Hi all,
I'm new to FreeNAS and I have “a few” questions. First some background information...
Why FreeNAS:
Not because I’m unhappy with my actual networked storage, but because I like to play with this stuff. I like to tinker and push my network. I’d also like to obliterate my colleague’s 64MB/s write speed (over CIFS to a Synology DS213j) :)
My current box:
For the moment I'm testing FreeNAS on a Gigabyte GA-F2A85XM-D3H motherboard with an AMD A8-5600k quadcore and 4x4GB Crucial Ballistix 1866MHz RAM (non-ECC). I'm using 2 Intel Desktop CT NICs (82574L controller) and a single 2TB WD green drive, the OS is on a mini Sandisk 8GB USB stick. The PSU is a 350w Corsair, the case a Fractal Design Arc Mini (v1).
Now I've done the research and I'm aware this is pretty far from what you'd advise as hardware, but I have my reasons for using this setup for now. Mainly: I wanted to test FreeNAS for a while with cheap hardware that could later be repurposed as a cheap multimedia/internet PC for my mom. The PSU and drive I had laying around, so all in all the cost wasn't too high. I’m getting between 55MB/s and 60MB/s write speeds over CIFS.
Usage and network setup:
The FreeNAS will be used to serve HD content (720p and 1080p with up to 3 simultaneous streams) to mediaplayers and computers around the house and for photo and document storage. Read and write (adding new HD content) will be done at the same time. This is why I set up the Intel NICs with LACP to my central 24p Cisco SG200 series switch. I'm currently also using 2 Synology DS212J boxes for HD content and 2 Iomega Iconnects (basically a 4xUSB to gigabit ethernet box) for SD material. One of the Synology boxes also acts as an OpenVPN server/endpoint.
Thinking about new hardware:
I've been checking out the Supermicro X9SCM-F board and the Intel Xeon E3-1230v2 CPU, with ECC memory.
Now here come the questions:
Haswell vs. Ivy Bridge:
Would there be a noticeable performance or power consumption difference between the Ivy Bridge-based hardware above and a Supermicro X10 (LGA 1150) motherboard with a E3-1230v3 Haswell CPU? The TDP of the v3 is actually higher than the v2, but TDPs don't mean everything of course.
Has anyone got real (measured) power consumption figures from a Xeon E3-1230 (v2/v3)?
Also, does anyone have any experience with the Supermicro X10 boards? Do the new Intel NIC controllers on these boards work under FreeNAS?
Multiple pools:
I intend to run multiple pools and not necessarily in any kind of raid. The reason is I already have critical data on 3 separate machines (2 disks in 2 different desktops and on a NAS), and media content on 2 machines (1 disk in a desktop and on a NAS). If I run multiple pools each with one disk (no striping/mirroring), am I correct in assuming that if a single disk fails it only impacts the data on that one disk?
Also, do multiple pools with simultaneous read/write actions have a large impact on performance and CPU load?
Or is this setup just not a good idea considering what I want to achieve?
What would be the hit in write speeds I can expect when moving to RAIDZx compared to single disks (if any)?
Disks:
For the moment the price per TB is about the same on 2, 3 and 4 TB consumer disks. When a disk fails in a RAID setup you have to take into account the time it takes to rebuild a disk, but what about in my single-disk pools? Are 3 and 4 TB consumer disks a lot less reliable compared to 2 TB versions?
Any opinions on / experiences with WD Red drives or Seagate NAS drives (st3000vn000 / st4000vn000)?
LACP Link Aggregation:
I intend to keep using LACP with the 2 onboard NICs from the Supermicro board, but would adding a third NIC (one of the PCI-E cards from my current box) have any benefits? I had some problems setting up LACP: I already had one single interface set up (the onboard NIC) but couldn’t delete this properly (as advised before switching to LACP). The system would throw errors and whatever I did, I couldn’t get rid of it. I ended up doing a fresh install and immediately setting up the LACP, and this worked just fine. So I’d like to know if using a triple (or even quadruple) LACP has any real use before I get the new box, so I can set it up from the start.
Dedicated ZIL and L2ARC device:
From what I’ve read a dedicated SSD for ZIL and L2ARC wouldn’t really increase performance in my typical use case (HD media so large files with continuous read and write with limited use for caching). Correct?
ECC RAM:
Does RAM speed have an actual impact on performance? I would assume it hasn’t and that you’re better off with more and cheaper 1333MHz memory? I do intend to switch to ECC when I go over to a Supermicro board.
PSU:
Is it worth spending big money on a “more reliable” PSU? With the single-disk pools I have in mind, would a PSU failure wipe out any data?
I’ve never had a PSU failure myself, but I have seen a few OEM no-name PSUs fail on other people.
Simultaneous NFS and SMB/CIFS:
The FreeNAS documentation advises against activating NFS and CIFS at the same time on the same share (for access violation and permissions problems it seems). Does this cause a lot of problems if only one machine does the writing at any given time, and the rest is just mediaplayers reading the file? (so there will not be any joint-editing of files for instance)
I need CIFS to give my Windows machines access, but I’d like NFS for the mediaplayers as this should be more performant (less overhead).
There, all done :) Pardon my very lengthy post, and I hope I haven’t overlooked many previously asked questions.
All feedback is welcome!
