YARQ (Yet Another RAM Question)

[oRAirwolf]

I put together a new NAS for myself using a Dell PowerEdge T320 as the base, rather than going for a full custom build, as it was significantly cheaper for what I wanted.

Dell PowerEdge T320 Chassis
Intel Xeon E5-2407 @ 2.20GHz
24GB DDR3 1333 ECC Memory
Broadcom 5720 Dual Port 1Gb integrated NIC
Dell PERC H310 HBA cross flashed to stock LSI firmware in IT mode with these instructions
5 x 8TB Western Digital Red NAS
RAIDZ1 for ~27TB of usable space

I was reading through the hardware guide and saw that the general rule of thumb is 1GB of RAM per 1TB of storage. I was curious to get some opinions on if my RAM is sufficient for my use scenario. Basically, I am using FreeNAS first and foremost as storage for media (Movies/TV), backup for some applications, and ISO storage. I currently use my desktop for SabNZBD and Plex, but I have been considering offloading this to the FreeNAS box. The server will honestly be idle most of the time and only accessed by myself. Generally, I am consuming media that is stored on my desktop and only stream from my NAS for a movie or TV show in the living room. In this case, do you think 24GB is sufficient, given my use case and amount of storage? I can upgrade from 24GB up to 48GB for about $45, so I am not too worried about cost, but I would rather put that RAM in my ESXi box if it's going to be wasted in my NAS.

Any opinions/suggestions/criticism would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Ericloewe]

Do you need more performance, particularly in read latency? If the answer is no, don't bother.

 

[wblock]

Or to rephrase: is it fast enough now? Is it using swap? If not, don't fix what ain't broken.