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jarito
Aug 26, 2003



Biscuit Hider

Looking for a NAS recommendation. Here are the requirements I'm looking for. There seem to be a couple of vendors that might work, trying to get some real hand experience.

  • 4 drive capacity
  • Multiple drive sizes / manufacturers (e.g. 2 1GB, 2 3GB)
  • RAID of some type
  • Gigabit wired (wireless optional)
  • DLNA
  • Samba
  • NZB / BitTorrent downloader preferred
  • External USB & eSATA would be nice too

I've been looking at the Synologies, but there are some bad reviews out there. Does anyone use these? Are they too slow?

The unit will mostly be storage for a Boxee front end (old laptop) that is filled with SickBeard and SABNZB mostly.

Any other options I should look at?

adorai
Nov 2, 2002

10/27/04 Never forget

Grimey Drawer

jarito posted:

4 drive capacity
My opinion, which is almost certainly fueled by paranoia, is that 6 drives in raid6 is the minimum to be safe. In 2 years I have had 3 drive failures, 2 of them in the same week. A single parity drive, when you are talking 1+ TB drives, is just too risky. 3+1 in raid5 is scary as hell at these drive sizes.

jarito
Aug 26, 2003



Biscuit Hider

adorai posted:

My opinion, which is almost certainly fueled by paranoia, is that 6 drives in raid6 is the minimum to be safe. In 2 years I have had 3 drive failures, 2 of them in the same week. A single parity drive, when you are talking 1+ TB drives, is just too risky. 3+1 in raid5 is scary as hell at these drive sizes.

How so? If you have a 3 + 1 and a drive fails, you can replace it without loss, yes? The only risk is if you have two drives fail before you replace the broken one? What does the size of the drives have to do with it? (Honestly asking, I understand normal RAIDs, but these quasi-raids are a bit new to me).

japtor
Oct 28, 2005
WELL ARNT I JUST MR. LA DE FUCKEN DA. oh yea and i suck cocks too


I'm guessing he/she was just referring to the paranoia of having more data at risk.

As for 5 vs 6, I remember some link way way back in this thread showing failure rates and a bunch of math mumbo jumbo, showing that the chance of loss was much less with a second parity drive. Less with additional parity drives of course, but I vaguely remember that the jump from one to two seemed the most significant.

I guess there's one more thing to the size paranoia, if you lose a drive you have to go through longer rebuilds with bigger drives, more time for shit to happen to another drive.

adorai
Nov 2, 2002

10/27/04 Never forget

Grimey Drawer

jarito posted:

How so? If you have a 3 + 1 and a drive fails, you can replace it without loss, yes? The only risk is if you have two drives fail before you replace the broken one? What does the size of the drives have to do with it? (Honestly asking, I understand normal RAIDs, but these quasi-raids are a bit new to me).
Every drive occasionally experiences an Unrecoverable Read Error. For consumer SATA drives, the rate is typically once per 10^14 reads. So, for every 12TB read, you will experience a single URE, on average. When an array is rebuilding after a drive failure, every block that has data on it must be read at least one time. So if you have a 3+1 array or 1TB disks (and it is full), you have roughly a 1 in 3 chance that you will experience an URE. Some controllers will simply stop rebuilding right then. Others will handle it more gracefully. Either way, you have a 1 in 3 chance of at least some data loss. Even more frightening is that your array is likely built from disks that came from the same batch from the manufacturer, so once one dies, it seems likely that the others could be close to failure as well.

xgalaxy
Jan 27, 2004
i write code

Happy to report I've been running my 6 drive zfs array for well over a year now. Highest uptime was well over 250 days, but had some issues with sabnzbd that required a restart some where along the line.

Haven't had to deal with any hard drive issues at all yet, of course I'm sure that's only a matter of time.
I went with 6 so I could have a second parity, so I'm dealing with just over 3 TB of space. Getting close to passing the half way mark on space used.

xgalaxy fucked around with this message at 07:26 on Sep 18, 2011

kdevil II
Aug 18, 2000
Forum Veteran

jarito posted:


I've been looking at the Synologies, but there are some bad reviews out there. Does anyone use these? Are they too slow?


I am running this Synology and I think it's awesome. I've also had a Thecus 4 bay and the intel / emc 4 bay and I much prefer the Synology. I am running it in RAID 6 and it is very fast. I am able to almost saturate my gig ethernet connection from my main PC. I also haven't had any issues streaming files from the NAS while doing windows or time machine backups.

