Need advice on new NAS build

[mfenn]

Seems like I have hit an other road block . guys at freenas suggest that for ZFS to work properly one should have at least 8gb of ram and not just any ram a freaking ECC ram which is not only hard to find for this board but is also damn expensive. Anyone has any personal experience with this ? I am alrdy on tight budget and can't afford to fork out £60 plus on just ram. If this doesn't work I might as well save myself the headache and do for the Zyxel solution.

The FreeNAS forum posters are a bit, shall we say, extreme when it comes to data storage. They're NAS enthusiasts so it's to be expected, but you have to take what they say with a grain of salt (just like everything on the Internet, including here). They get really concerned about the extremely rare chance of a single-bit error in memory staying in the same place for a long period of time and ZFS deciding to slide the same data block over that single bit error. Such a thing is theoretically possible, but the chances are exceedingly small.

For a home setup, sure ECC RAM will give you better data protection. However, running FreeNAS on ZFS w/o ECC is basically the same in terms of protection as running a prebuilt NAS. FreeNAS has more features and is more tweakable, but it takes a little more effort to get set up. So it's all a trade-off in that regard.

 

[smitbret]

The FreeNAS forum posters are a bit, shall we say, extreme when it comes to data storage. They're NAS enthusiasts so it's to be expected, but you have to take what they say with a grain of salt (just like everything on the Internet, including here). They get really concerned about the extremely rare chance of a single-bit error in memory staying in the same place for a long period of time and ZFS deciding to slide the same data block over that single bit error. Such a thing is theoretically possible, but the chances are exceedingly small.

For a home setup, sure ECC RAM will give you better data protection. However, running FreeNAS on ZFS w/o ECC is basically the same in terms of protection as running a prebuilt NAS. FreeNAS has more features and is more tweakable, but it takes a little more effort to get set up. So it's all a trade-off in that regard.

QFT. ZFS people can be intense, almost religious.

Also, keep in mind, that the odds of that bit error are astronomical. In a high I/O situation where millions of bits are being read all day/every day (Amazon) then it will happen at some point and the proper precautions will need to be in place to prevent data loss. For the average home user, you just need to judge whether you can live with the slight chance you could lose your Hootie and the Blowfish .mp3 if you don't go with ECC.

I went ECC, but it's definitely not necessary, especially if you have a good backup system in place.

 

[XavierMace]

QFT. ZFS people can be intense, almost religious.

Also, keep in mind, that the odds of that bit error are astronomical. In a high I/O situation where millions of bits are being read all day/every day (Amazon) then it will happen at some point and the proper precautions will need to be in place to prevent data loss. For the average home user, you just need to judge whether you can live with the slight chance you could lose your Hootie and the Blowfish .mp3 if you don't go with ECC.

I went ECC, but it's definitely not necessary, especially if you have a good backup system in place.

So much THIS. They remind me of an episode of Stargate Atlantis.

Kramer: Some of these worst-case scenarios are terrifying…
Tunney: Of course they're terrifying--they're worst-case scenarios. They are the worst possible thing that could happen, ever.

OP: I love ZFS. I've run 3 different ZFS builds now; 2x FreeNAS, 1x Solaris 11. But some of their fan base completely runs off the home user crowd. If you look through the Memory and Storage sub-forum, you'll see I've butted heads with them a few times. They are locked into the enterprise mindset and trying to prove ZFS is a viable alternative for hardware RAID at that level.

It's not that their feedback is necessarily wrong, it's just totally unnecessary for a home user. Case in point is when a member asked for advise on a budget (like $400) ZFS build. Someone responded with a like $3,000 build list. They simply don't understand home usage scenarios.

ZFS can be run on lower hardware than typically recommended, you just won't get optimal performance. You'll need to make sure you've got resource intensive features like de-dupe and compression turned off. You can also probably make due with 4Gb of RAM. However, I would strongly recommend more than one drive.

 

[Essence_of_War]

For a home setup, sure ECC RAM will give you better data protection. However, running FreeNAS on ZFS w/o ECC is basically the same in terms of protection as running a prebuilt NAS.

I think ZFS w/o ECC is certainly no worse than a pre-built in the worst-case, borderline-malicious-ram-bit-flip scenario, but outside of that, ZFS still looks like a head-and-shoulders better. At minimum, you're still getting end-to-end data checksums on an atomic filesystem, data integrity scrubs if you've set up any redundancy at all, easy to use mountable, snapshots (and you get FreeNAS's GUI for setting them up), and transparent, low-cost compression.

 

[mfenn]

I think ZFS w/o ECC is certainly no worse than a pre-built in the worst-case, borderline-malicious-ram-bit-flip scenario, but outside of that, ZFS still looks like a head-and-shoulders better. At minimum, you're still getting end-to-end data checksums on an atomic filesystem, data integrity scrubs if you've set up any redundancy at all, easy to use mountable, snapshots (and you get FreeNAS's GUI for setting them up), and transparent, low-cost compression.

:thumbsup: You are absolutely correct. I was focusing in on the bit flip scenario and worded my statement too generally.