FreeNAS

Hi all,

please post your hardware and experience with this setup, especially about stability.

Use form like this:

Mainboard:
CPU:
RAM:
Lan:
Boot device:
HDD configuration:
FreenasVersion:

I want to findout the better workable hardware/chipset combos. I know about compatibility lists
at freebsd.org, but them seems to be not really comparable to requirements of FN.

thank you

Mainboard: Abit AB9 Pro
CPU: Intel E6600 Dual Core
RAM: 2GB Corsair 8500C Dominator
Lan: Realtek RTL8111B
Boot device: SATA II HDD
HDD configuration: 300GB SATA II HDD (Boot & Backup for crucial data) - 1x 1TB Hitachi SATA II - 3x 750GB Seagate SATA II BIOS-RAID0
FreenasVersion: 0.687b1 (revision 2845) - Had rsync instability problems with later (stable) revisions

Mainboard: Asus M2NPV-VM
CPU: AMD Athlon64 X2 2GHz
RAM: 1GB DDR2
Lan: Intel Pro 1Gb
Boot device: Transcend 256MB IDE flash disk
HDD configuration: 6x Samsung 500GB SATAII in graid5
FreenasVersion: 0.69 (2976)

Stable enough for me (using only active directory, cifs/smb & ftp access).

Further to my earlier reply I use AFP, rsyncd, SMB, SSH and am looking at Unison.

I have a couple of Macs and 3 PC's transfer rates using AFP are extremely high, almost double that of SMB even after tweaking. NFS is almost as quick as AFP and fits with

I found some stability issues with the Stable labeled versions, which was very strange. I now use the 0.687b1 (revision 2845) and it's rock solid, I've thrown everything I can at it.

It's set up as a full installation booting from HDD.

Mainboard: GIGABYTE GA-G33M-S2
CPU: INTEL DUAL-CORE E2160(1,8GHz)
RAM: OCZ 2x512MB DDR2 PC6400 4-4-4-15
Lan: integrated, RTL8111B
Boot device: CF 256MB + adapter (non DMA)
CD-ROM: LG SATA
HDD configuration: 4x Samsung 1TB on Highpoint 2310 PCIe
FreenasVersion: 0.69.2951

With fn 0.686.x there are stability issues with new intel chipsets, 0.69 is OK.
Maybe I will change boot from CF to small 2.5" HDD and DVD to IDE.
In future, I'll change integrated lan to Intel PCIe
With G31/G33 chipset is unable to boot from USB, and it is also not possible to load FN, when any USB device (keyboard..) is plugged in.

Mainboard: Intel DG965 OT
CPU: Intel Celeron 420 (1,6GHz)
RAM: 1024MB G.E.I.L
Lan: Intel 82566DC
Boot device: 1GB Kingston USB
HDD configuration:
- 2x Samsung 501LJ @ RAid 1
- 1x Samsung 403LJ
- 1x Samsung 752LJ
FreenasVersion: 0.69 (revision 2976)

Stable until Hard disk standby time is enabled, then lots of DMA Errors(freeze)
Raid 1 - Status: Degraded ?!:P
SMB performance ~23MB/s @25%CPU Load
FTP performance ~49MB/s @37%CPU Load

I have a few systems, but one of the longest running & most stable is a scsi box.

Mainboard: I think intel 440bx, it's been so long - haven't opened it in years.
CPU: pII 450mhz
RAM: 256mb
Lan: rtl8139 10/100
Boot device: ad0: 1222MB <QUANTUM FIREBALL1280A A63.0H00> at ata0-master WDMA2
HDD configuration: (raid5) 5 x <SEAGATE SX910800N 8514> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-2 device 5.000MB/s transfers (5.000MHz, offset 15),Tagged Queueing Enabled 8669MB (17755614 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 1105C)
+ 2 x 4disk-cd <NAKAMICH MJ-4.8S 1.05> Removable CD-ROM SCSI-2 device 5.000MB/s transfers (5.000MHz, offset 15)
FreenasVersion:at present=0.686.1 (revision 2831) originally started with v-0.64 in 2006

Very stable. used mainly as internet ftp. Boot time is long due to scsi checks , fortunately the only time it goes down is a power-failure 1-2 times /year or a freenas update every 6months.

