NAS Storage - FreeNas?

S

shadow_man

Executive Member
Joined
May 27, 2005
Messages
7,025
Reaction score
1,745
Location
Cape Town
I'm running out of hard drive space / bays at an alarming rate.

Currently my pc holds 2x 1TB, 1x 2TB, 1x1.5TB

I'm out of SATA connections on my motherboard and out of bays, thus im looking to add a NAS to my network and get rid of some of the drives / leave room to aquire more.

Looking at something like FreeNas. Anyone running it, what kind of hardware are you using. How easy is it to use etc?

Also please recommend a nice case with lots of hdd bays that I can use.

Thanks
J
 
jsheed_sa said:
Looking at something like FreeNas. Anyone running it, what kind of hardware are you using. How easy is it to use etc?

Also please recommend a nice case with lots of hdd bays that I can use.
Click to expand...

FreeNAS is pretty good and easy to use. Hardware requires for a NAS are pretty low.

Do a search here for HDD tower, NAS case etc as some good info has been posted before.
 
Sorry to slightly hijack here, but what are the advantages of using FreeNas vs just running XP on the box and sharing the drives?
 
Neverwhere said:
Sorry to slightly hijack here, but what are the advantages of using FreeNas vs just running XP on the box and sharing the drives?
Click to expand...

Also what do you store that you need that much space that doesn't make you money?
 
jsheed_sa said:
Looking at something like FreeNas. Anyone running it, what kind of hardware are you using. How easy is it to use etc?
Click to expand...
So I've setup about 4 NASs up to this point. 2 for myself. The first I setup for myself had the following setup:
Asus M2N32 Wireless Deluxe Motherboard (Dual onboard Realtek gigabit LAN)
2GB RAM (DDR2-800 Cl4-4-3-8)
AMD 6000+ (125w TDP)
4x2TB Western Digital Green Power (WD20EARS, 4kb sector size)

Tested with the following NAS OSs:
Openfiler (Max write speed: 30mb/s sustained over GBit LAN. Read Speed: 90mb/s over GBit LAN)
FreeNAS (Max write speed: 60mb/s sustained over GBit LAN. Read Speed: 25mb/s over GBit LAN). FreeNAS Network settings were tweaked, never tested without tweaking but on my current setup I found that not tweaking GREATLY increased read speeds.

Next NAS was: (this is the current NAS I'm running)
Gigabyte P45 UD3 (onboard Realtek gigabit LAN)
Intel Dual Core E7400 (65w TDP)
2GB RAM (DDR2-1066)
6x2TB Seagate LP

I switched to this computer because of the much lower heat dissipation on the CPU but those 6x2TB drives expel so much heat that I can't keep the cover on the case. There is just too much heat.

Initially I used onboard RealTek Gigabit LAN and got the following speeds:
Openfiler (Max write speed: 30mb/s sustained over GBit LAN. Read Speed: 90mb/s over GBit LAN)
FreeNAS (Max write speed: 20-30mb/s sustained over GBit LAN. Read Speed: 20-30mb/s over GBit LAN). Network settings weren't tweaked.

Then I installed a Intel Pro/1000 GT Network card and tested again, got the following:
Openfiler: (Max write speed: 30-40mb/s sustained over GBit LAN. Read Speed: 90mb/s over GBit LAN)
FreeNAS: (Max write speed: 60-70mb/s sustained over GBit LAN. Read Speed: 60-70mb/s over GBit). Network settings weren't tweaked.
EON: (Max write speed: 90-100mb/s sustained over GBit LAN with very large files, 40mb/s with small files. Read Speed: 60-70mb/s over GBit with large files, 20mb/s with small files). EON sometimes ran very fast other times slow, very inconsistent. Further it lacks a GUI.
NexentaStor: Can't recall exactly but was low, like 4-10mb/s over Gigabit LAN write. Stopped testing at that point.

In all cases these test were conducted with large AVI (700mb+) and MKV files (2gb+). The same set. Thereafter a set of small files (3-10mb MP3 files) were also copied. It's a large set of files for the purposes of ascertaining sustained speeds.

