Low Cost NAS Server

[black0ut]

I dunno why you guys are saying zfs takes up so much cpu, I had it running on a pentium 4 with 10 drives serving over a gigabit network, works fine.

Then again, that was zfs on opensolaris. Later on, same box ran zfs on linux, also did fine.

I agree if you want transcoding, you'll need some cpu power, but the i3 won't cut it for that either, at least for high bitrate 1080p movies.

 

[mfenn]

I dunno why you guys are saying zfs takes up so much cpu, I had it running on a pentium 4 with 10 drives serving over a gigabit network, works fine.

Then again, that was zfs on opensolaris. Later on, same box ran zfs on linux, also did fine.

I agree if you want transcoding, you'll need some cpu power, but the i3 won't cut it for that either, at least for high bitrate 1080p movies.

You were obviously not using many ZFS features then. It can be a huge CPU hog once you enable things like compression, tons of snapshots, etc.

 

[mfenn]

Thanks once again! You've been immensely helpful, so here's my final question (I think), is there software to make a web interface so that I can access my linux server and have more of a FreeNAS style interface instead of having to just SSH into it? It is not necessary at all and really I am just curious since I am fine with working from shell but I am a little curious and other people in my household might want it, although once again, not necessary for the NAS.

Thanks,
ljbaumer

Webmin approximates that, but it's not as polished as something purpose-built like the FreeNAS UI.

 

[ljbaumer]

Alright sweet, thanks, so just to clarify, it will function better if I'm running the OS off of it's own drive? And an 80GB WD scorpio will work for this? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136129

Just cause I have one right infront of me right now lol

 

[mfenn]

You don't want to use any PATA drive because newer motherboards don't have PATA ports. In addition, laptop PATA is a different connector from desktop PATA, so you'd need another adapter anyway.

The system isn't going to be writing anything to the root filesystem except for logs and such, so using a USB stick for that is perfectly fine. You can also use a (SATA) HDD or SSD, but it's really not necessary.

 

[ljbaumer]

Alright! Even better! All set now.

Thanks,
ljbaumer

 

[s44]

Looks like you have your setup, but if you or someone else wants to do it all inside FreeNAS...