Moving to freenas MB suggestions

[fizzgig656]

Looking to move to freenas. Now I've got a intel d700mud at the moment with 4 sata drives (2 mirrored zfs) only 4gb ram and wanting to run file sharing, transmission, dynamic dns, minidlna and possible plex but all low demand. As in one user using it for home use.
Currently running nas4free with 50% ram usage and only starts to thrash cpu when transcoding in plex. But I don't use plex for video much.
Will my motherboard run ok? Do I need to upgrade my board so I can get more ram in?
What mothboard suggestions for low price, low power consumption with 4 sata ports and 16? Gb ram? Might be able to get hold of a corei processor but do like my atom☺

 

[jgreco]

The bare minimum to run FreeNAS is 8GB of RAM. Regardless of how few users or how much at home it is. There've been a lot of people who have run into trouble down the road when something bad happens and they have insufficient RAM.

The Atom C2550 is a nice small platform. There are a variety of nice E3 based alternatives as well. There's a bunch of stickies that talk about this sort of thing.

 

[fizzgig656]

ok cheers. though as much.
Ttrouble is the threads ive seem talk more about performance and durability and top spec rather than low power consumption and low cost, without compromising too much on quality. Obviously im not looking for a multi NIC dual processor type of board, simply 4 sata, 1 nic, couple of ram slots, and as freenas seem to need a good btt of ram 16g ideally minimum. and only really a slightly better processor. I think if i could of added more ram to my current board it would be fine - but i cant! lol.

 

[danb35]

For low power, either the SuperMicro or the ASRock Atom C2750 boards is a good choice, but expensive. For low cost, your best bet is probably to find either a Lenovo TS140 or a Dell T20, add some RAM and your drives.

 

[SweetAndLow]

ok cheers. though as much.
Ttrouble is the threads ive seem talk more about performance and durability and top spec rather than low power consumption and low cost, without compromising too much on quality. Obviously im not looking for a multi NIC dual processor type of board, simply 4 sata, 1 nic, couple of ram slots, and as freenas seem to need a good btt of ram 16g ideally minimum. and only really a slightly better processor. I think if i could of added more ram to my current board it would be fine - but i cant! lol.

I don't think you seem to get it, no one cares what processor your have and never said you need a fancy motherboard. Your just need 8GB of memory and maybe 16GB if you run multiple jails. The last several generations of hardware supports this configuration. You also mention low power consumption but I'm pretty sure you don't understand what that means. Some of the highest performing servers on here use less power than a light bulb when sitting idle. Cheap components are not less power hungry than server grade high performance parts.

 

[jgreco]

Low cost compromises away any sort of quality. Don't expect to be paying $40 for your mainboard+APU. That stuff is invariably trash.

A lot of people then think that we're asking for the most expensive stuff out there. Definitely NOT. The gamers sometimes appear and want to recycle their ultra awesome previous gen $400 gaming motherboard; these are often equally unsuitable.

A decent server grade motherboard often costs around $150. It's usually equivalent to, sometimes a little cheaper than, a decent workstation grade motherboard. I don't think this makes it a "fancy" motherboard, more like, it's a motherboard that has the features you require. For example, the guy who likes to go surfing and boating probably isn't well-served by a Mini Cooper, but a truck lets him toss surfboards in the back and haul boats on a trailer.

 

[fizzgig656]

ok all thanks. i think some of you you have jumped at me for the wrong reasons or miss understood what i was trying to say, I never said i want cheap parts because there lower power consumption!

I don't think you seem to get it, no one cares what processor your have and never said you need a fancy motherboard. Your just need 8GB of memory and maybe 16GB if you run multiple jails. The last several generations of hardware supports this configuration. You also mention low power consumption but I'm pretty sure you don't understand what that means. Some of the highest performing servers on here use less power than a light bulb when sitting idle. Cheap components are not less power hungry than server grade high performance parts.

i understand what you are all saying and i never meant i was looking for a cheap and nasty MB, i expect to pay a bit but still nice to know what people are using or suggest as ive not had change to look at all the boards out there yet, and the latest MB is not always the one to go for when a slightly older current one suites all your needs. All i was saying is i have no requirement for Fast processing, resilvering, data transfer dual NIC or 12 SATA ports etc. I have not deadlines or time constraints that possible business situations could cause. Its all a humble sit at home nas doing one or two things at a time, I realise freenas/ZFS needs ram, fair enough, i can take that into account.
thanks danb35 for the pointers - this is what i was after.
Processors and motherboards do matter a bit, as my current one only just handles plex transcoding and my current board needs 2 more sata port and more ram slots ideally. I know most newer motherboard will surpass my old one. If i could get 8gb into my current board it would be ok for now, but would still ideally need upgrading.

