Hey guys I had a question in regards to the hardware required when building a Nas for the Free Nas software. I was planning on using the intel pentium processor with 8 gb of ram and a mid range asus mAtx motherboard. While doing research I found a couple forum posts on another site stating that Free Nas can be pickly with what hardware you use, and the reccomended onlu using server motherboards. Is this actually necessary? Can a perfectly usable Nas be made using "normal" hardware?
Thank you
You can use "normal" hardware, but in many cases it may be better to upgrade to server. I would recommend looking here and seeing some of the suggestions. One thing you will want to make sure to use is ECC RAM, so just make sure your motherboard and processor support it and you're good to go. Only other area of incompatability you may have is the NIC and the SATA controller. If both are intel then you're good to go, otherwise, check to make sure that they are supported under FreeNAS, which can be accomplished with a simple google search.
FreeNAS will run on most hardware. However, without ECC memory support you'll lose the error correction function of the ZFS file system which is the whole point of using ZFS. The first box I built was on a cheap gigabyte matx board with an amd processor and 16gb of standard memory. Everything worked fine but you run the risk of data loss and corruption without ECC. I built a new system later on after I became more familiar with the OS and packed it full of hdd's. Most server or workstation motherboards will support ECC. I'm using an ASRock workstation broad right now with a C226 chipset and intel i3 processor. They make one in a mATX form factor with dual intel NIC's for about $170.
You don't lose error correction of the filesystem, and there are plenty of other reasons to use ZFS (COW, snapshots, disk management, compression, the list goes on...). All you lose is the additional resiliency offered by ECC. ZFS fixes errors with data on disk. ECC fixes errors with data in memory. People recommend ECC not because ZFS requires it, but because data integrity (regardless of filesystem) is greatly enhanced when the possibility of memory errors is kept to a minimum.
To reiterate, you don't need ECC to use ZFS. You do need ECC if the integrity of your data is critical, and that has nothing to do with ZFS. And if you have data that you absolutely can not lose, there is no substitute for keeping multiple backups (including offsite backup).
My question is what will you be using the freenas for, other than the obvious file sharing.
The plugins and jails library for freenas is pretty good, and if you decide to do as many people have and install php virtualbox, you will need quite a bit more "umph" than normal.
If all you plan on using your freenas for is standard file sharing, and the features that zfs brings to the table, then you don't need much, even ecc ram. I've never had a problem with hardware compatibility until you get into the hardware raid controllers. If you ever have any questions on it, though, just go to the freebsd hardware compatibility list because freenas 9.3 is simply based on freebsd 9.3
To reiterate, you don't need ECC to use ZFS. You do need ECC if the integrity of your data is critical, and that has nothing to do with ZFS. And if you have data that you absolutely can not lose, there is no substitute for keeping multiple backups (including offsite backup).
^^ this.
As far as how much ram, budget 2g for the OS, +1g/tb of raw disk space, and +1g/100g of l2arc (if you plan to use l2)
Thanks everyone for all the information. @Durasara I plan on using it as a file server for my family as well as using it for plex. Another question I did have was in regards to the CPU power required, I know that the CPU power will ultimately determine how fast it can transcode. If I were buy something like the Intel pentium G3258, would it have enough power to deal with a couple plex streams?
I am looking to setup a NAS as well using Free NAS. I have an opportunity to pick up a Fujitsu CELSIUS R650 for a couple hundred dollars. This machine is not the latest and greatest but it does have 2, 4 core Intel Xeon X5460 processors and support for up to 32 GB of ECC DDR2 RAM. Do you guys think this is a waste of money, due to the age/outdate components? The machine will be getting all new NAS drives and will mainly be used for basic home server functions, media and backup storage.