Mainboard: Intel D201GLY2 mini-ITX
CPU: Celeron 1.2Ghz
RAM: 512MB Team DDR2-800
Lan: integrated 10/100
Boot device: USB thumb drive
HDD configuration: 250GB Seagate 8MB SATA
FreenasVersion: 0.686.1

Not a powerhouse, but does transfers to a single computer (Athlon X2) at 80Mb/s over CIFS with ~30% CPU. Used only for home network. Stability has not been an issue.

Mainboard: Abit BX6 (Intel 440BX Chipset)
CPU: Intel Pentium III 500MHz
RAM: 512MB SD100
LAN: RTL8139 100mbit
Boot device: HDD
HDD configuration: Promise ATA133 PCI IDE Card + 13GB Western Digital (Embedded + Data Partition), 160GB Western Digital, 500GB Seagate
FreenasVersion: 0.686.2 STABLE

Stability is not an issue. Its main purpose is for Samba transfers within my home network (up to 3 computers, 1 Xbox). Uploads from a PC typically max out around 7-10MB/sec using FFCopy (http://www.ffprojects.net/ffcopy/ffcopy.htm). Watching movies stored on the NAS on the Xbox (through XBMC) works perfectly.

Motherboard: Asrock 939Dual-SATA2
CPU: AMD64 3200+
RAM: 1gb
NIC: 3Com 905TX 10/100
Video: ATI Radeon 9200 AGP
SATA: Onboard SATA2 controller (JMB360) in IDE mode
Boot Device: Hitachi 20mb 2.5-inch laptop hard drive via Belkin F2n511 2.5-3.5 adapter
Storage: WD 500gb SAATA2
FreeNAS: 0.686.2 Stable

Motherboard: Asus CUSL2 (non on board audio version, using onboard video)
CPU: Intel Pentium III 800 Mhz (eb version)
Ram: 512 MB
NIC: Realtek el cheepo 1 Ghz
Boot device: HDD (13 gigs but bios only sees 8 gigs, two partions with freenas getting 256 megs)
Storage controller: 3ware 9500 configured in a raid 5 with 64k chunks (64 bit card pluged into a 32 bit slot, damm I hate not getting all I can out of that card)
Storage drives: Four (4) seagate 750 gigs SATA --> 2 terabytes total (remember raid 5)
Freenas: 69.2993 Stable so far and so have past versions.
Transfer rates: (Using Status Graph built into freenas) In 130 Mbps, Out 200 Mpbs.

Notes:
Tuning option is on
All conputers (2) Xbox, Audiotron, freenas server, etc, all conected to cheap ($49.00) netgear 8 port giga switch
MTU set to 1492 (match ppoe / DSL)
1000baseTX conection
Samba (CIFS/SMB), SSHD and Webserver only active services (for now)
WOL works perfect
Plink shutdown works perfect
Main uses are iTunes (iTunes has no problem seeing reading or writting to it), movie server and picture server (works great using xp media center and My Movies add-in)

Mainboard: HP Vectra VL4

CPU: P II 400 MHz

RAM: 384MB (3x128MB PC100)

Lan1: Integrated
Lan2: Digitus DN-1011 Gigabit

Boot device: CF Extreme III 1GB on Conrad Electronic ST-308 IDE-CF adapter

HDD configuration:
-ATA channel 0:
Master: ad0 <SAMSUNG SP2514N/VF100-33> ATA/ATAPI revision 7
Slave: ad1 <ST3500630A/3.AAF> ATA/ATAPI revision 7
-ATA channel 1:
Master: acd0 <GCR-8523B/1.00> ATA/ATAPI revision 0
Slave: ad3 <ST3500630A/3.AAC> ATA/ATAPI revision 7
-ATA channel 2:
Master: no device present
Slave: ad5 <SanDisk SDCFX-1024/HDX 4.03> ATA/ATAPI revision 4
-ATA channel 3:
Master: no device present
Slave: no device present
-USB 2.0 (Via VT6212L) Hitachi VLAT80

FreenasVersion:
-0.685b2 installation
-0.687b1 (revision 2732) update

Notes:
A pretty old base combo with some hardware added to keep it flexible and upgradable.
Actually 2x500GB no RAID + 1x250GB internally and 1x250GB on the USB2 port.
Possibility to have up to 7 HDD internally and 4 HDD on USB2.

