older desktop as a NAS for system backups

[Tater]

I inherited a Lenovo ThinkCentre M57 6075 (duo-core, vista era machine) that i was thinking of just adding a couple drives and making it a machine to store backups for. our household has three windows 8 machines, half a dozen raspberry Pis, and other things. this system would not be used for media, just backups and online storage. anything i should worry about at the beginning?

 

[Arwen]

Please supply more hardware details. Specifically this;

• Does the CPU support ECC memory?
• How much memory can the board hold?
• What is the make and model of the Ethernet chip(s)?
• What is the make and model of the SATA chip(s)?
• How many SATA ports are there?
• What is the make and model of the hard drives you want to add?
• What ZFS pool configuration were you wanting to use with the hard drives?
  
• Will the existing power supply support additional hard drives?

In general, left over desktops tend to give poor experience, (meaning slow and
un-reliable), for FreeNAS. And in some cases, simply don't have enough resources
to run FreeNAS at all, (like 8GBs of memory).

You should start with the hardware recommendations;

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

 

[Tater]

unit is stock i believe, I'll quote the below from https://www.cnet.com/products/lenov...duo-e6550-2-33-ghz-monitor-none-series/specs/

Please supply more hardware details. Specifically this;

• Does the CPU support ECC memory?

No

• How much memory can the board hold?

installed 1g up to 8g DDR2 SDRAM - non-ECC

• What is the make and model of the Ethernet chip(s)?

Ethernet Controller(s) Intel 82566DM IEEE 802.3 Gigabit Ethernet

• What is the make and model of the SATA chip(s)?

not specified

• How many SATA ports are there?

at least two? boot and optical drive uses a sata, i can pull that and do two 1,2,3tb drives for a software mirror

• What is the make and model of the hard drives you want to add?

open to suggestion. i have a WD3003 that i can pull from another machine, and then buy a similar to mirror

• What ZFS pool configuration were you wanting to use with the hard drives?

ummm(googles) a mirrored pool of two drives?

• Will the existing power supply support additional hard drives?

no idea

In general, left over desktops tend to give poor experience, (meaning slow and
un-reliable), for FreeNAS. And in some cases, simply don't have enough resources
to run FreeNAS at all, (like 8GBs of memory).

I understand this, the reasoning is that i *should* set up a NAS for backup of all the other machines, plus a little offsite storage, but i'd like to use existing older equipment to evaluate the feasibility before i decide to upgrade.

the machine seems nice, just slow under vista, and no longer able to keep up with the new things in the world, just trying to find a home for perfectly working equipment.

You should start with the hardware recommendations;

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

reading it as we speak. if this machine is NOT useable, can someone recommend a use for this box? right now I have it keeping a stack of HP G3s from floating away if gravity fails

 

[Tater]

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

ok, I read this. it seems a little.......harsh when it comes to recommendations, or at least on equipment that might not be the fastest and bestest. (do a word count for the word 'crap')

let me rephrase my goals. I have three people, all with their own machines, instead of setting up a USB drive and physically going to each machine and doing a backup, i'd like to have an older, dedicated machine that they could point their backups too. also one of the people constantly seems to have their hard drive get full, so I'd like them to be able to move stuff to an archive folder on the older dedicated machine instead of her constantly borrowing the USB external drive.

so I was thinking of setting up the duo core with some large(2tb) drives, mirrored, put it on the network, and leave it running, accessible to everyone. technically i *should* be able to do this with the installed Windows Vista...but it's Vista :/

 

[Pitfrr]

Considering that you want to reuse available hardware and considering that this hardware is not adequate for running FreeNAS serenely maybe an other NAS OS might be more suited (NAS4Free?)?

Otherwise if you are looking for a platform to test FreeNAS to see if it fits your needs (and considering the hardware limitations and danger (i.e. no ECC RAM)) you might be able to experiment with that set-up and later get more appropriate hardware.

 

[Arwen]

@Tater,
I understand your desire to re-cycle your old computer. It's that FreeNAS is an appliance
like software with specific hardware desires and requirements. Part of our harshness for the
hardware requirements, is that people have ignored them, or did not care when they put
their FreeNAS together. Then, when something bad happens, or even something annoying,
(like low performance), the person comes here to solve it. When in reality the solution is to
do the correct thing and use proper hardware.

We care about reliability and recoverability of our data, thus, we use and recommend server
hardware. Some of us are computer professionals, and server room planning is in our blood.
Thus, I prefer to plan for 3 to 5 years without any changes, (space or performance upgrades).

