Hardware for my new home nas

[Richardkk]

I currently have a dlink 2 bay nas with 2 3tb drives in raid 1 and it sucks, the throughout is pitiful.
So I am looking at hardware for a new nas with a bit more storage and much better speed. Also trying to keep costs down and power draw liveable, and keeping my 2 3 Tb drives I already have.
I am looking at a
Tyan Toledo i3200R with
board rated max 8 Gb ecc ram.
6 sata 2 ports.
an e4300 1.8 Ghz dual core, seems like the lowest power cpu supported, shouldnt need more, right?
4, 3 Tb drives in software raid 10, I read that software raid is better with Freenas and the ich9r doesnt do raid with 3 Tb drives.
I would also buy a couple extra drives in case of failure. Can I connect the extra one so they act as spares in case a drive fails? Was thinking of an Lsi 9650 (with firmware upgrade to support 3 Tb drives) but after reading on here maybe not, the IBM serveraid seems a better choice, but if I can do it with the onboard sata, why not saves money.
Are these good choices for Freenas?

 

[joeschmuck]

I don't have time to look up the MB you mentioned but the specs are fine overall. Use the on board SATA connectors for your application. 8GB RAM is the minimum recommended and if you are only using the NAS in a home environment to serve as a backup device and even host video, music, and photo content then you should be fine.
I just created a posting in Off Topic where NewEgg is having a pretty good sale for the WD Red 3TB drive today as one of their Shell Shocker deals. I would recommend that if you have any intentions to expand your NAS storage that you do that up front. My advice is to have four 3TB drives placed in a RAIDZ1 configuration minimum. Use this page to calculate the storage http://www.servethehome.com/raid-calculator/
Four 3TB drives in a RAIDZ1 gives you 8.2TB of storage. Those same drives in a RAIDZ2 configuration give you 5.5TB of storage.

Hopefully someone can speak to your MB selection. Also, have you read the stickies which discuss what works?

 

[rm-r]

look at the hardware guide in my signature - very helpful

 

[Richardkk]

Do you really need a 3.7 Ghz hyperthreaded quad core?

 

[rm-r]

Do you really need a 3.7 Ghz hyperthreaded quad core?​

i want to do it once, and right for once - this is a box to last me for a good few years... i hope! i also got a pass from the wife so had to seize the chance ;)

 

[Richardkk]

I was just wondering, and also I looked all over and didnt find anything about cpus in the hardware requirements and suggestions, just amount of ram and ethernet, disk controllers etc.

 

[joeschmuck]

The CPUs are mainly up to what you want to do. If you want to just use it for backups and simple media streaming then a low speed/power CPU will be okay. Do you want an ultra quiet system, do you want instant data access, or maybe a good compromise like my system. I think it would be a good idea to update one of the stickies to include a general CPU recommendation.

As for a minimum spec recommendation: 64-bit, ECC RAM capable, dual core.
If you want Hard Drive Encryption: AES in CPU.
Now for CPU speeds (this is all subjective but I'm making a generalization):
Backups and minor media streaming: 2GHz CPU
Media Transcoding: 3GHz CPU

Any CPU near 4GHz is likely to offer minimal [if any] benefit but if the cost is reasonable buy what you want. My CPU is 3.8GHz but the price was very good when I purchased it. It is overkill for my FreeNAS needs but if I ever use this CPU for something else, well it might be good enough for another home computer system.

 

[Richardkk]

The CPUs are mainly up to what you want to do. If you want to just use it for backups and simple media streaming then a low speed/power CPU will be okay. Do you want an ultra quiet system, do you want instant data access, or maybe a good compromise like my system. I think it would be a good idea to update one of the stickies to include a general CPU recommendation.

As for a minimum spec recommendation: 64-bit, ECC RAM capable, dual core.
If you want Hard Drive Encryption: AES in CPU.
Now for CPU speeds (this is all subjective but I'm making a generalization):
Backups and minor media streaming: 2GHz CPU
Media Transcoding: 3GHz CPU

Any CPU near 4GHz is likely to offer minimal [if any] benefit but if the cost is reasonable buy what you want. My CPU is 3.8GHz but the price was very good when I purchased it. It is overkill for my FreeNAS needs but if I ever use this CPU for something else, well it might be good enough for another home computer system.

ECC RAM capable? Dont all modern cpus support ecc ram? If not where would I look to see what cpus do or dont? As far back as my Tyan 2510 board and P3 cpus used ecc reg ram.

 

[Richardkk]

In my case, using a 775 cpu, the memory controller is in the NB, so whether it supports ecc ram depends on the board and chipset, unlike newer cpus with the IMC on chip, am I correct in this?

 

[Tomas Liumparas]

Well intel CPU selection tool
http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced/?s=t&SocketsSupported=LGA775&ECCMemory=false

Doesn't list any of the ECC supported processors. So either this a mistake, or you right.

Bu the way, why you are looking at so quite old board? As far as I know DDR2's a way more expensive than DDR3's. So as the CPU's

Unless, ofcourse you have this hardware already. I would also believe, that it is not wise to buy a hardware with limitation - 8Gb ram. I also believe that a newer hardware would be cheaper at the end.

