Hi from the UK, yet another FreeNAS noob....

[Spoon]

Hi,

I'm new to the forum and was looking for some pointers in the right direction.

I had a 2 bay ReadyNAS which I decided to upgrade and after being tempted into buying a HP Proliant Microserver Gen 8. After stumbling over FreeNAS again I decided to give it a go.

As it stands the specs are
- Celeron® G1610T
- 16GB (ECC)
- 2x 2TB Samsung Spinpoints (from previous NAS).
- 64GB Memory Stick with FreeNAS 9.3-Stable
- APC Smart-UPS 1500

Want I want to use it for is:
1. Use it as a Apple Timecapsule for 1x Macbook
2. Store Acronis Disk Images for 2x PC performed every 2days
3. Nothing more...

So far so good, I have FreeNAS up and running and it is performing the above tasks although slowly. Limiting factor I'm guessing is the HDD which will be upgraded in due course (perhaps 4x4TB Deskstars or 4x8TB Seagate Archive V2 in RAIDZ2?). I have a scrubs setup to run every 2 weeks, SMART tests I am still researching but will be addressed.

So too my questions:
1. As it is being used for system images (80%) I figured it might potentially fit into the obscure "benefit from dedup/L2ARC". Given the maximum memory I can install is 16GB should I even consider an SSD and L2ARC? I have a spare Intel 530 Series 120GB could I use this if I limited the storage used on it?
2. I also have a HP SmartArray P430 on the desk next to me. From reading the forums the important thing is making sure it is used as a 'dumb' device and passes through the HDD SMART information. Has anyone had any experience using this adapter in IT mode? Is this a good idea/worth the effort?
3. The CPU doesn't seem to be stressed by what I have thrown at it so far. Will it be fit for purpose for dedup or should I be looking at either the E3-1265L v2 or E3-1220L v2?
4. Any tuning advice/recommended further hardware upgrades/pointers?

I'm sure jgreco/cyberjocks head will explode on reading the above but just in case in might be an idea, Ill ask...

And thanks for the forum, Its a goldmine.
Cheers,

 

[Ericloewe]

Hi,

I'm new to the forum and was looking for some pointers in the right direction.

I had a 2 bay ReadyNAS which I decided to upgrade and after being tempted into buying a HP Proliant Microserver Gen 8. After stumbling over FreeNAS again I decided to give it a go.

As it stands the specs are
- Celeron® G1610T
- 16GB (ECC)
- 2x 2TB Samsung Spinpoints (from previous NAS).
- 64GB Memory Stick with FreeNAS 9.3-Stable
- APC Smart-UPS 1500

Want I want to use it for is:
1. Use it as a Apple Timecapsule for 1x Macbook
2. Store Acronis Disk Images for 2x PC performed every 2days
3. Nothing more...

So far so good, I have FreeNAS up and running and it is performing the above tasks although slowly. Limiting factor I'm guessing is the HDD which will be upgraded in due course (perhaps 4x4TB Deskstars or 4x8TB Seagate Archive V2 in RAIDZ2?). I have a scrubs setup to run every 2 weeks, SMART tests I am still researching but will be addressed.

So too my questions:
1. As it is being used for system images (80%) I figured it might potentially fit into the obscure "benefit from dedup/L2ARC". Given the maximum memory I can install is 16GB should I even consider an SSD and L2ARC? I have a spare Intel 530 Series 120GB could I use this if I limited the storage used on it?
2. I also have a HP SmartArray P430 on the desk next to me. From reading the forums the important thing is making sure it is used as a 'dumb' device and passes through the HDD SMART information. Has anyone had any experience using this adapter in IT mode? Is this a good idea/worth the effort?
3. The CPU doesn't seem to be stressed by what I have thrown at it so far. Will it be fit for purpose for dedup or should I be looking at either the E3-1265L v2 or E3-1220L v2?
4. Any tuning advice/recommended further hardware upgrades/pointers?

I'm sure jgreco/cyberjocks head will explode on reading the above but just in case in might be an idea, Ill ask...

And thanks for the forum, Its a goldmine.
Cheers,

Dedup is pretty much guaranteed to be a bad idea. Any backup software worth its salt does its own versioning, which avoids most of the duplication. L2ARC won't be of any good with so little RAM.

That SAS controller you mention is unlikely to use an LSI controller. Even if it does, SAS3 stuff is still rather experimental in FreeBSD/FreeNAS.

No T or L version is a good choice, unless you're restricted by TDP. You just get artificially lower performance with no power consumption benefit at idle, possibly not even over time.

 

[cyberjock]

I gotta LOL at the Celeron.... Pretty funny how people think they're gonna save a few bucks over a Pentium (the lowest end CPU we recommend). Don't worry.. they'll be complaining later about the poor performance, and we'll point out that they shouldn't have bought a CPU with so little internal cache.

 

[Spoon]

Thanks for the quick reply,

I'll bin the dedup idea and find another use for the SSD.

I checked the the BSD HCL and it is supported via ciss(4), although not so sure from the man pages as to what functions are supported. Will give it a go...

The CPU came with the box for £100. I am not complaining. The intention was to replace with an adequate E3 xeon after I could get a better idea as to what would be suitable. I was looking at the L variety due to the compactness of the box and the desire to keep the wattage down. I'm not looking for stellar performance, only has to transfer be able to write 1 x 40gb file at 4am and finish before 6am. From my reading of the forums I understand that CIFS is single threaded application so my thinking is less cores but faster would be a better choice?

Once again thanks for the input and the resource,
Cheers