All that said, you can use your old PC for backups. Test FreeNAS out on the hardware. Play
with it. I highly recommend that if you have a person using this FreeNAS for a dumping
ground, it's not their only place the data is stored.

Next, you will NEED 8GBs of RAM. If you can't get DDR2 memory today, then scrap the
idea of using FreeNAS. Few people run FreeNAS with less than 8GBs of memory. Some
who do, end up with problems.

A simple 2 disk Mirrored vDev ZFS Pool is perfectly fine. The performance is probably
just fine using 1Gbps or less Ethernet. The speed limiting factor might be the CPU or the
DDR2 memory, (don't know if that CPU uses FSB, Front Side Bus).

If you don't have more than 2 SATA ports, then you will have to use a USB drive for the
boot device. (Or 2 mirrored, since USB flash drives are not as reliable as they can be.)
Note that in the past, FreeNAS needed only 8GB boot devices. But, today, we recommend
16GB or a bit larger.

Last, read up on ZFS. It has some limitations, but in general it's a world & enterprise class
file system and volume manager. Not only does ZFS want to store your data, it wants to
protect it from harm.

 

[BarefootWoodworker]

Just as an FYI, Tater, I was using an X2 with 16GB of RAM when I was fiddling with FreeNAS to begin with. If I remember right, the CoreDuo is from around the same time as the X2.

I was using it as an iSCSI box with 2 1TB drives, and that little X2 would get slaughtered on transfers. It actually wouldn't even do volume to volume transfers for crap. Every time I tried, it would puke and fail.

So while you *can* use old hardware, just be forewarned that it may run very poorly. You're also taking a risk without ECC RAM of writing bad data to your drives and losing everything.

With that said, I ended up liking FreeNAS and ended up building the system in my signature.

Also, to stress what Arwen said; for some of us, IT (computers) is a profession, and we constantly see people try to make hardware do what it was never intended then get upset that they're not getting the experience they were expecting.

 

[Wayland Sothcott]

I inherited a Lenovo ThinkCentre M57 6075 (duo-core, vista era machine) that i was thinking of just adding a couple drives and making it a machine to store backups for. our household has three windows 8 machines, half a dozen raspberry Pis, and other things. this system would not be used for media, just backups and online storage. anything i should worry about at the beginning?

It sounds like FreeNAS is not for you. There are easier Linux alternatives you can use this old IBM machine for.

I would recommend ClearOS 7 which will work on your hardware as is. 2GB RAM is fine but 4 will stop it from swapping to disk in the night when you might hear it.

I would also recommend hardware RAID using AMCC/3Ware 9650SE-2LP card with a couple of 750GB Seagate Barracuda drives as these are large, cheap and reliable. I know FreeNAS wants to do the RAID itself which is wonderful but normally hardware RAID is a lot easier. Once it's set up (press ALT+3 for the setup screen) then Linux sees it as just another hard drive.

You could use ClearOS 6 on a 32 bit system or even ClearOS 5 on very basic Pentium III hardware if you chose only to install the file sharing stuff and not put it on the Internet.

This FreeNAS is obviously only of use for super huge, super fast, super reliable applications, not for modest use.

 

[wblock]

This FreeNAS is obviously only of use for super huge, super fast, super reliable applications, not for modest use.

FreeNAS is for people who don't want to lose their data, and works well as a personal NAS. The only problem here is squaring the idea of keeping backups on old, marginal hardware. How important are those backups? If they're truly backups, using hardware that is capable of storing them safely is not a lot of overhead. Particularly when hardware is cheap and recreating data is expensive.

 

[Wayland Sothcott]

FreeNAS is for people who don't want to lose their data, and works well as a personal NAS. The only problem here is squaring the idea of keeping backups on old, marginal hardware. How important are those backups? If they're truly backups, using hardware that is capable of storing them safely is not a lot of overhead. Particularly when hardware is cheap and recreating data is expensive.

My point still stands. It's a more expensive way of storing data. I've just read up on the ZFS and it is indeed very comprehensive and well thought out way of storing data. It does not just organize your files like a basic file system would do but manages all the different types of storage used in saving and retrieving that file. Multiple copies of the data are held as the file is written. A journal is created to ensure the file can be retrieved if it's interrupted before it hits the actual hard drive. It is truly amazing and requires some serious hardware if it's to be of any use at all.