On the latest NAS box CPU usage spikes to about 60% usage (rarely), mostly sits at 30%. So you don't need a very powerful CPU.

On FreeNAS, EON and NexentaStor I was running RAID-z1. EON and NexentaStor only support RAID-z. FreeNAS however supports many other RAID setups but RAID-z is superior to RAID5 in all cases.

On OpenFiler there is no choice really, I used RAID 5.

So after all that said and done, what are my impressions:
FreeNAS is the best IMHO. Overall not the BEST read/write speeds on ALL file sets but overall it had the best and it was sustained speeds.

It is also by far the easiest to setup & use. Also has a very nice user interface. But all of them with the exception of EON has a web-interface. NexentaStor was also very easy to use but the have restrictions in terms of space and usage.

Do not attempt to run a NAS with RealTek LAN cards. Those cards don't work very well, you need an Intel Pro/1000 card. My Windows Box which I copied to/from still has a RealTek NIC. Pretty sure if I install a Intel Pro/1000 my benchmarks would improve as MTU larger than 1500 doesn't work with RealTek. They are the cheapest for a reason after all...

If you plan on setting one up I can give you some more important pointers based on my experience. Can also tell you which hardware to get from say, Esquire, to build a NAS for cheap (Around R2k for the hardware excluding hard-drives) that'll work well.

But if you are just planning on sharing your hard-drives as JBOD I'm not sure what the purpose of having a NAS is. Rather sell those and get a bunch of drives (2TB preferable) and do RAID-z (need at least 3).

Neverwhere said:
Sorry to slightly hijack here, but what are the advantages of using FreeNas vs just running XP on the box and sharing the drives?
Click to expand...
Windows XP doesn't officially support RAID 5. But I've tested on Windows 2008 R2 Server edition, software RAID 5. The array took 5 days to build (VS 6 hours on Openfiler and no build time on FreeNAS, EON and NexentaStor).

Write/Read speeds were low, 30mb/s sustained.

Lastly it also dumped a drive from the array if the drive didn't respond immediately. Long story why it does that but it isn't a viable option for a NAS.

Last but not least, even Windows 2008 R2 Server only supports 2 options for sharing, SMB and NFS. FreeNAS support out of the box is a whole list you can find on the web-site but it is substantial.

Also security settings in FreeNAS is much easier and more intuitive to setup than Windows.

There are so many other small reasons...
 
Ooooh.... I feel it is time for a little project... thanks Gnome... very very nice.
 
Freenas is excellent and FAST and can run on pretty old hardware.
nice web interface to work with as well.

Dual Core 2.7
2gb ram
ASus motherboard
Server case
2x 2TB
2x 2TB
2x 1.5TB
2x 1TB

stay away from using Windows as a backup server.
 
Def time for a new project....

I have one HP server box that can def act as a good Nas tower (can take 7 drives)....
 
Guys just to comment. The systems I've built so far weren't newer than socket 775 (notable the P45 chipset I have been using for these NAS PCs so far except for the M2N32 Wireless deluxe which was nVidia chipset). Haven't had much hardware compatibility issues. But Intel Core i3/i5/i7 would be wasted on a NAS anyway. Don't get anything with integrated video as you want as few components generating heat as possible (Core i3/i5 for example come with on chip GFX). It must however have COM (serial) port as FreeBSD/Solaris require a COM port to run without a video card. Wouldn't recommend using any of the Intel Atom CPUs, the NAS doesn't need a powerful CPU but atom won't cut it, they are just a little too low performance.

In the BIOS disable EVERYTHING you don't use (except COM port ;) ), unplug everything you don't need.

Get good ventilation, with 3 drives and everything spaced out it is fine, but as soon as you start filling those drive bays the drives will generate lots of heat. I didn't quite believe it at first but 6 drives run very hot, definitely needs a fan blowing directly on them (As I said the case even stands open 24/7 and the drives still idle at 42 degrees go up to 49 at load).

