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Hi Everyone, I decided to build a FreeNAS out of my old System.
Sabertooth z77
16gb Ram
2500k CPU
120GB Evo 840
bequiet 850W P9 Pro

And a three random 3TB Drives with Media. (I will exchange them for 4tb WD reds later on)

I dont have a DVD Drive around and want to install the Iso from a usb stick. Anyone can tell me what I should use to make a bootable usb installer?
In one of the Tek syndicate Videos Logan said he is going to use the SSD for chaching does this work when I install FreeNAS on that drive?
I'm still looking for a dual gig nic, anyone can send me a link to a reliable one I could get in Germany?

If you got any other advise for me, I'm happy to hear it.

Have a tek day!
Lighto

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This will help you with getting the installer on a USB flash drive.

As far as the SSD Caching goes, it works wonderfully. I've got an array (raid5) of 5x4tb drives with 2 SSD's caching it. Although it's not freenas, it's using pretty much the same software.

I would recommend an intel pro/1000. This one is on ebay, and I'm not sure about getting one locally for you, but the Pro 1000 are pretty much industry standard as far as 1GbE goes. The one I linked is used, but I've seen these things outlast the cases they're put in. I have 3 of these in my systems, and I can't complain.

As far as recommendations go, I'd recommend you consider getting both of the following things:

  • A UPS, although ZFS is pretty good when it comes to handling raid in an inconsistent state, freeBSD is sometimes finicky when sudden power loss happens. If you can get a UPS, you can plug it into the machine, and when it kicks over to battery power, it can send a signal to freenas and shut down the server.

  • Offsite backup. If you're storing important data (stuff you'd be sad about loosing), I'd absolutely recommend using an offsite backup solution. I'm using crashplan, and while it fits my needs, it may not fit yours. You can install the crashplan program right on freenas, last I checked, so it should be pretty good for this. They offer unlimited "cloud" backup for ~59.99 USD a year, so it's a pretty good deal for me, as I'm storing ~12tb on there. Not sure about their availability in Germany.

Hope this helps!

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Wow how did I miss that Video... Thanks a lot!

I can setup more than one SSD for caching? Great I got two 120gb 850 here :)

Intel pro 1000 looks great and I found one ;) Thanks again!

A UPS, hmm I'll read up on this sound like I might need it.

Offsite backup isn't needed for this media Server but thanks for the recommendation, I think amazon has a similar service in Germany.

Thanks sgtawesomesauce!

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I'm not sure if you can with the freenas web-ui, but with the ZFS command line, you absolutely can. No harm in plugging both of the SSD's in and giving it a try. ZFS has multiple uses for SSD's.

For read caching, you can use what they call the L2ARC (level 2 active replacement cache) which keeps frequently accessed data on your SSD. Pretty simple.

For write caching, you can use what they call a ZIL (ZFS intent log). Every write to the disk is stored as an intent on ZFS, before it's written to the actual array. With the ZIL, you do multiple things:

  1. prevent ZFS from storing it's intent log on your actual array (helping to reduce fragmentation a bit. ZFS has no defrag feature, so beware)
  2. speed up writes to your array. Obviously, an SSD is faster than a spinning HDD. I can get about 500mbps on my array, using a couple 840s.

I would recommend splitting about 8GB to 32GB off of your SSD's. My array looks like this. It's important to have the ZIL (logs in the quote below) mirrored, because that's a critical part of ZFS. If you have an error on your array, the raid5 will save it, if you have an error on your cache, it will fall back to the spinning array. If you have an error on your log device, you're done.

NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
main        ONLINE       0     0     0
  raidz1-0  ONLINE       0     0     0
    sdd     ONLINE       0     0     0
    sdg     ONLINE       0     0     0
    sdc     ONLINE       0     0     0
    sdb     ONLINE       0     0     0
    sda     ONLINE       0     0     0
logs
  mirror-1  ONLINE       0     0     0
    sdf2    ONLINE       0     0     0
    sde2    ONLINE       0     0     0
cache
  sdf3      ONLINE       0     0     0
  sde3      ONLINE       0     0     0

The pro 1000 won't let you down. The other reason I like them is that no matter what OS you're using, they will (except for XP I think) have out of the box driver support, so if you decide to go with a different NAS OS later on, you'll be all set!

A UPS is more of a creature comfort than anything else. I got mine from a business I was supporting. Their batteries were no good, and they wanted me to replace the whole thing. I did that and took the old one. Replacement batterys cost me about $25x2 (two batteries) and it's been ticking for about three years. If you can find a cheap one on ebay or something, link the model number here and we can tell you if it's good. What you should do first is look at your actual draw from the wall. Get a kill-a-watt and plug it in between your server and the wall. what it shows will be the actual power draw of the computer. That will help you get a more well-suited UPS.

Media servers don't need backups. You're spot on there.

Let me know if you've got any further questions. I'm here all day folks!

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