using command line? Or might 2Gb/drive be sufficient considering I've got 16Gb RAM?

I wasn't aware that I'd be unable to use the extra space on the thumb drive. Shame..

 

[paleoN]

Or might 2Gb/drive be sufficient considering I've got 16Gb RAM?

More than sufficient. Not to mention you never want to be swapping.

 

[cyberjock]

More than sufficient. Not to mention you never want to be swapping.

Exactly. If you are swapping you should have more RAM. Anyone relying on swap is just asking for trouble.