Lastly as I said, RAID-z1 is superior to RAID-5. RAID-z2 is superior to RAID 6. Use them instead if you can. RAID-z also offer stripe options (IE. RAID 1) would also be better IMHO. If you lose power to the NAS while it is running and no writing occurred all should be well with the file system. If however it fails while writing it is essential a manual scrub is performed (can be done VIA the WUI in FreeNAS). The scrub will detect and correct the incorrectly written parity blocks (if any exist).

If you buy 4K sector size drives (WD EARS drives, and some of the newer Samsung), be safe and ONLY use FreeNAS, make sure to check the 4k compatibility checks or you will have SERIOUSLY degraded performance (as in 4mb/s write).

If you guys do build a box with RAID-z it is recommended you have NO LESS than 2GB RAM (any less will become very unstable) and recommended 4GB RAM. Also in FreeNAS it is pretty much a requirement that the RAID-Z kernel options be tweaked. A plugin exists (ZFSKernTune) which allows you to simply select your RAM size and it'll set the variables according to well know values. Without that tuning FreeNAS *may* be unstable, unstable meaning if you copy very large files or incredibly large data sets (IE. 100gb of files) you may encounter a Kernel panic (specifically kmem_map too small error). Best to just avoid that situation and set the tuning options.

I know it is a bit crude but compared to Windows it is a walk in the park to setup as a NAS. Of all the NAS options I wouldn't say it is the most difficult (EON is probably the most work) but neither is it the easiest (probably NexentaStor is).
 
Last edited:
Gnome said:
Wouldn't recommend using any of the Intel Atom CPUs, the NAS doesn't need a powerful CPU but atom won't cut it, they are just a little too low performance.
Click to expand...

I have the new Dual Core HyperThreading Atom in my home server with FreeNAS. I do use Raid-Z and it works fine. Personally I think they are fast enough. Scrubbing the 4TB (3x2TB) drive took about 8 hours which is not bad. The write/read speed is also not bad (still need to sort the NIC out as the bottleneck it there at this stage, only about 200Mbs which translates to about 30MB/s). For a extremely low power NAS solution (which was my aim) I think the Atom based solution is a win/win provided you get the correct motherboard :)
 
Gnome said:
So I've setup about 4 NASs up to this point. 2 for myself. The first I setup for myself had the following setup:
Asus M2N32 Wireless Deluxe Motherboard (Dual onboard Realtek gigabit LAN)
2GB RAM (DDR2-800 Cl4-4-3-8)
AMD 6000+ (125w TDP)
4x2TB Western Digital Green Power (WD20EARS, 4kb sector size)

Tested with the following NAS OSs:
Openfiler (Max write speed: 30mb/s sustained over GBit LAN. Read Speed: 90mb/s over GBit LAN)
FreeNAS (Max write speed: 60mb/s sustained over GBit LAN. Read Speed: 25mb/s over GBit LAN). FreeNAS Network settings were tweaked, never tested without tweaking but on my current setup I found that not tweaking GREATLY increased read speeds.

Next NAS was: (this is the current NAS I'm running)
Gigabyte P45 UD3 (onboard Realtek gigabit LAN)
Intel Dual Core E7400 (65w TDP)
2GB RAM (DDR2-1066)
6x2TB Seagate LP

I switched to this computer because of the much lower heat dissipation on the CPU but those 6x2TB drives expel so much heat that I can't keep the cover on the case. There is just too much heat.

Initially I used onboard RealTek Gigabit LAN and got the following speeds:
Openfiler (Max write speed: 30mb/s sustained over GBit LAN. Read Speed: 90mb/s over GBit LAN)
FreeNAS (Max write speed: 20-30mb/s sustained over GBit LAN. Read Speed: 20-30mb/s over GBit LAN). Network settings weren't tweaked.