Simply im looking to upgrade from my d2700mud (i have been happy with its performance but now im asking more of it and thinking of moving to freenas). so just a little better performance, 4 sata, 1 nic, able to take minimum 8gb or ideally 16gb ram. without costing too much in outlay and daily running costs/mostly tick over. cant remember what mine runs at now...

 

[danb35]

There are a lot of folks who seem to believe that FreeNAS is designed to use any castoff old hardware. We frequently see them here when they've lost all their data and don't understand why. NAS4Free (i.e., the old FreeNAS) was, if not exactly designed for that purpose, at least more compatible with it. So between the fact that you're using NAS4Free now, and you're asking about low cost, people may jump to the wrong conclusion.

Last time I checked, the TS140 can get you into a complete system with a Xeon processor for under $300US. Add an 8 GB stick of RAM and your drives, and you're set.

 

[fizzgig656]

cheers. yes i should of make that clear that after working with nas4free i wanted to move UP to freenas? thanks danb35
im thinking the Atom C2550 or C2750 type of board, it will fit well into my current customer case. (i bet some will like and some will hate this)

 

[danb35]

The Atom boards are nice, but expensive--you could buy a whole TS140 system for less than the cost of one of those boards.

 

[fizzgig656]

trouble is, im looking from the uk and they seem to be £300+ for the ts140 xeon, the asrock c2550 is £229, ish, and the supermicro ive emailed their sales team. i know i dont wanna buy cheap but where/how do you draw the line between cheap and quality. do you go by price? do you go by brand? would most xeon MB's be quality? Do you see any desktop motherboards no good for freenas? or just cheap ones?
Do you see my current D2700mud as a cheap board? (i know its not good for freenas, but to gauge my "purchasing".
Ive just meassured mine and standard tick over its using 48w.

 

[jgreco]

Nice questions; I give some guidance to this in my old sticky, "So you want some hardware suggestions." The big point is that you don't really want a desktop board, you definitely don't want a CHEAP board, and you ideally want something designed to run 24/7, with server-y characteristics, like Intel ethernets, ECC support, etc. Most Xeon boards tend to fit the bill, but we find that the Supermicro ones tend to be the most optimal and at a lower cost than many of the alternatives.

 

[fizzgig656]

Cheers, i read a few "guides", ill digest yours now, thanks again. I know these questions keep coming up, but when they keep having these good ideas for new processors and MB's i guess the question will never stop, and when not all users have the same requirements and look at whats needed from a different slant its never straight forward. does anyone know what's in the IX systems kits? I see the power consumption on the mini i good. https://www.ixsystems.com/freenas-mini/ - Isee their atom?

 

[jgreco]

There aren't any truly revolutionary good ideas. There are some things like lower power options such as the Xeon-D/Avotons, integrated 10Gbase-T, and M.2 slots, but basically all the same things that made a board suitable for FreeNAS five years ago are still true now. The advice hasn't changed, merely the currently suggested model numbers.

The FreeNAS Mini is an Avoton C2750 (IIRC) with 16GB RAM in some unusual but still off-the-shelf mini-ITX chassis.

 

[fizzgig656]

I do underatand that freenas and nas4free are different and read some of the discussions/reasons about it and why. So that is not on discussion here. And partially why I'm looking to change as Ive changed the use of my nas.
1 question I can't get my head round is both nas4free and freenas use zfs. So why is the ram requirement so different. Is there more on freenas that needs ram?
Would I be right in seeing freenas as more of a commercially aimed multi functional service system and nas4free is more home for minimal number of services ? Although both can do both commercial and domestic?
I'm trying to tread carefully.....
As I said above I think I've got to look at the c2550 upwards before moving forward.
Thanks again for all your advise and guidance it is apriciated.

 

[John Richardson]

The asrock embedded server boards C2550d4i and C2750d41 are SLICK.

 

[JDCynical]

1 question I can't get my head round is both nas4free and freenas use zfs. So why is the ram requirement so different. Is there more on freenas that needs ram?

As a wise person once said, the bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away...

NAS4Free Wiki, Hardware requirements

• 2GB of RAM is the minimum required for running swab less.
• 512MB of RAM is the minimum required for upgrading the Embedded platforms.
• Using advanced features like software RAID 5 and enabling lots of functions may need more RAM (1GB or greater).
• For using ZFS, we recommend a absolute minimum of 4GB RAM and using a 64-bits install only by using the NAS4Free-x64 releases.

