Comments on: ZFS powered NAS, ultimate alternative to Drobo + Droboshare [Complete Guide]

By: Mbwjoe

Mbwjoe — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 02:21:00 +0000

I think all you’ve done here is prove just how great the drobo is.

By: mobi

mobi — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:39:00 +0000

Thanks for a great article, I’m now fully signed up to freenas! I’m using the Asus E35M1-M PRO
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_CPU_on_Board/E35M1M_PRO/

but I fail to see how the GPU is going to help with data copy throughput. Can you explain? Maybe freebsd or zfs makes use of the GPU??

By: day traders

day traders — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:43:00 +0000

I really love reading your comments guys.I learn a lot from you.

Thank you so much.

Regard,

Epoyjun

By: Polovni automobili

Polovni automobili — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 17:33:00 +0000

Great job here. I really enjoyed
what you had to say.

Polovni
automobili

By: Izrada web sajtova

Izrada web sajtova — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 17:31:00 +0000

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By: Concord

Concord — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 22:00:00 +0000

Not sure if you want it for personal use or corporate use. In any case, for business, I’m using a couple of aberdeen inc. (abernas) RAID6 standard NAS servers for 4-5 years. They came out with ZFS server using NExenta software in 2010. Like any rack server, the fans are real noisy, at least on the ones I have.

By: gcs8

gcs8 — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 07:40:00 +0000

i got feedup with my drobo about 3 months ago when i ran out of space (95%) an it slowed down a lot. so i build my self a freenas box that now holds 20 2TB drives in a raidZ2 with ZFS over iscsi for 33.9TB of storage and a lot better RW speeds. let me know what you think i will leave some links if you dont mind, its my new baby. http://gcs8.org/m http://gcs8.org/rack great wright up BTW.

By: Review – HP Microserver « Chris Swan's Weblog

Review – HP Microserver « Chris Swan's Weblog — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 20:40:37 +0000

[...] again to the end of May. [2] I’d considered building my own NAS box along the lines of this guide, but had decided that life’s too short. [3] The Dell is now doing duty as my main box. It may [...]

By: eric

eric — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:16:00 +0000

Thanks. I never ordered anything from NCIX before, but I’ve heard of them before.

Thanks for letting me know

I think I might just get the Fractal Design Define R3

By: Frank Leng

Frank Leng — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 18:24:00 +0000

oh sorry about that. I got the case from NCIX.com
they are Canadian but also have a US site.

By: eric

eric — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 17:54:00 +0000

Hi Frank,

I think you missed my comment.

By: sims

sims — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:48:00 +0000

thank you for the link. too expensive for my needs.
need to find somebody who can do what you have done

thanks for sharing!

By: eric

eric — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:41:00 +0000

Hi Frank,

Where did you get your case from?

By: Frank Leng

Frank Leng — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 02:21:00 +0000

Not that I’m aware of. I don’t think FreeNAS has a commercial license.

You can take a look at unRAID
http://www.lime-technology.com/

hope that helps

By: sims

sims — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 02:07:00 +0000

Hi Frank, thanks for sharing your experience.

Much as I am tempted to go into creating a solution like the one you have created, time pressures do not allow me to do so. And neither am I happy with the rather slow performance (Comparitively at least) that I hear Drobo’s suffer from.

So would you know if there is an option of buying a pre-built computer with such features as the ones you mention. I guess I mean to ask if there is a pre-built FreeNAS computer of this kind that I can buy from somewhere?

By: Frank Leng

Frank Leng — Sun, 29 May 2011 23:37:00 +0000

Not a problem.

Love your selection of the board and the case. tho the cost probably would be my only concern. lol

By: NASGuy

NASGuy — Sun, 29 May 2011 22:56:00 +0000

Thanks again, Frank! Nice explanation right there!

I’ve decided on a build with 8GB RAM, an Array R2 Mini-ITX case and an Asus E35M1-I Deluxe Mobo. Case looks great and supports 6 HDDs, motherboard has 5 SATA-600 ports and runs the (apparently) excellent AMD Fusion E-350. And hell, RAM is so cheap that it’s worth going for the recommended amount!

Just thought I’d mention for others looking into decent NAS hardware, as I think it’s a pretty good build (if on the expensive side). I’m particularly satisfied with the case.

By: Frank Leng

Frank Leng — Sun, 29 May 2011 15:35:00 +0000

Totally agree. RAM is ridiculously cheap right now. and you do not need the high performance sticks for a NAS anyway.

Release 8.0 will be upgradable to 8.1 and the system will automatically preserve the configs like it did in 0.7.x. so no worries there.

Lastly, FreeNAS runs on a FreeBSD kernel called NanoBSD. It has a much more complete port of ZFS (from OpenSolaris) compared to the 0.7.x releases. Specifically, it now supports snapshots, and adding drives to an existing ZFS array.

If you look at the stuff from OpenSolaris on ZFS technology, it uses tremendous amount of cache/buffer to ensure the system is functioning at optimal levels which data is being moved and duplicated yet still maintaining throughput.
Regular NAS do not have this problem because they are simply not doing as much work as a ZFS system.

Ex. DroboFS gives you about 25mb/s at peak speeds when transferring files smaller than 2GB. that speed dies down tremendously when you have files larger than 2GB. Its hardware simply can’t keep up. Now try to have multiple users access the box at the same time… nightmare.
Now throw in 4GB of RAM on a ZFS system. As long as you have enough network bandwidth, your speed will be consistent.
People are also getting 80mb/s on ZFS. and that was on FreeNAS 0.7.x

By: NASGuy

NASGuy — Sun, 29 May 2011 09:07:00 +0000

Great, thanks! I don’t mind going for about 4GB RAM if it improves things — hell, it’s dirt cheap nowadays anyway. You mentioned that releases can’t eb upgraded to 8.x, but I assume that 8.0 can be upgraded to 8.1, right?

Why is it that the RAM requirements are so extremely different, anyway?

By: Frank Leng

Frank Leng — Sat, 28 May 2011 16:01:00 +0000

FreeNAS 8.0 already supports adding new devices to an existing array.
However it requires significant amount of RAM for the ZFS subsystem to
perform at optimal conditions. that is to say that 2GB is the absolute
minimum you should have for a FreeNAS 8.0 system. In fact, FreeNAS
recommends 4-8GB of RAM.
Release 8.1 is currently being tested. and you should get either 8.0
now or wait for 8.1. 7.x releases are NOT upgradable to 8.x.

Gigabit ethernet is already maxing out your drives performance unless
you go SSD. There is no way of making your NAS a standard USB/FireWire
storage device. someone might figure out a way to emulate them down
the road. but I do not see any benefit in having that. At least not in
terms of speed.

Hope that answers ur questions.

Let me know how ur FreeNAS 8 experience turns out.