Is FreeNAS right for my build?

[Matt W.]

Here is my build so far..

Case: ThermalTake Core X9
Motherboard: Supermicro H8DGI-F
CPU: 2x AMD Opteron 6276
RAM: 64GB - 128GB ECC Registered Ram(have no ordered yet)

This is going to be my PLEX Server, Photo Strorge, Sonarr, Couchpotato, etc....I will want a Windows VM for a few winodws only programs... I will probably run a Teamspeak server, and few games servers.

My main concern is upgrading the data array...With unraid I know I can add a hard drive and have it rebuilt the array with that drive in it and not worry about data loss it just add that new drive to the total storage array. Will FreeNAS do this.

Thanks
Matt

 

[joeschmuck]

My main concern is upgrading the data array...With unraid I know I can add a hard drive and have it rebuilt the array with that drive in it and not worry about data loss it just add that new drive to the total storage array. Will FreeNAS do this.

Yes and No. FreeNAS uses ZFS and the typical home user will use a RAIDZ2 setup using say six hard drives. This creates a vdev/pool for storage. If you want to add a single hard drive well you can't without putting your data at risk, however you could add an additional vdev of multiple drives to the original vdev and expand your pool. It's tricky to be sure.

So if you are looking for a system where you can easily just add a single hard drive to boost capacity, ZFS & FreeNAS is not for you. I would suggest you read Cyberjock's VDEV presentation, it will give you some insight.

Good Luck