FreeBSD disables things like prefetch if the system RAM is 4GB or less:

Code:

# Disable ZFS prefetching

# http://southbrain.com/south/2008/04/the-nightmare-comes-slowly-zfs.html
# Increases overall speed of ZFS, but when disk flushing/writes occur,
# system is less responsive (due to extreme disk I/O).
# NOTE: Systems with 4 GB of RAM or more have prefetch enabled by default.
vfs.zfs.prefetch_disable="1"

ZFS was also designed with ECC RAM in mind, which is generally only found on 'server grade' boards.

Really, the minimum requirements are not that different when ZFS enters into the picture.

 

[jgreco]

1 question I can't get my head round is both nas4free and freenas use zfs. So why is the ram requirement so different.

In my opinion, as the person who bumped the FreeNAS RAM requirement from 6GB to 8GB: The RAM requirement isn't that different. We're just not unrealistic optimists about the amount of RAM needed.

In particular, lots of people used to run FreeNAS systems with 4GB or 6GB of RAM. We noticed an uncomfortable number of people who suffered catastrophic pool losses. Not a huge number. Not even a large number. But enough.

Then I took some time and studied the problem. The people who were running these systems uniformly lacked the skill to postmortem what had happened. I wasn't interested in trying to replicate something that had no obvious reproducible path. But I did notice that not one of those complaints came from people with 8GB (or more) of RAM.

Pragmatic fix: bump the minimum RAM requirement.

So, here's the question. Why does this matter? We assume you come here because you want ZFS, which means you want reliable file storage. You are fine with providing 4GB of RAM - a totally ridiculous amount of RAM for a fileserver, since there are lots of UFS or EXT3 based NAS units that get by on 128MB or 256MB of RAM. 4GB is fine, and you understand the value of the 4GB, but you're resistant to 8GB? That makes no sense to me. Give it the required resources and get the benefits.

The truth? I think NAS4Free quite possibly needs just as much RAM but people optimistically charge forward with too-small configurations and then when something bad happens, they chalk it up to ${randomreason}.

Us, here, we hate to see pools lost. We're paranoid about it. We tell people to use at-least RAIDZ2. We beat on people to use ECC. We strongly encourage the use of server grade motherboards. Etc. We're serious about building systems that are reliable. You want reliable? It's 8GB minimum, and 1GB per TB of disk.

You want to screw around? You can run FreeNAS on 4GB RAM. Go ahead. Just don't come crying to us if something bad happens. Probably won't. But it could. Seen it, often enough...

Does that answer your question?

 

[fizzgig656]

Hell yes! I have this in my job, sometimes you cant pin point why its doing it but you can eliminate the fault by changing something then that's fine. - resolution.

I wouldn't say im resistant to 8gb vs 4gb. if i have the capacity i would do it now, even thinking ahead 16gb, my limitation is what i have now and its expandability. I'm not sitting here say i wasn't a complete data centre from this "notebook" if you catch my drift. I'm trying to make a system that isn't (overkill is the wrong word) more than i need! Data loss is a inconvenience and i would be annoyed but i wouldn't be crying into my soup, that's what backup are for in my eyes. saying that i don't want to buy something that's known to give problems or struggle - both of these questions in my head initiated the start of this thread. and i think answered.

You stated you advise at least RAISZ2, i see why not Z1, especially on multi-TB multi-HDDs but on my 4 x 2TB HDD (soon to be - i currently have 2 1tb and 2 500gb HDDs) system would you advise 2 mirrors or 1 RAIDZ2?

 

[Ericloewe]

Hell yes! I have this in my job, sometimes you cant pin point why its doing it but you can eliminate the fault by changing something then that's fine. - resolution.

I wouldn't say im resistant to 8gb vs 4gb. if i have the capacity i would do it now, even thinking ahead 16gb, my limitation is what i have now and its expandability. I'm not sitting here say i wasn't a complete data centre from this "notebook" if you catch my drift. I'm trying to make a system that isn't (overkill is the wrong word) more than i need! Data loss is a inconvenience and i would be annoyed but i wouldn't be crying into my soup, that's what backup are for in my eyes. saying that i don't want to buy something that's known to give problems or struggle - both of these questions in my head initiated the start of this thread. and i think answered.

You stated you advise at least RAISZ2, i see why not Z1, especially on multi-TB multi-HDDs but on my 4 x 2TB HDD (soon to be - i currently have 2 1tb and 2 500gb HDDs) system would you advise 2 mirrors or 1 RAIDZ2?

Mirrors are faster, RAIDZ2 is safer.