Then I installed a Intel Pro/1000 GT Network card and tested again, got the following:
Openfiler: (Max write speed: 30-40mb/s sustained over GBit LAN. Read Speed: 90mb/s over GBit LAN)
FreeNAS: (Max write speed: 60-70mb/s sustained over GBit LAN. Read Speed: 60-70mb/s over GBit). Network settings weren't tweaked.
EON: (Max write speed: 90-100mb/s sustained over GBit LAN with very large files, 40mb/s with small files. Read Speed: 60-70mb/s over GBit with large files, 20mb/s with small files). EON sometimes ran very fast other times slow, very inconsistent. Further it lacks a GUI.
NexentaStor: Can't recall exactly but was low, like 4-10mb/s over Gigabit LAN write. Stopped testing at that point.

In all cases these test were conducted with large AVI (700mb+) and MKV files (2gb+). The same set. Thereafter a set of small files (3-10mb MP3 files) were also copied. It's a large set of files for the purposes of ascertaining sustained speeds.

On the latest NAS box CPU usage spikes to about 60% usage (rarely), mostly sits at 30%. So you don't need a very powerful CPU.

On FreeNAS, EON and NexentaStor I was running RAID-z1. EON and NexentaStor only support RAID-z. FreeNAS however supports many other RAID setups but RAID-z is superior to RAID5 in all cases.

On OpenFiler there is no choice really, I used RAID 5.

So after all that said and done, what are my impressions:
FreeNAS is the best IMHO. Overall not the BEST read/write speeds on ALL file sets but overall it had the best and it was sustained speeds.

It is also by far the easiest to setup & use. Also has a very nice user interface. But all of them with the exception of EON has a web-interface. NexentaStor was also very easy to use but the have restrictions in terms of space and usage.

Do not attempt to run a NAS with RealTek LAN cards. Those cards don't work very well, you need an Intel Pro/1000 card. My Windows Box which I copied to/from still has a RealTek NIC. Pretty sure if I install a Intel Pro/1000 my benchmarks would improve as MTU larger than 1500 doesn't work with RealTek. They are the cheapest for a reason after all...

If you plan on setting one up I can give you some more important pointers based on my experience. Can also tell you which hardware to get from say, Esquire, to build a NAS for cheap (Around R2k for the hardware excluding hard-drives) that'll work well.

But if you are just planning on sharing your hard-drives as JBOD I'm not sure what the purpose of having a NAS is. Rather sell those and get a bunch of drives (2TB preferable) and do RAID-z (need at least 3).


Windows XP doesn't officially support RAID 5. But I've tested on Windows 2008 R2 Server edition, software RAID 5. The array took 5 days to build (VS 6 hours on Openfiler and no build time on FreeNAS, EON and NexentaStor).

Write/Read speeds were low, 30mb/s sustained.

Lastly it also dumped a drive from the array if the drive didn't respond immediately. Long story why it does that but it isn't a viable option for a NAS.

Last but not least, even Windows 2008 R2 Server only supports 2 options for sharing, SMB and NFS. FreeNAS support out of the box is a whole list you can find on the web-site but it is substantial.

Also security settings in FreeNAS is much easier and more intuitive to setup than Windows.

There are so many other small reasons...
Click to expand...

Hi Gnome/Ara,

Can I just say first... thank goodness I found this site and thanks so much for your posts! It's really amazing the lack of info on FreeNAS with the 2TB drive I/O issues and how to fix it plus the difference in speed between a Software Raid and ZFS Raid on them.

Although the info on this bb is really informative, I was wondering if I could get your opinion on a couple of decisions I need to make....

I have built a NAS from scratch with default install of FreeNas 0.7.2 on the box (on a CF card via IDE adapter into the mother board) and want to set up some sort of mirroring raid (Raid 1 etc) as I am led to understand that although this uses up double the disks, it is the best raid for recovery and performance.

The spec of the NAS is as follows:

Fractical Design R3 Case
Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R (Vs 2)
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 2.8Ghz LGA775 Processor
nVida GeForce 9300 GE PCI-E Dual Graphics Card
8 x WD20EARS HDD Drives
2 X 2GB DDR3 Ram (Max allowed by MB)
1 x 1Gb Transcend Compact Flash Card (Via IDE Adapter OS)

I set up FreeNas on the CF and have set up 2 disks in Software Raid1 and I also set up 2 disks in a ZFS mirrored config so they are pretty much the same type of disk config as each other. So the main test is speed differences between the set ups.