It needs plenty of RAM or else it will hammer the hard drive. It needs an SSD (or M.2 NVMe) for intermediate writes. It needs enough drives to form a meaningful RAID array.

For someone wanting to take a step up from keeping everything on their PC, laptop or external hard drive FreeNAS is a step too far for many. An old 64 bit PC with MDADM RAID or a reasonable RAID card and two drives and a UPS would make a very sensible upgrade. I built one for £75.
HP AMD 64 PC £30, 3ware RAID £15, 2x 750GB Seagates £30.
In most cases it's actually £45 cash outlay as most people can find an old PC for free.

OK so it can only push files at 400mbps but that's faster than WiFi and plenty for streaming and backups.

FreeNAS looks like the way to go for me to store data commercially.

 

[BarefootWoodworker]

It needs an SSD (or M.2 NVMe) for intermediate writes.

I don't have an SSD in mine and it crams 1+Gb just fine. All you really "need" is a battery backup, and that's just being intelligent about not feeding sensitive electronics crappy power.

FreeNAS looks like the way to go for me to store data commercially.

Not at all. It's quite easy to make a personal NAS out of FreeNAS, and not what I would call extremely expensive. But then again, commercial solutions, to me, are things from EMC, Hitachi, or NetApp.

 

[Wayland Sothcott]

I don't have an SSD in mine and it crams 1+Gb just fine. All you really "need" is a battery backup, and that's just being intelligent about not feeding sensitive electronics crappy power.

Not at all. It's quite easy to make a personal NAS out of FreeNAS, and not what I would call extremely expensive. But then again, commercial solutions, to me, are things from EMC, Hitachi, or NetApp.

OK then some of the commenters here seem to say it can't be an old desktop PC. I don't see why not. If the machine breaks just throw the drives in another one. Unless that's a hard thing to do. It's easy the way I've been building machines.

First rule of business, don't go spending money on stuff you don't need. The point of RAID is the "Redundant" and "Inexpensive". By using the disks in a smart way they don't have to be NASA quality to get the job done.

Yes a UPS cuts out most of the problems with server reliability. It's when the power comes back that you find it's broken.

 

[wblock]

My point still stands.

I disagree. You said it was for commercial use only, and the people on this forum demonstrate that's not true.

It's a more expensive way of storing data.

It's actually much cheaper than comparable storage. The difference is that it can't really be compared to traditional "whoops, lost it, sorry about that" filesystems used by cheap and not-so-cheap NAS systems.

It needs plenty of RAM or else it will hammer the hard drive. It needs an SSD (or M.2 NVMe) for intermediate writes. It needs enough drives to form a meaningful RAID array.

Your understanding of ZFS is incomplete. An SSD is not required, although one or more can be added. ZFS is efficient enough that they are only needed in large systems. "Enough drives" is two for a mirror. These are not unique requirements of ZFS, it's just that ZFS turns the computer into a bigger, smarter RAID controller.

Hardware is cheap these days. The only time it's not worth giving a NAS good hardware is when the data is not worth storing. And if it's not worth storing, why bother storing it?

 

[ccssid]

This ^^

 

[Adrian]

It sounds like FreeNAS is not for you. There are easier Linux alternatives you can use this old IBM machine for.
This FreeNAS is obviously only of use for super huge, super fast, super reliable applications, not for modest use.

My first FreeNAS machine was a very modest HP Microserver with 8 GB of ECC memory, an Intel NIC and a RAIDZ1 of 4 * 2 TB WD Green drives. Note that HP often offer cash back discounts on these, making the server very cheap. It served me very well for years, and is about to be prepared as a second partial backup to be installed in a family member's home. A FreeNAS Mini (32 GB, RAIDZ1 4 * 6 TB WD Red) is my main backup. It was till a few days ago my main machine (RAIDZ2), now replaced by a spiffy and expensive FreeNAS Mini XL (32 GB, mirrored 8 * WD 6TB Red).

It all boils down to how much your data is worth. If you keep it on or back it up to something cheap and nasty, you stand a good chance of loosing the lot. Fair enough if it is replaceable or disposable, or you are just experimenting to see if FreeNAS suits you.

For better data retention reliability you need better hardware. As far as I know the FreeNAS Mini and Mini XL are one of the cheapest and easiest ways of getting suitable hardware. iXsystems' stance on the current Intel C2000 and Asrock BMC/IPMI problems (warranty on machines which fail due to either of these extended to 3 years from date of purchase) is very reassuring.