The software itself is very slick and leagues better than the other NAS boxes I've used. It also gets updated very regularly to add features. (time machine finally works in lion now) I also have a security camera hooked up to it and the security station is really cool. Though they charge you more for extra licenses to hook up more than one camera. I have not tried running an NZB client on mine yet, but I think some 3rd party ones do exist.

I purchased the 1010 just before the 1511 (off the top of my head the 1511 had a faster processor and had two esata ports for expandability) came out and I had already built the RAID and moved my files off of the Thecus. Once I saw the 1511, I ordered it and sent the 1010 back to Amazon. I was able to just install the old drives and everything worked fine. The old file structure was still in place and there was no data loss. I thought that was pretty cool. It also bodes well in case of some other hardware failure.

I don't have any experience with their 4 bay models but I definitely love my 5 bay. I know someone on here has had some failures with the sinologys they built for their customers but I've never had any issues yet.

complex
Sep 16, 2003



For anyone thinking of running a ReadyNAS with vSphere 5, don't. There is an issue with ISCSI: http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewt...p?f=118&t=56355

Megaman
May 8, 2004
I didn't read the thread BUT...

I have a synology NAS. All my exported shares on the NAS are readonly, and I have one entry point share that all files are downloaded into and moved out to the other readonly shares via the admin user. My question is: for all files and folders contained within the shares that are readonly, what should the default permissions be? 755 root:root? I would like all the files to be able to be read and executed by any user that is able to mount the shares.

Sizzlechest
May 7, 2007


I have a Synology DS211J. It's a good buy for the low-end 2-drive range. For $200 (without hard drives), it can't be beat. Going up to 4 drives or better processor/features, you may want to think about slapping together a NAS on your own. The Synology software is great, but it's not going to be as robust as a full blown Linux or Windows OS. Adding features that aren't officially supported by Synology gets a little hairy. If you're happy with what comes on the box, then go for it.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams


What the shit, I adjusted the permissions on one of my shares on my Solaris 11 server, and now that I've done that, I can no longer access the server via CIFS using the hostname, only the IP address.

Nam Taf
Jun 25, 2005

I am Fat Man, hear me roar!



FISHMANPET posted:

What the shit, I adjusted the permissions on one of my shares on my Solaris 11 server, and now that I've done that, I can no longer access the server via CIFS using the hostname, only the IP address.

Obvious question: is nmbd or equivalent on Solaris still running?

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams


Nam Taf posted:

Obvious question: is nmbd or equivalent on Solaris still running?

I was digging into that, and it looks like it isn't a separate service (the CIFS server runs from the kernel). However, on my desktop I can access via name, , so I don't know what's going on.

adorai
Nov 2, 2002

10/27/04 Never forget

Grimey Drawer

FISHMANPET posted:

I was digging into that, and it looks like it isn't a separate service (the CIFS server runs from the kernel). However, on my desktop I can access via name, , so I don't know what's going on.
with solaris as the host I have found that once you access a share via IP once, it no longer works via name on the same client until all of those connections are removed. I have not noticed the same behavior with windows. Do you have a share mapped from that client via IP?

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams


adorai posted:

with solaris as the host I have found that once you access a share via IP once, it no longer works via name on the same client until all of those connections are removed. I have not noticed the same behavior with windows. Do you have a share mapped from that client via IP?

I did map a share via IP, so that would explain it.

What a strange bug.

8-bit Miniboss
May 24, 2005

CORPO COPS CAME FOR MY


jarito posted:

Looking for a NAS recommendation. Here are the requirements I'm looking for. There seem to be a couple of vendors that might work, trying to get some real hand experience.

  • 4 drive capacity
  • Multiple drive sizes / manufacturers (e.g. 2 1GB, 2 3GB)
  • RAID of some type
  • Gigabit wired (wireless optional)
  • DLNA
  • Samba
  • NZB / BitTorrent downloader preferred
  • External USB & eSATA would be nice too

I've been looking at the Synologies, but there are some bad reviews out there. Does anyone use these? Are they too slow?

The unit will mostly be storage for a Boxee front end (old laptop) that is filled with SickBeard and SABNZB mostly.

Any other options I should look at?

ReadyNAS meets all those needs. At least the Intel Atom models.

I have a ReadyNAS Ultra 4 and works like a charm with most of your bulletpoints.

