Various questions for FreeNAS 8.04 build [New to this]

[Hammerz]

Hey everybody!

In my search for a safe haven for my data I have decided to try FreeNAS 8.04 and since I know nothing of linux, nothing of FreeNAS save what I have read and youtubed I got a few questions before I try it out.

So first off does the following hardware work in FreeNAS v 8xx:

CPU: Intel Core i3-2120T Processor LGA1155,
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z68-M PRO, Socket-1155 Z68

Secondly I would like to know how upgrades to major new releases work? What I specifically mean is I will have ZFS running, but will upgrading to major new releases ie 9.xx etc trash my array so I am forced to take the data out before upgrading or is it static and unaffected by fresh installs/Major Upgrades of FreeNAS? ie does it work like drives attached to RAID 5 controllers in terms of ability to move it to new install OS/version? hope this makes sense I am sorry if I am not uber technical but I really like the skinned down product and higher safety on ZFS than usual :P

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks

 

[survive]

Hi Hammerz,

That combo should work just fine with FreeNAS.

Be sure you get enough RAM, 6GB minimum so figure on getting at least 8.

There haven't been any major upgrades for FreeNAS as it is in it's current form, but personally I'm confident that any transition between base FreeBSD versions will be seamless to your data.

-Will

 

[Hammerz]

Thanks for the quick answer sir! much obliged.
I got 16 GB ram ATM, but I am going to upgrade to 32 shortly. Is changing out the RAM an issue after installation or is it same behavior as normal OS? I am going for 32 as I will have a huge amount of files on the array with no drive for buffering.

 

[louisk]

Changing RAM should have no (negative) effect on how the system runs.

In theory, upgrades are painless and performed via the webby (documented on the freenas site). In reality, there haven't been any major upgrades happen yet, so we don't know. In reality, I have not had an upgrade with a problem since I started with the 8.0 betas (I used .7 and .6 before that, but there is no upgrade vector yet from .7 to 8.x).

 

[Hammerz]

Thanks louisk :)

More questions :P
I got my system up and running nicely and trucking away and I run into intermittent file transfer interrupts.
My NAS system is still on and I can still talk to it in the GUI but file transfers just drops out intermittently from my Windows 7, 64 bit host to the NAS stating network path is no longer available. If I then start up the transfer again it will run before dropping again. Very annoying.

I checked an issue somewhat similar to mine yet not quite in the ticket system found here:
http://support.freenas.org/ticket/424


Hardware on NAS is:

OS: FreeNAS-8.0.4-RELEASE-x64 (10351)
Intel Core i3 2120T Cpu
ASUS P8Z68-M PRO, Socket-1155 Z68
16 GB Corsair 1333 Mhz DDR3 Ram (4x4)
6 x 3TB Western Digital Caviar Green WD30EZRX hard drives
Corsair 750 watts AX Gold Rated Power Supply

Relevant things I can think off that I have tampered with/enabled (maybe?) is:

- I have set each disk at power saving "64" not sure if this matters
- I have enabled S.M.A.R.T service
- I do not have a Swap file location drive or any drive for tasks (yet) is this the issue?
- I only have 1.3 TB of storage on my 12.8 TB array yet so it should not be lack of available RAM overhead due to file reservations yet right?
- I only experience drop outs when doing file transfers (so far) normal operation/streaming seems to be fine from the NAS to host.
- My network backbone ie my routers/switches/cables work perfectly so no culprit there I have had several NAS apperatures work fine even at colossal file transfers prior to this project with no issues.
- When I created my ZFS RAID1 volume I ticked "Force 4k sectors" not sure if this was right but WD drives I use use AF so it seemed I needed to?

Hope you smart people can point me in the right direction and remember to be gentle what most likely is obvious to you is sorcery at best to me, im still new to this :)

 

[louisk]

I could be wrong, but I thought most drives still emulated 512b sectors. I would read up on your drive and see if they are 4k only, or 4k optional. I would try disabling disk power saving and see if that makes a difference.

 

[Hammerz]

I could be wrong, but I thought most drives still emulated 512b sectors. I would read up on your drive and see if they are 4k only, or 4k optional. I would try disabling disk power saving and see if that makes a difference.

If I look here:


It says my drive is AF = 4k sectors if I read all the jargon correctly?

Anyways im getting more confused by the minute, if I look here:
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=730 it says 512b sectors (emulated) whatever that means. argh!

EDIT 1:
I found #10 here:
http://forums.freenas.org/showthrea...cking-out-hardware&p=6088&viewfull=1#post6088

Think im ok with sector size then at least. Then its just the damned network drop to be resolved and I should be super.

EDIT 2:
I think the network drop was because of APM settings. I have had no further issues since I changed that (knocking on wood) I used CrystalDiskInfo to find out that the WD drives does not support APM at all. Doh!

 

[Hammerz]

Figured all I needed to know, thanks for all the fast and good answers :)