I started to test by copying 26GB of video files from my PC (Quad Core AMD/8GB Ram/Win 7/Gigabit Nic) to a share I had created on each drive mount and monitored the Windows speed reporting on the screen. With copying to/from the NAS ZFS folder I was getting 30mb/s write and about 30mb/s to 70mb/s read and with the Software Raid 1 I was getting about 45mb/s write and 45mb/s read.

I read Gnomes comments about putting an Intel card in the box as the onboard RealTek would not provide the best performance so have just ordered one for the NAS and one for the PC in the hope this will help. The one thing I'm not sure about is if there is something else I should be doing to try and diagnose/fix the set up.

I'm pretty good with Windows etc but a bit of a novice with FreeBSD so had a look on YouTube and also around the web but can't seem to find any step by step guides on any tweaks/improvements I should make as I'm using the 2TB drives.

Does anyone have any a spare few minutes to give me some advice on which is bettter for the radi config... ZFS or SoftWare raid and also step by step how I could tweak anything that needs tweaking.

Really appreciate your time.

GT
 
ponder said:
FreeNAS is pretty good and easy to use. Hardware requires for a NAS are pretty low.
....
Click to expand...

My first attempt at FreeNAS was a 75Mhz P1 - it had 2 x 200GB IDE hard drives and a 10Mbit card. It worked like a dream. Motherboard BIOS only supported 30GB HDD but this shows the value of not running Windows.
 
The one thing I really like about FreeNas is the ability to set up iSCSI targets. It's nice to have that drive appear as local storage to Windows, it lets you do some things you can't do with a mapped drive. I really like FreeNas and I think the next version is going to be even more awesome. Hope they release it soon!
 
Gnome said:
So I've setup about 4 NASs up to this point. 2 for myself. The first I setup for myself had the following setup:
Asus M2N32 Wireless Deluxe Motherboard (Dual onboard Realtek gigabit LAN)
2GB RAM (DDR2-800 Cl4-4-3-8)
AMD 6000+ (125w TDP)
4x2TB Western Digital Green Power (WD20EARS, 4kb sector size)

Tested with the following NAS OSs:
Openfiler (Max write speed: 30mb/s sustained over GBit LAN. Read Speed: 90mb/s over GBit LAN)
FreeNAS (Max write speed: 60mb/s sustained over GBit LAN. Read Speed: 25mb/s over GBit LAN). FreeNAS Network settings were tweaked, never tested without tweaking but on my current setup I found that not tweaking GREATLY increased read speeds.

Next NAS was: (this is the current NAS I'm running)
Gigabyte P45 UD3 (onboard Realtek gigabit LAN)
Intel Dual Core E7400 (65w TDP)
2GB RAM (DDR2-1066)
6x2TB Seagate LP

I switched to this computer because of the much lower heat dissipation on the CPU but those 6x2TB drives expel so much heat that I can't keep the cover on the case. There is just too much heat.

Initially I used onboard RealTek Gigabit LAN and got the following speeds:
Openfiler (Max write speed: 30mb/s sustained over GBit LAN. Read Speed: 90mb/s over GBit LAN)
FreeNAS (Max write speed: 20-30mb/s sustained over GBit LAN. Read Speed: 20-30mb/s over GBit LAN). Network settings weren't tweaked.

Then I installed a Intel Pro/1000 GT Network card and tested again, got the following:
Openfiler: (Max write speed: 30-40mb/s sustained over GBit LAN. Read Speed: 90mb/s over GBit LAN)
FreeNAS: (Max write speed: 60-70mb/s sustained over GBit LAN. Read Speed: 60-70mb/s over GBit). Network settings weren't tweaked.
EON: (Max write speed: 90-100mb/s sustained over GBit LAN with very large files, 40mb/s with small files. Read Speed: 60-70mb/s over GBit with large files, 20mb/s with small files). EON sometimes ran very fast other times slow, very inconsistent. Further it lacks a GUI.
NexentaStor: Can't recall exactly but was low, like 4-10mb/s over Gigabit LAN write. Stopped testing at that point.