Comradephate
Feb 28, 2009



College Slice

Is most/all rack mounted storage (direct attached) SAS SFF?

are there any that would be compatible with consumer 3.5" SATA drives?

E: obviously as someone who doesn't know the answers to these questions I have no actual need for a rack form factor, but I'm curious what my options are.

Comradephate fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Sep 20, 2011

Devian666
Aug 20, 2008

Take some advice Chris.



Fun Shoe

Comradephate posted:

Is most/all rack mounted storage (direct attached) SAS SFF?

are there any that would be compatible with consumer 3.5" SATA drives?

E: obviously as someone who doesn't know the answers to these questions I have no actual need for a rack form factor, but I'm curious what my options are.

I'm no expert in rack storage but if you did want some non-commercial rack options you can buy 4U cases.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...4u+case&x=0&y=0

With a 4U case you can get rack storage using consumer hardware and drives. Also the larger rack size means you get decent fan sizes to keep the noise down. I run 1U racks for number crunching at work and the fans are extremely noisy at an annoying frequency.

Comradephate
Feb 28, 2009



College Slice

Devian666 posted:

I'm no expert in rack storage but if you did want some non-commercial rack options you can buy 4U cases.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...4u+case&x=0&y=0

With a 4U case you can get rack storage using consumer hardware and drives. Also the larger rack size means you get decent fan sizes to keep the noise down. I run 1U racks for number crunching at work and the fans are extremely noisy at an annoying frequency.

Well, I'll be parking it in my basement and just running a KVM (or strictly remote connections) to it, so the noise isn't a big deal.

But I didn't know they made rack cases like that, I'll check it out, thanks.

sixide
Oct 25, 2004


I put together my mediocre DIY NAS yesterday and the CF-to-IDE adapter started on fire. I guess for the time being I'll just partition the drives for system files.

MrMoo
Sep 14, 2000



Might be a bit late to the party, one of my SPARC ReadyNAS automatically updated with the latest firmware for OSX Lion support and ugh. This automatic upgrade applies on reboot, but the upgrade process seems to have a bug that causes it to stall, quite a few reports on their support forums too.

Impressively the manual upgrade feature works fine. So basically, incredibly poor testing

an actual cat irl
Aug 29, 2004



I'm about to pull the trigger and build myself a NAS box. I want quite a bit of space, and a bit of redundancy, so I was thinking of building a FreeNAS box with four drives using RAID-Z1. I just wanted to check that my planned specs would be adequate, as the specs on the FreeNAS website leave me a bit puzzled

I was thinking of basing the system around a Zotac NM10-F-E motherboard (w/Atom CPU), 4GB RAM, 4x2TB HDDs, plus a low capacity 2.5" HDD I had lying around to install FreeNAS 8 on.

Is 4GB enough memory to use ZFS with FreeNAS 8? Looking at the system specs here, it seems to suggest that 6GB is required to use ZFS.

Or, alternatively, should I just use FreeNAS 7 instead? I already have a Mac Mini server which caters for all my torrent/NZB needs, so those features in v7 wouldn't be of any use to me. Would FreeNAS 7 be a better choice considering I'm using low powered hardware?

Matt Zerella
Oct 7, 2002


moron posted:

I'm about to pull the trigger and build myself a NAS box. I want quite a bit of space, and a bit of redundancy, so I was thinking of building a FreeNAS box with four drives using RAID-Z1. I just wanted to check that my planned specs would be adequate, as the specs on the FreeNAS website leave me a bit puzzled

I was thinking of basing the system around a Zotac NM10-F-E motherboard (w/Atom CPU), 4GB RAM, 4x2TB HDDs, plus a low capacity 2.5" HDD I had lying around to install FreeNAS 8 on.

Is 4GB enough memory to use ZFS with FreeNAS 8? Looking at the system specs here, it seems to suggest that 6GB is required to use ZFS.

Or, alternatively, should I just use FreeNAS 7 instead? I already have a Mac Mini server which caters for all my torrent/NZB needs, so those features in v7 wouldn't be of any use to me. Would FreeNAS 7 be a better choice considering I'm using low powered hardware?
rtorrent and sabnzbd need very few resources to run.

4gigs is fine for ZFS, but the big question is, do you want to spend a little extra money and go for ECC RAM, which isn't supported by Atom.

Unless you're using compression or dedupe (which aren't even available in FreeNAS right now) the Atom will handle it fine. The only time you'll encounter slowdown are for scrubs which should be running when you're asleep on a weekly basis.