Kind regards,
Tom aka. Whatts
I'm new to FreeNAS and I have “a few” questions. First some background information...
Why FreeNAS:
Not because I’m unhappy with my actual networked storage, but because I like to play with this stuff. I like to tinker and push my network. I’d also like to obliterate my colleague’s 64MB/s write speed (over CIFS to a Synology DS213j) :)
My current box:
For the moment I'm testing FreeNAS on a Gigabyte GA-F2A85XM-D3H motherboard with an AMD A8-5600k quadcore and 4x4GB Crucial Ballistix 1866MHz RAM (non-ECC). I'm using 2 Intel Desktop CT NICs (82574L controller) and a single 2TB WD green drive, the OS is on a mini Sandisk 8GB USB stick. The PSU is a 350w Corsair, the case a Fractal Design Arc Mini (v1).
Now I've done the research and I'm aware this is pretty far from what you'd advise as hardware, but I have my reasons for using this setup for now. Mainly: I wanted to test FreeNAS for a while with cheap hardware that could later be repurposed as a cheap multimedia/internet PC for my mom. The PSU and drive I had laying around, so all in all the cost wasn't too high. I’m getting between 55MB/s and 60MB/s write speeds over CIFS.
Usage and network setup:
The FreeNAS will be used to serve HD content (720p and 1080p with up to 3 simultaneous streams) to mediaplayers and computers around the house and for photo and document storage. Read and write (adding new HD content) will be done at the same time. This is why I set up the Intel NICs with LACP to my central 24p Cisco SG200 series switch. I'm currently also using 2 Synology DS212J boxes for HD content and 2 Iomega Iconnects (basically a 4xUSB to gigabit ethernet box) for SD material. One of the Synology boxes also acts as an OpenVPN server/endpoint.
Thinking about new hardware:
I've been checking out the Supermicro X9SCM-F board and the Intel Xeon E3-1230v2 CPU, with ECC memory.
Now here come the questions:
Haswell vs. Ivy Bridge:
Would there be a noticeable performance or power consumption difference between the Ivy Bridge-based hardware above and a Supermicro X10 (LGA 1150) motherboard with a E3-1230v3 Haswell CPU? The TDP of the v3 is actually higher than the v2, but TDPs don't mean everything of course.
Has anyone got real (measured) power consumption figures from a Xeon E3-1230 (v2/v3)?
Also, does anyone have any experience with the Supermicro X10 boards? Do the new Intel NIC controllers on these boards work under FreeNAS?
Multiple pools:
I intend to run multiple pools and not necessarily in any kind of raid. The reason is I already have critical data on 3 separate machines (2 disks in 2 different desktops and on a NAS), and media content on 2 machines (1 disk in a desktop and on a NAS). If I run multiple pools each with one disk (no striping/mirroring), am I correct in assuming that if a single disk fails it only impacts the data on that one disk?
Also, do multiple pools with simultaneous read/write actions have a large impact on performance and CPU load?
Or is this setup just not a good idea considering what I want to achieve?
What would be the hit in write speeds I can expect when moving to RAIDZx compared to single disks (if any)?
Disks:
For the moment the price per TB is about the same on 2, 3 and 4 TB consumer disks. When a disk fails in a RAID setup you have to take into account the time it takes to rebuild a disk, but what about in my single-disk pools? Are 3 and 4 TB consumer disks a lot less reliable compared to 2 TB versions?
Any opinions on / experiences with WD Red drives or Seagate NAS drives (st3000vn000 / st4000vn000)?
LACP Link Aggregation:
I intend to keep using LACP with the 2 onboard NICs from the Supermicro board, but would adding a third NIC (one of the PCI-E cards from my current box) have any benefits? I had some problems setting up LACP: I already had one single interface set up (the onboard NIC) but couldn’t delete this properly (as advised before switching to LACP). The system would throw errors and whatever I did, I couldn’t get rid of it. I ended up doing a fresh install and immediately setting up the LACP, and this worked just fine. So I’d like to know if using a triple (or even quadruple) LACP has any real use before I get the new box, so I can set it up from the start.
Dedicated ZIL and L2ARC device:
From what I’ve read a dedicated SSD for ZIL and L2ARC wouldn’t really increase performance in my typical use case (HD media so large files with continuous read and write with limited use for caching). Correct?
ECC RAM:
Does RAM speed have an actual impact on performance? I would assume it hasn’t and that you’re better off with more and cheaper 1333MHz memory? I do intend to switch to ECC when I go over to a Supermicro board.
PSU:
Is it worth spending big money on a “more reliable” PSU? With the single-disk pools I have in mind, would a PSU failure wipe out any data?
I’ve never had a PSU failure myself, but I have seen a few OEM no-name PSUs fail on other people.
Simultaneous NFS and SMB/CIFS:
The FreeNAS documentation advises against activating NFS and CIFS at the same time on the same share (for access violation and permissions problems it seems). Does this cause a lot of problems if only one machine does the writing at any given time, and the rest is just mediaplayers reading the file? (so there will not be any joint-editing of files for instance)
I need CIFS to give my Windows machines access, but I’d like NFS for the mediaplayers as this should be more performant (less overhead).
There, all done :) Pardon my very lengthy post, and I hope I haven’t overlooked many previously asked questions.
All feedback is welcome!
Kind regards,
Tom aka. Whatts
