N40L Media Server?

[Shingle]

Hi, I was hoping for a little advice please.

I have a HP G7 N40L server which I brought a couple of years ago, still new in it's box (waste I know). I would like to use this as a media server for my Raspberry pi which I run XBMC.

The questions I have really, is that I would like to install x3 3TB drives into the server which already have media on them, obviously I presume I can't have raid then, which isn't a problem at this time, I would just like to get the thing up and running as a basic server, can FreeNAS do that? or must I run raid? Would the N40L even be suitable for the job?

As you can probably guess I'm not expert, so apologises for a such a basic question.

 

[ewhac]

You are encouraged to read the FreeNAS manual. You are then encouraged to read all the "pinned" topics in this sub-forum for guidance on system selection and configuration, as well as pitfalls to avoid. Yes, it's a lot of reading. Yes, it's worth it (you'll become a smarter, sexier person for having done so).

Some super-duper basic stuff:

• You must use ECC RAM in the box. ZFS's data integrity relies on RAM always telling The Truth; thus you need RAM modules that can at least report when a bit cell has been mysteriously flipped (very very rare, but it does happen) so that ZFS can take defensive action.
• You will need at least 8GiB of ECC RAM in the box to run FreeNAS; the more RAM, the better. Provided you select vendors carefully, the N40L can take up to 16GiB of RAM.
• You must turn off RAID in the BIOS/disk controller. ZFS does its own RAID-ish data redundancy, and needs direct access to the state of the drives. Hardware-based RAID gets in the way of this, and the controller and ZFS will have a fight if it's enabled, with the loser being your data.
• You do not have to run ZFS RAID features on your drives (with the understanding that, if your drive dies, there's no redundancy to recover lost data).

Provided you set up your box well, an N40L will make a satisfactory (if unspectacular) small FreeNAS server.

 

[jgreco]

sexier? really?

 

[ewhac]

sexier? really?

My local population sample may be skewed...

 

[jgreco]

or those glasses might need adjusting? ;-)

 

[cyberjock]

I should be so sexy women are lining up at my door. I do get credit for every person I get to convert, right?

Oh.. hey.. a mob of lovely ladies is collecting outside my door.. be right back...