Personally, I shelled out the extra for a Supermicro board and ECC ram but I also had an E6300 Core2Duo lying around (still uses way more power than an Atom but I use the machine for transcoding and other things so I don't mind the extra horsepower).

Matt Zerella fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Sep 23, 2011

movax
Aug 30, 2008



I need a sanity check. My parents have a Popcorn Hour in the basement in the theater that they use to watch movies and such; I usually sneakernet them over and spend entirely too long (and clunkily) transfering them to the internal HDD in the Popcorn Hour.

I need something really simple, so rather than setting up a NAS box (Synology DS211j or similar), I'm thinking about just getting a single 4TB Seagate GoFlex, hooking it up their computer (Asus H67 board so it has USB 3.0 as well) and just having that shared via SMB to all the network devices. Low power consumption, because it'll only be on when the desktop is on, not a separate device to maintain, etc.

The best part is that backup isn't really important, because every file on that drive would be from my personal ZFS fileserver, which is ~22TB with RAID-Z2.

Am I missing a critical flaw in my plan? I don't recall Windows having a terrible problem sharing external drives, the only thing I would foresee is if the drive letter changed somehow between boots.

Galler
Jan 28, 2008



moron posted:

I'm about to pull the trigger and build myself a NAS box. I want quite a bit of space, and a bit of redundancy, so I was thinking of building a FreeNAS box with four drives using RAID-Z1. I just wanted to check that my planned specs would be adequate, as the specs on the FreeNAS website leave me a bit puzzled

I was thinking of basing the system around a Zotac NM10-F-E motherboard (w/Atom CPU), 4GB RAM, 4x2TB HDDs, plus a low capacity 2.5" HDD I had lying around to install FreeNAS 8 on.

Is 4GB enough memory to use ZFS with FreeNAS 8? Looking at the system specs here, it seems to suggest that 6GB is required to use ZFS.
Might want to look into a HP Microserver and the £100 rebate they have going on seeing as it's made to do pretty much exactly what you're trying to do.

Sizzlechest
May 7, 2007


movax posted:

Am I missing a critical flaw in my plan? I don't recall Windows having a terrible problem sharing external drives, the only thing I would foresee is if the drive letter changed somehow between boots.

The drive letter won't matter since it won't be used when browsing the network for it. If you're still concerned, just set the drive letter to Z: to avoid any other attached devices from stomping over it.

It seems okay as long as they're good with leaving the computer on. There are small single drive external cases that allegedly have networking for under $100, but I don't think they support SMB.

movax
Aug 30, 2008



Sizzlechest posted:

The drive letter won't matter since it won't be used when browsing the network for it. If you're still concerned, just set the drive letter to Z: to avoid any other attached devices from stomping over it.

It seems okay as long as they're good with leaving the computer on. There are small single drive external cases that allegedly have networking for under $100, but I don't think they support SMB.

Ooh, setting it to Z:\ is a great idea, thanks.

The PC has to be on, definitely. The 4TB size aside, I got abysmal performance over SMB with a USB enclosure hooked up to a DD-WRT router, so that idea is out. Most of the time they would be using devices that need the media, the desktop would be on anyways, so I think this should work.

Copying stuff to the drive in the Popcorn Hour was an exercise in torture. Over the network, it only delivers ~10Mbit performance. USB connectivity is wonky and requires an ext3 filesystem driver on the Windows side. All that aside, that data still ends up only being accessible in that Popcorn Hour, and no other devices. This should make everyone's lives way easier at last

Also, not having to worry about redundancy...

Sizzlechest
May 7, 2007


movax posted:

...horrors of the Popcorn Hour...

One other suggestion... I just bought a Western Digital WD TV Live Plus and it's awesome. You can attach NTFS drives to it from USB or stream over the network. You can get it cheap by doing the following:

1. Go to ejunkie and buy a Staples $25 off $75 coupon (costs about $2-$3).
2. Call Staples and pricematch it to amazon.com (Currently $86).
3. After the coupon, it will be about $61 plus tax (free shipping).

Unless you need to be able to add/delete files to the external drive on the PC, you could just plug it into the WD and leave it by the TV. Can't the Popcorn Hour support an external NTFS drive?

an actual cat irl
Aug 29, 2004



Galler posted:

Might want to look into a HP Microserver and the £100 rebate they have going on seeing as it's made to do pretty much exactly what you're trying to do.

