Trying out FreeNAS

[AND_YOU_ARE]

The last few months I have been lurking and reading up on the FreeNAS forums. I have been wanting to build a home NAS and offload 3TB of media files from my current gaming PC. I am planning of building a proper NAS system using FreeNAS, likely a Supermicro X10SL7-F, 16-32GB ECC RAM, and possibly 10TB in RAIDZ2. My goal is to store all my media files, pictures, crash plan backups, and use PLEX. I might build this NAS as soon as my tax return comes in, or after buying a house this spring. In the mean time I would like to install FreeNAS and try it out with my old gaming PC.

Its hardware is an ASUS P5B Deluxe, Intel Core 2 Duo E6400, 4GB RAM, and a number of older 1.5TB drives. I also have an old 10GB SSD for the OS, so I shouldn't have to purchase anything with this trial system. Ive read FreeNAS requires 64bit computing, my old motherboard supports 64bit. It doesn't have on board video, but I have a few old video cards to choose from. I do not plan to do much with this build and FreeNAS, but I would like to become more comfortable with the OS, creating pools, etc, and all the different settings. I have dabbled with Ubuntu on an old laptop, but do not have much experience with linux distros.

Is there anything I am missing before I go ahead and give it a shot?

 

[MrToddsFriends]

Lurking and reading for a few months means of course that you are familiar with the hardware recommendations, especially the 8 GByte RAM requirement and the advise not to use desktop hardware for FreeNAS (which often has network and/or SATA controllers which don't work very well or are not supported at all). And of course you are already familiar with the concept of hardware burn-in tests.

My advise would be to rethink your plan, buy proper hardware first and play with it thoroughly afterwards (before storing valuable data on it).

 

[AND_YOU_ARE]

Yes I have seen the recommendation of using 8GB of RAM for FreeNAS, I thought it was a recommendation for better performance, not a hard and fast rule. I might have 8GBs of RAM, I haven't powered it up in two years, I'll have to check.

 

[Mirfster]

I am planning of building a proper NAS system using FreeNAS, likely a Supermicro X10SL7-F, 16-32GB ECC RAM, and possibly 10TB in RAIDZ2. My goal is to store all my media files, pictures, crash plan backups, and use PLEX. I might build this NAS as soon as my tax return comes in, or after buying a house this spring.

Get @anodos to spec you out a system and mention you have a "budget". He will make sure that ALL of your tax return goes towards the FreeNas build... :p

On a more serious note:

• Your motherboard (ASUS P5B Deluxe) does not support ECC Ram (I don't think the CPU does either) and maxes out at FreeNas' Minimal requirement:

Memory
4 x DIMM, Max. 8 GB, DDR2 800/667/533 Non-ECC,Un-buffered Memory
Dual Channel memory architecture
* Refer to www.asus.com or user manual for Memory QVL (Qualify Vendor List)

• At best, you will be running with minimal requirements and Non-ECC; so:
  
  • Don't expect this thing to fly or even perform as expected
  • Know that your data is at risk, so I would not recommend putting anything on this system that is of any importance
  • Take it all with a grain of salt, any issues you have more than likely will be due to your hardware (or lack of)
  • Treat is as a "learning experience" and please do not let this machine/setup make you think badly of FreeNas

 

[Jailer]

If you are just testing things out then yes you can use this old system to play around with FreeNAS. As others have noted the hardware, specifically the memory, falls below the requirements and you may experience odd behavior as a result.

If you can I would try to get 8GB of memory to make it a good experience while testing. If you can't I'd still give it a shot for some learning experience.

 

[Montel Bahn]

The disparity in the hardware you would get vs. what you have will make testing (sic) almost pointless, except if you have lots of time, as a learning experience.

Start by checking support for whatever video cards and onboard lan you have.(marvell google tells me, but you need to check deets!)
Hell, you can probably even get it running without video, but that is beyond our scope.
My iso asked for ip 192.168.1.121 from my cisco router, wait, it was 192.168.1.140 to be honest, a couple of weeks ago.
You might be best to try PC-BSD first, it's a good stepping-stone/hardware support gauge. (and so much more)
Go get that iso file right now!