hp microserver g7 nl40 and FreeNAS

[wl04]

Hello, I've decided to start my own thread because I need some advices specific to my hardware setup. So please don't merge it with threads similar to mine. At the moment I own 2 almost identical hp microserver G7 nl40. The only difference is RAM. One of them has 4Gb non-ECC RAM (2x2Gb) and other has 4GB ECC RAM (2x2Gb). At the moment one of them runs Windows SBS 2011 and I'm happy with this hardware + software combo for my purposes. I've decided to use spare server for home NAS purposes. Here is the exact list of things I want to do:

• network storage 2 x 1Tb WD RED disks (the plan is to mirror them) + 250gb disk for temporary storage (torrents, some not critical data) + 60 Gb SSD for OS;
  
• Plex media server. Only for streaming purposes, no transcoding is planned. G7 has weak CPU;
• transmission for torrent downloads.

That's it. No more additional functionality planned due to CPU power limitations. Ahh almost forgot to say about my data pattern. At the moment the amount of data I consider critical is around 100Gb - family photo/video library and work files that I'd like to keep safe. I don't think any time soon it will grow more than 250-300Gb. Rest are random media files, some distros and other staff that is easy to re download from internet. Critical data has multiple backups on external hdd's (2 at home and 1 at work).

I'm quite comfortable with Debian Linux distro so my intentional plan was to install it, make software RAID1 with mdadm (90% right sizing), ext4 as filesystem, install Plex and torrent, share drives with Samba and go like that. Then I've read some articles about ZFS and decided to see if it's available at consumer level. That's how i've ended on this forum. I've done some reading and here are my questions:

• FreeNAS hardware requirements state 8Gb ECC RAM minimum, but i've also read that its more like 1Gb per 1Tb storage. Is it safe to run on 4Gb of RAM? I don't plan to upgrade my storage any time soon. Just need to run it fast and safe now :)
• Do I need ZFS in general? Or UFS/ext4 or anything else is good enough for my pattern;

I do understand that ZFS is born in corporate sector so it needs beefy hardware to work well and i do understand that ECC is a must.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Running less than 8GB will result in data lose at some point in time. That's why 8GB is the minimum not the recommended.

Ufs support has be dropped in recent 9.3 release. And since your data sounds very important to you I would say yes you need zfs. Picture storage is a great reason to have a filesystem that prevents bit root.

 

[wl04]

Running less than 8GB will result in data lose at some point in time. That's why 8GB is the minimum not the recommended.

Ufs support has be dropped in recent 9.3 release. And since your data sounds very important to you I would say yes you need zfs. Picture storage is a great reason to have a filesystem that prevents bit root.

So if I got you right at the moment ZFS is the only file system FreeNAS works with? But what should I do for example with my 250gb drive for temp files and torrents? Its a waste of system resources to have ZFS on it and I'm not planning to add it to raidz. Also how exactly low ram amount will corrupt data integrity? I thought non ecc memory will and low amount of ram will only affect performance of array. I'm not going to use deduplication or compression. Is there even point to start to upgrade my system? Anyway CPU is weak. That's why I've asked if I should go with freenas and ZFS at all on that system.

 

[HoneyBadger]

The "8GB RAM" requirement isn't necessarily a factor of ZFS (because I've run pools on less, under other OSes) but because FreeNAS has additional demands and certain expectations of the system. Think of FreeNAS as an appliance more than an OS.

It might work initially with less, right up until it suddenly doesn't.

The weak CPU shouldn't affect anything as long as you aren't using deduplication or heavy compression like gzip9. Default should be OK.

 

[mjws00]

Pretty much any OS does a decent job of mirrors. The advantage with ZFS is bitrot protection, and of course arc, slog etc that don't do you any good.

Run Debian if you like it. It is a great choice for that hardware. Give ZFS on Linux a try perhaps. One of the other NAS distro's may work great on that gear. Xpenology is pretty slick, OMV is Debian, even nas4free might be happy.

Unless you can get 8gb ecc. Use a different platform. This one bites when under specced.

 

[wl04]

Thx for the answers. I'll research into nas4free and OMV or just stick with plain Debian system. I'd rather not risk wasting data than assure myself that miraculous ZFS will save me from anything even on underpowered hardware.

 

[gpsguy]

There are users who run FreeNAS on your hardware. But, they put 8-16GB of RAM in them. I have both a N40L and a N54L. I use my 40 for FreeNAS and the 54 for ESXi.


Sent from my phone

 

[adrianwi]

I also ran a N40L with 16GB RAM and it was fine for the things you suggest, although won't transcode. I've still got a N54L with 16GB RAM that I use as a backup, and whilst that just about managed a single 720p transcode struggled with 1080p.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

But what should I do for example with my 250gb drive for temp files and torrents? Its a waste of system resources to have ZFS on it and I'm not planning to add it to raidz.

1. You have no choice if you're running the current release of FreeNAS - it's ZFS-only.
2. Even on a single drive, ZFS can detect bit rot, which is useful. What it can't do is fix it.

 

[wl04]

1. You have no choice if you're running the current release of FreeNAS - it's ZFS-only.
2. Even on a single drive, ZFS can detect bit rot, which is useful. What it can't do is fix it.

that's kinda lame but if it wont affect performance its OK with me =)
Also nice to know that someone within community uses same hardware. I would like to know what read speeds do you guys get on your NL40's and NL54's? I'm using 1Gbit/sec network. Will I be able to get decent read speeds? Because my usage pattern is mostly about read speeds.

 

[adrianwi]

A very quick test on my N54L last night which has a 4x4TB striped pool was showing ~110MB/s read and write so pretty much saturating my 1Gbps network.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[wl04]

A very quick test on my N54L last night which has a 4x4TB striped pool was showing ~110MB/s read and write so pretty much saturating my 1Gbps network.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thx for the information. Nice speed 110Mb/s is close to 1Gbit/sec LAN limit. I think its more than enough for home server purposes.
Btw followed mjws00 advice and actually tried nas4free solution, getting roughly the same read/write values (~105Mb/s) on mine NL40. And here is the question. Is nas4free as stable as FreeNAS? How stable those solutions compared to their underlying system - FreeBSD?https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?members/mjws00.42043/

 

[mjws00]

Heh. Is nas4free as stable? Hard to answer that with anything but speculation. BSD is BSD. The significant difference is the target hardware and interface.

Both are pretty much rock solid. FreeNAS devs just made the decision to optimize for a more demanding hardware platform. In addition they abandoned 32-bit and anything not ZFS. That has some significant advantages in terms of code-base, maintenance, and performance... but it narrows the user base.

Stability is likely not the primary concern. Both are adequate, it is the usefulness of the system as a whole. Otherwise you'd strip out everything. CLI only with a bare minimum of modules etc to minimize potential errors.