Note that ZFS has check sums everywhere so it should detect blocks which have suffered bit-rot.

I also use s3browser (pay for version for performance) under Windows to back up my more important data to Amazon S3, encrypting on the client it before it is sent or when it is retrieved. The initial upload (with my 80/20 FTTC connection) took a couple of weeks but incremental updates of this largely static collection usually does not take too long.

Edit: Ah, several others have beaten me to the post.

 

[Wayland Sothcott]

I disagree. You said it was for commercial use only, and the people on this forum demonstrate that's not true.


It's actually much cheaper than comparable storage. The difference is that it can't really be compared to traditional "whoops, lost it, sorry about that" filesystems used by cheap and not-so-cheap NAS systems.
....

I did not say it's for commercial use only. I said "FreeNAS looks like the way to go for me to store data commercially. "

Hardware is not cheap. It's just that drive capacities are much larger and so are the amounts of data people store.

Most file systems are journaling so tend not to go wrong so much. The advice I keep seeing is that you need several GB of RAM. If the PC breaks down does that mean the data is lost or can you just shove the drives into another PC? I can do that with Linux with almost no effort. If you have to ensure the PC never breaks then that puts the cost up. If it only runs on the latest hardware then that's a cost too. I've been seeing newbies advised to build mega machines just to store a few photos and stream a movie.

 

[Wayland Sothcott]

My first FreeNAS machine was a very modest HP Microserver with 8 GB of ECC memory, an Intel NIC and a RAIDZ1 of 4 * 2 TB WD Green drives.
...

I also use s3browser (pay for version for performance) under Windows to back up my more important data to Amazon S3, encrypting on the client it before it is sent or when it is retrieved. The initial upload (with my 80/20 FTTC connection) took a couple of weeks but incremental updates of this largely static collection usually does not take too long.

Exactly my point 8GB RAM is twice what those servers come with. Not exactly re-using existing hardware either, you had to buy that as a storage server. The original poster wanted to reuse a PC. He's basically in the wrong place if he wants to build a server out of a spare PC. I do it all the time using ClearOS. RAID card and XFS seems pretty solid. Had some drives break but no data loss.

You would definitely need to mirror those hard drives. The Green WD ones last about 6 months and then stop working. The Blue ones seem OK though.

Very wise to encrypt your data before giving it to Amazon. I'd be concerned about who's software was doing the encryption too.

 

[wblock]

Please review http://doc.freenas.org/9.10/zfsprimer.html. ZFS is copy on write. It is vastly different from previous-generation filesystems.

Yes, if the hardware dies, the disks can be easily swapped to another system.

As far as "mega machines for a few photos"... how many people do you know who have lost irreplaceable family photos because of a media failure? A decent NAS is just insurance. The cost of decent hardware for a basic setup is far cheaper than the cost of attempting to recover data from a failed hard disk or flash drive. And data recovery often fails anyway.

When people routinely have terabytes of information to store, requiring 8GB of RAM is not a "mega" machine any more.

 

[BarefootWoodworker]

I've been seeing newbies advised to build mega machines just to store a few photos and stream a movie.

Stream, or decode? Because they're two different things.

 

[Wayland Sothcott]

Please review http://doc.freenas.org/9.10/zfsprimer.html. ZFS is copy on write. It is vastly different from previous-generation filesystems.

Yes, if the hardware dies, the disks can be easily swapped to another system.

As far as "mega machines for a few photos"... how many people do you know who have lost irreplaceable family photos because of a media failure? A decent NAS is just insurance. The cost of decent hardware for a basic setup is far cheaper than the cost of attempting to recover data from a failed hard disk or flash drive. And data recovery often fails anyway.

When people routinely have terabytes of information to store, requiring 8GB of RAM is not a "mega" machine any more.

It's still expense. It costs no money if you lose priceless photos since they are lost and have no monetary value. So no, it's not a saving to spend the money on special hardware it's just insurance against loss of your photos.

Yes I appreciate that FreeNAS is special but I don't think people who want something normal want to spend extra money to get the extra.

A file server connected via Ethernet cable will feed a TV set fine. Obviously if they want trans-coded output squished down to fit on an Android connected via WiFi they will need sufficient CPU power on the server. It's odd that no one has done this in OpenCL or CUDA on the graphics card for media servers. It would save having to use a powerful CPU.