Hmmm...that actually looks perfect, and the £100 rebate is very nice. Thanks for the tip!

movax
Aug 30, 2008



Sizzlechest posted:

One other suggestion... I just bought a Western Digital WD TV Live Plus and it's awesome. You can attach NTFS drives to it from USB or stream over the network. You can get it cheap by doing the following:

1. Go to ejunkie and buy a Staples $25 off $75 coupon (costs about $2-$3).
2. Call Staples and pricematch it to amazon.com (Currently $86).
3. After the coupon, it will be about $61 plus tax (free shipping).

Unless you need to be able to add/delete files to the external drive on the PC, you could just plug it into the WD and leave it by the TV. Can't the Popcorn Hour support an external NTFS drive?

I think I belatedly discovered that the Popcorn Hour does NTFS over external drives (previously thought it was either FAT32, impractical for movies or ext2/3), but they just picked up another media streamer, so centralizing on the desktop is probably a better choice now.

That is not a bad price for the WDTV Live Plus though. Isn't the same SMP86xx chipset though, as the rest of the NMT family? Probably uses the SMP8655. No idea if WD has pushed to get some unfucked firmware that supports MKV compressed headers either.

e: Also, I waffled on getting the 4TB Seagate...it's $250 from most places (cheaper on Amazon but OOS for 1-2 months). I think I will just get a 3TB 5K3000 from Hitachi and put it one of those Rosewill enclosures I bought, and hook it up via eSATA to their desktop. $120 via Prime, they don't quite need 4TB yet I think. Is >2TB non-boot drive over eSATA an issue under Windows 7? It would be through a JMicron controller on the Asus mobo. My enclosure claims it works with 3TB drives, so I think I should be ok.

Now to do some research into combining 3TB and 2TB drives under ZFS. The rate I'm going, I will likely have to buy a 24-bay Norco this Christmas and a new vdev of six more drives. Any ideas what will happen striping 3 6-drive RAID-Z2 vdevs (12 Seagate, 6 Hitachi) with another 6-drive RAID-Z2 made up of 3TB drives? Performance of each vdev should still be capped at performance of the slowest spindle in each vdev, so there shouldn't be an issue, unless I'm missing something. I guess I would have to double-check drive-size compatibility against my 1068Es.

movax fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Sep 23, 2011

Nam Taf
Jun 25, 2005

I am Fat Man, hear me roar!



moron posted:

Hmmm...that actually looks perfect, and the £100 rebate is very nice. Thanks for the tip!

Just got one of these myself as my Mk.II RAID-Z server. You can do a few nifty things with it, including using the optical drive SATA port to run another HDD (bringing you to 5 HDDs for 4 storage and 1 OS) or using a PCI-E 1x card to run multiple extra SATA drives.

If you go with using the optical SATA port for a 5th drive, there is a modified BIOS allowing you to crank it up to full speed as it is currently limited. Be aware, however, that it's a BIOS flash and could trash your hardware though HP commercial warranty support kicks arse. This thread (excuse the stupid posters) on another forum has a lot of info about the device and some ideas on what people use them for.

Something else I considered was running 5 RAID-Z drives and using a USB stick on the internal USB port as the OS drive, but went away from that out of not being familiar with good USB sticks.

Also note, these things can use ECC RAM if it's unregistered. I have put in 8GB of the Kingston KVR1333D3E9S RAM, which is ECC and seems to be a pretty common option as you don't have much room between the RAM slots and the HDD bays so watch out for RAM with big heatsinks on. It'll also take non-ECC RAM if you want to go that way too.

Overall, I'm very happy with it. I'm just finalising configuration now before trying to remember how to configure FreeBSD.

Nam Taf fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Sep 26, 2011

SynMoo
Dec 4, 2006



Can you guys recommend a 2bay NAS that'll participate in an AD domain for access privileges? It'll be used mostly for storing local backups of a server and a few desktops for a small office.

Leaning toward the Netgear RNDP2210.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16822122073

Dilbert As FUCK
Sep 8, 2007

by Cowcaster


Pillbug

I take it freenas 8 is giving others problems as well, not just me correct?

Galler
Jan 28, 2008



moron posted:

Hmmm...that actually looks perfect, and the £100 rebate is very nice. Thanks for the tip!

If you take a look at my post history in this thread I did a whole bunch of about setting mine up. There are a number of other people in here that have one as well.

