Upgrading drives without upgrading RAM

[sig]

My fileserver currently has 32GB ECC RAM, with 10x 4TB harddrives in RaidZ2. I would like to upgrade to 8TB or 10TB drives, however the motherboard doesn't support more memory. I can't afford to upgrade motherboard, CPU and RAM as well as the harddrives.

I know it's recommended to have 1GB memory for each 1TB of storage, but what disadvantages is there if I upgrade drives without adding more memory? The fileserver doesn't see heavy use, it's mostly movies and such.

It's on FreeNAS 9.2.1.5 now, but I'm planning to upgrade to latest stable before adding new drives.

 

[Heracles]

Hey Sig,

The 1G RAM per TB of storage is not a hard requirement. Go ahead and do not worry. Your system will still perform exactly as it is performing now.

 

[sig]

Hey Sig,

The 1G RAM per TB of storage is not a hard requirement. Go ahead and do not worry. Your system will still perform exactly as it is performing now.

Thanks for the help. Drives are installed, and I'm currently transferring files to the new volume.

 

[pschatz100]

If you are worried about memory usage, you can monitor usage of swap memory after the upgrade. This is space on disk that is used if there isn't enough RAM memory installed. If it is zero, or near zero, then you are OK.

You can see reports of memory use in the UI.

 

[sig]

If you are worried about memory usage, you can monitor usage of swap memory after the upgrade. This is space on disk that is used if there isn't enough RAM memory installed. If it is zero, or near zero, then you are OK.

You can see reports of memory use in the UI.

Server has been up about a week now. Swap memory is practically at 0. But it seems it's only using about 11GB of RAM (of 32GB) at any time.

 

[pschatz100]

Then all is OK. On my system, about 12GB out of 16GB is usually used. I suspect that, as you add data, set up some jails, etc., that more memory will be used over time.