In all cases these test were conducted with large AVI (700mb+) and MKV files (2gb+). The same set. Thereafter a set of small files (3-10mb MP3 files) were also copied. It's a large set of files for the purposes of ascertaining sustained speeds.

On the latest NAS box CPU usage spikes to about 60% usage (rarely), mostly sits at 30%. So you don't need a very powerful CPU.

On FreeNAS, EON and NexentaStor I was running RAID-z1. EON and NexentaStor only support RAID-z. FreeNAS however supports many other RAID setups but RAID-z is superior to RAID5 in all cases.

On OpenFiler there is no choice really, I used RAID 5.

So after all that said and done, what are my impressions:
FreeNAS is the best IMHO. Overall not the BEST read/write speeds on ALL file sets but overall it had the best and it was sustained speeds.

It is also by far the easiest to setup & use. Also has a very nice user interface. But all of them with the exception of EON has a web-interface. NexentaStor was also very easy to use but the have restrictions in terms of space and usage.

Do not attempt to run a NAS with RealTek LAN cards. Those cards don't work very well, you need an Intel Pro/1000 card. My Windows Box which I copied to/from still has a RealTek NIC. Pretty sure if I install a Intel Pro/1000 my benchmarks would improve as MTU larger than 1500 doesn't work with RealTek. They are the cheapest for a reason after all...

If you plan on setting one up I can give you some more important pointers based on my experience. Can also tell you which hardware to get from say, Esquire, to build a NAS for cheap (Around R2k for the hardware excluding hard-drives) that'll work well.

But if you are just planning on sharing your hard-drives as JBOD I'm not sure what the purpose of having a NAS is. Rather sell those and get a bunch of drives (2TB preferable) and do RAID-z (need at least 3).


Windows XP doesn't officially support RAID 5. But I've tested on Windows 2008 R2 Server edition, software RAID 5. The array took 5 days to build (VS 6 hours on Openfiler and no build time on FreeNAS, EON and NexentaStor).

Write/Read speeds were low, 30mb/s sustained.

Lastly it also dumped a drive from the array if the drive didn't respond immediately. Long story why it does that but it isn't a viable option for a NAS.

Last but not least, even Windows 2008 R2 Server only supports 2 options for sharing, SMB and NFS. FreeNAS support out of the box is a whole list you can find on the web-site but it is substantial.

Also security settings in FreeNAS is much easier and more intuitive to setup than Windows.

There are so many other small reasons...
Click to expand...

So I was initially gonna buy a Seagate BlackArmor NAS for R3k but since you say you can DIY it for R2k, how about suggestions for the actual hardware to buy from Esquire please.
 
Last edited:
I want to write up a nice guide but before I can do that I need to do a test. Can't hardly recommend hardware if I haven't tested it.

I have everything I need except the motherboard. I pretty much need a Socket 1155 INTEL motherboard with an onboard Intel 82579V NIC.

Reason: To test how well that NIC is supported.

I won't be buying one anytime soon, so either I need to lend one or someone else needs to do the test.

It is quite simple, all you need is:
- Intel Socket 1155 motherboard with an onboard Intel 82579V NIC
- A 512mb or larger flash drive that can be formatted.
- About 15 minutes of free time.

If you know someone that can help, PM me and I'll write up what that person should do and we can do a quick test to see if everything is well.

I actually have a socket 1155 cpu and everything, the problem is just that these computers aren't destined to be NAS so I bought Asus motherboards with RealTek 8111E NICs which are very poorly supported.
 
Gnome said:
I want to write up a nice guide but before I can do that I need to do a test. Can't hardly recommend hardware if I haven't tested it.

I have everything I need except the motherboard. I pretty much need a Socket 1155 INTEL motherboard with an onboard Intel 82579V NIC.