GobiasIndustries
Dec 14, 2007



Lipstick Apathy

I'm planning on converting my old desktop into a NAS for movies, tv, etc. It's got a Radeon 4890 installed with no video on the mobo, but now that I've got unRAID up and running, am I correct in thinking that I can just uninstall the card and leave it running headless? I'd prefer to not have that card draining power if it's not necessary. Also, if/when I decide to up the number of drives in the system, what's a decent expander card to look at? I've been streaming 720p/1080p files just fine from my desktop to laptop wirelessly for a while now, so really all I'm looking for is the extra ports.

Longinus00
Dec 29, 2005
Ur-Quan

GobiasIndustries posted:

I'm planning on converting my old desktop into a NAS for movies, tv, etc. It's got a Radeon 4890 installed with no video on the mobo, but now that I've got unRAID up and running, am I correct in thinking that I can just uninstall the card and leave it running headless? I'd prefer to not have that card draining power if it's not necessary. Also, if/when I decide to up the number of drives in the system, what's a decent expander card to look at? I've been streaming 720p/1080p files just fine from my desktop to laptop wirelessly for a while now, so really all I'm looking for is the extra ports.

You'll still need a video card for it to even boot unfortunately. I'd definitely go try and acquire a cheap one since the 4890 is still relatively power hungry even at idle.

SynMoo
Dec 4, 2006



GobiasIndustries posted:

I'm planning on converting my old desktop into a NAS for movies, tv, etc. It's got a Radeon 4890 installed with no video on the mobo, but now that I've got unRAID up and running, am I correct in thinking that I can just uninstall the card and leave it running headless? I'd prefer to not have that card draining power if it's not necessary. Also, if/when I decide to up the number of drives in the system, what's a decent expander card to look at? I've been streaming 720p/1080p files just fine from my desktop to laptop wirelessly for a while now, so really all I'm looking for is the extra ports.

I've got some PCI Trident cards laying around for just this purpose. I'll drop you one for the cost of shipping (~$5) if you send me a PM or email to my forum name at gmail.

an actual cat irl
Aug 29, 2004



Galler posted:

If you take a look at my post history in this thread I did a whole bunch of about setting mine up. There are a number of other people in here that have one as well.

Are you using FreeNAS 7 or 8? I must admit, upon further investigation, the steep system requirements for v8 worried me that the Microserver wouldn't be powerful enough (a max of 4GB ram and the relatively modest CPU).

I'll be absolutely honest and say that whatever NAS I end up with will only be getting light usage. It'll only have one simultaneous connection, and it'll spend 90% of the time sitting idle. The low power draw of the Microserver is very attractive to me, however I've read online people saying that ZFS needs 6GB or more to work properly, and a decent CPU is a great benefit. Any thoughts on this?

Galler
Jan 28, 2008



moron posted:

Are you using FreeNAS 7 or 8? I must admit, upon further investigation, the steep system requirements for v8 worried me that the Microserver wouldn't be powerful enough (a max of 4GB ram and the relatively modest CPU).

I'll be absolutely honest and say that whatever NAS I end up with will only be getting light usage. It'll only have one simultaneous connection, and it'll spend 90% of the time sitting idle. The low power draw of the Microserver is very attractive to me, however I've read online people saying that ZFS needs 6GB or more to work properly, and a decent CPU is a great benefit. Any thoughts on this?

Here's my post about my microserver: http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...4#post393875749

I'm using Solaris 11 with Napp-it (ZFS filesystem RAIDZ1). If I was going to use FreeNAS I would use version 7 - not because of hardware limitations but because FreeNAS 8 seems to be way behind FreeNAS 7 in terms of features at the moment.

Also memory is cheap so you might as well max it out but so long as you're not using deduplication and some other spiffy but unnecessary features you don't need a ton of ram, it just helps. Especially with only one connection I don't think you will have a problem.

Posts Only Secrets
Jan 22, 2005
Breaking the NDA...

Longinus00 posted:

You'll still need a video card for it to even boot unfortunately. I'd definitely go try and acquire a cheap one since the 4890 is still relatively power hungry even at idle.

That's not true. I did the same thing with our current setup infact. Just setup the bios to not halt on any errors. Our usage went from 110 watts with the video card, to 65-70 without it. I even kept the card in the bottom of the case in a static bag, just in case we need to do something locally with the server. If you ever need to do something with the PC, just power it down and pop the card back in.

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