 

[Richardkk]

Well intel CPU selection tool
http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced/?s=t&SocketsSupported=LGA775&ECCMemory=false

Doesn't list any of the ECC supported processors. So either this a mistake, or you right.

Bu the way, why you are looking at so quite old board? As far as I know DDR2's a way more expensive than DDR3's. So as the CPU's

Unless, ofcourse you have this hardware already. I would also believe, that it is not wise to buy a hardware with limitation - 8Gb ram. I also believe that a newer hardware would be cheaper at the end.

Why do I need to spend several hundred bucks just on a chip and board for a nas?All it is going to do is backup files.
I have an old 478 board here with a 3 Ghz P4 and 2 Gb ram, 3com gigabit with one Sata 1 hdd that I am trying out the software on and I am getting 60-70 MB/s which is the measured max speed of the single hdd in sequential writes (with UFS of course).
What I am building is already a HUGE upgrade from what I have, my Dlink nas has 128 Mb ram

 

[cyberjock]

Richardkk,

Please check out the hardware requirements from the manual. They will discuss all of the system requirements.

 

[jgreco]

Why do I need to spend several hundred bucks just on a chip and board for a nas?All it is going to do is backup files.
I have an old 478 board here with a 3 Ghz P4 and 2 Gb ram, 3com gigabit with one Sata 1 hdd that I am trying out the software on and I am getting 60-70 MB/s which is the measured max speed of the single hdd in sequential writes (with UFS of course).
What I am building is already a HUGE upgrade from what I have, my Dlink nas has 128 Mb ram

You don't need to spend several hundred bucks on a chip and a board for a NAS. You do, however, probably need to spend several hundred bucks on a chip and a board to run FreeNAS with ZFS successfully and reliably.

There are many other FreeBSD, Solaris, and Linux based NAS packages out there. FreeNAS is NOT a small and lightweight system, and does not pretend to be. There are others that are.

I could turn this around and ask why the hell your D-Link NAS needs 128MB RAM; 20 years ago we used to provide NFS file services off machines with 4MB RAM and thought that to be very generous.

FreeNAS is built to support ZFS, and ZFS was built from the ground up to assume that resources such as RAM and CPU are plentiful. If you do not plan to make them plentiful, then ZFS is a bad fit, and therefore FreeNAS is probably a bad fit.

Nobody here will think poorly of you for trying to recycle old gear, but we have to be realistic too.

 

[Knowltey]

an e4300 1.8 Ghz dual core, seems like the lowest power cpu supported, shouldnt need more, right?

I see that you did the proper thing and made sure to utilize ECC RAM in your build, but you will want to also make sure that your motherboard and processor both specifically support ECC RAM. For the record I am 99.9% sure that the E4300 does NOT support ECC RAM

 

[Dusan]

I see that you did the proper thing and made sure to utilize ECC RAM in your build, but you will want to also make sure that your motherboard and processor both specifically support ECC RAM. For the record I am 99.9% sure that the E4300 does NOT support ECC RAM

It does not matter. E4300 is the first generation Core CPU (Conroe). Those did not have memory controller integrated in the CPU. Intel moved the memory controller into CPU few years later (Nehalem). With Conroe it is the chipset that contains the memory controller and therefore you only need to look at the board/chipset for ECC support -- the Tyan seems to support ECC: http://www.tyan.com/manuals/m_s5211_120.pdf

 

[Knowltey]

Ah, didn't realize that there were any of the Core 2 consumer line that were able to support ECC, perhaps that was why I couldn't fine the ECC Support field in the Intel ARK for a processor in a current machine that I was working with since I was curious if it supported ECC RAM since in my BIOS it had a chart that had a field that specified whether or not you had ECC RAM installed or not which made me curious. For the record it is an E6### Dual core vPro processor that in a Dell Optiplex 755 AIO.

 

[Richardkk]

So, I got all the components together, threw in 2 3 Tb drives and crossed my fingers, but the bios showed them as 800 Gb :(
The rom for the ich9r isnt updated. I figured I would have to buy an add on card like the IBM 1015.
Then I was playing around with installing, had to install from usb key.
Booted up and logged into the interface and it shows the drives as full 3 Tb ??
I am confused. Is the os confused or is there really the full size of the drives there available? How do I find out?

 

[Knowltey]

You're confused that things are working as intended? You must have low expectations. Although that's usually a good thing in IT.

On a more serious note, if the FreeNAS GUI is showing 3TB then that should mean they are being reconized at whatever size the GUI is showing. You can always go ahead and test that by making a pool with one of them and seeing if you are able to successfully stick more than 800GB on the drive.

 

[Richardkk]

You're confused that things are working as intended? You must have low expectations. Although that's usually a good thing in IT.

On a more serious note, if the FreeNAS GUI is showing 3TB then that should mean they are being reconized at whatever size the GUI is showing. You can always go ahead and test that by making a pool with one of them and seeing if you are able to successfully stick more than 800GB on the drive.

Yes, I am sending files to it now to see how much room I actually have.

 

[jgreco]

It basically means that the BIOS is limited to 2TB (for sure) and that the hardware might or might not be limited to 2TB, but the OS is seeing it as 3TB. If the OS and hardware work with > 2TB, then there's still some risk because of the way the disks might be seen if you happen to pop in a liveCD for something else. You want to be very careful and maybe Google up on your particular board or controller.