Reason: To test how well that NIC is supported.

I won't be buying one anytime soon, so either I need to lend one or someone else needs to do the test.

It is quite simple, all you need is:
- Intel Socket 1155 motherboard with an onboard Intel 82579V NIC
- A 512mb or larger flash drive that can be formatted.
- About 15 minutes of free time.

If you know someone that can help, PM me and I'll write up what that person should do and we can do a quick test to see if everything is well.

I actually have a socket 1155 cpu and everything, the problem is just that these computers aren't destined to be NAS so I bought Asus motherboards with RealTek 8111E NICs which are very poorly supported.
Click to expand...

OK let's assume I know zip about what's needed (and I really don't know much hey)...

In terms of the case, what type of case is best? I'm ideally looking to fit 4 drives in there MINIMUM.

Also, sound has to be MINIMAL even though the NAS will be sitting in another room.

It will primarily be for home usage, specifically for streaming to my Boxee Box media player in my lounge.

Write speeds aren't important but I assume the read speeds are VIP since I wanna be able to stream 1080p without issue.

Any input is welcome here.. :)
 
This is probably what I would say makes an ideal NAS, but as I said, I haven't built using these motherboards yet. If the onboard NIC doesn't work then you'd have to get an Intel PRO/1000 GT or something like that. If the SATA doesn't work you just need to set it to IDE mode instead of ACHI. When I get a motherboard to test with eventually I'll post again with a complete recommended build and where to buy for the cheapest.

You *might* have to buy from multiple places to get the correct hardware.

As I said, this is my recommended build:
CPU: Intel Core i3-2100T or Intel Core i5-2500T
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus
RAM: At least 4GB DDR3-1333 running at 1.5v. If you can 8GB DDR3-1333 running at 1.5volt. Lower voltage is better! We are trying to build a stable rig, not run Farcry 2 at maximum resolution.
RAM I would get: Kingston HyperX, they are priced fairly competitively but plain old Kingston valueRAM will do. But do check the voltage, some Kingston Hyper-X, even at 1333 need more than 1.5v. Avoid those like plague.
GPU: Absolutely no GPU, it is actually a bad idea to install a GPU.
Case: Cooler Master Centurion 590
Fans: Any 120mm fans will do. You need 4 Fans at least. 3 in the front, one in the rear.
PSU: Corsair CX430
Motherboard: Ranked from cheapest to most expensive.
- Expandable to 4 Drives only: Intel Desktop Board DH61CR
- Expandable to 6 Drives only: Intel Desktop Board DH61BE
- Expandable to 8 Drives only: Asus P8P67 PRO

FLASH: Any 2GB or larger flash will do. This is where the operating system will be installed.

(Optional) UPS: APC Smart-UPS 750VA

Anything not in the hardware list shouldn't even be connected to the computer. No CD-ROM/DVD-ROM/etc. They'll only waste power and although rare could make the system less stable. It's a NAS not a home entertainment system. All you need is a LAN card, SATA controllers HDs and fans.

My recommendation: One of your first things you should do is to disable the following in the BIOS:
- Parallel port(s)
- Serial port(s), BUT leave just 1 active (FreeNAS needs 1 serial port if you don't want to connect a display adapter)
- Firewire ports (IEEE 1394)
- Unused USB ports, if you can, but most motherboards have an all or nothing in terms of enabling/disabling USB. You'll need at least 1xUSB for the OS.
- onboard sound
- onboard wireless
- etc. anything that will not be used by the NAS.

Which FreeNAS distribution should you use?
http://sourceforge.net/projects/freenas/files/FreeNAS-7-nightly/
Get the latest from there. It says nightly build and only for testing but they really are stable.

A mistake would be downloading FreeNAS 8 RC, they are not even close to stable and will need quite a bit of tweaking before it is on the level of FreeNAS 7.

Expected speeds: I haven't tested this particular hardware build but based on previous experience it just have around ~70mb/s up to ~100mb/s constant speed.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X