If need it, I can mount and share a data CD-ROM or use FreeNAS on CD and floppy for testing purposes.

Hi!

Mainboard: DELL PowerEdge 840
CPU: DUAL CORE XEON 3050, 2.13GHZ/2MB
RAM: 1GB 533MHZ SINGLE RANK ECC MEMORY (2X512
Lan: Broadcom® Gigabit Ethernet NIC
Boot device: USB stick
HDD configuration: SAS 5/IR INTERNAL RAID CONTROLLER, PCI-E
da0 1140592MB Dell VIRTUAL DISK 1028
ad0 286189MB Maxtor 6B300R0/BAH41G10
ad1 286189MB Maxtor 6L300R0/BAH41G10
ad4 715405MB ST3750640NS/3.BKE
ad5 715405MB ST3750640NS/3.BKE
ad6 715405MB ST3750640NS/3.BKE
FreenasVersion: 0.686.1 (revision 2623)

Notes:
Working Great but I had a lot of DMA trouble before.
I Downgraded to this version and turned of Disk standby and now everything is fine.

Mainboard: MSI K7D Master
CPU: Dual MP1900
RAM: 512 MB Registered DDR
Lan: Realtek Gigabit (MTU set to 7k)
Boot device: ad0 (Embedded 32 mb)
HDD configuration:
ad0 238476MB HDS722525VLAT80/V36OA6MA Always on UFS ONLINE
ad1 305246MB WDC WD3200JB-00KFA0/08.05J08 Always on UFS ONLINE
ad2 157067MB HDS722516VLAT80/V34OA60A Always on UFS ONLINE
ad3 476941MB WDC WD5000AAKB-00YSA0/12.01C02 Always on UFS ONLINE
FreenasVersion:
0.686.3 (revision 3011) i386-embedded on AMD Athlon(tm) MP 1900+ running at 1600 MHz

System runs 24/7 Had to turn off Power Man as the disks constantly threw errors when waking up.

The system has been running since very early release and get updated to latest stable after a few days post release. All essential data is backed up a 12 everyday onto other systems.

I am soooooo impressed with FreeNas. Thank you Oliver and Volker and anybody else concerned.
Is there a way WE the community can help more?

"Is there a way WE the community can help more?"
Yes by using more the wiki page.
All these answers will fit great on this page for example:
http://www.freenas.org/index.php?option=com_openwiki&Itemid=30&id=freenas_users_hardware

This is an old system i got when i built my neighbor a new system. This system would not run anything they had anymore and had been sitting on my back room for about a year or more now. I was trying to configure FreeNAS on a 75MHZ to see how well it ran on slow hardware when i found this system... PS the 75MHZ system would not support a CD Rom so i abandoned it. :p This set up runs REALLY FAST!!! i am able to stream multiple movies from this system with no issues or lag at all. I can upload a 1Gig movie in about 4 to 5 mins to this system. So for all you people hopeing there old computer they cant use for anything else will work, here is your hopes come true!

Mainboard: HP Pavilion
CPU: i386-full on Intel Celeron running at 601 MHz
RAM: 26% of 310MB
Lan: 10/100 Full Duplex
Boot device: 20G hard drive IDE
HDD configuration: 80G IDE, 20G IDE, 40G external laptop HD at times.
FreenasVersion: 0.686.3 (revision 3011)

Mainboard: Super Micro P4SCE
CPU: P4 2.8GHz 1mb L-2 cache/800 FSB
RAM: 2mb PC3200 400MHz D
Lan: Dual Intel® 82541 Gigabit Ethernet
Supports 10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, and 1000BASE-T, RJ45 output
LAN card: D-Link TX530 10/100BaseT RK-45
Boot device: 512K USB Flash drive
HDD configuration: 1 X 80GB WD IDE
4 X 500GB WD SATA 300 on a HighPoint RocketRAID 1740 PCI-SATA 300 card (RAID 5)
FreenasVersion: Currently 0.686.2933, but planning to upgrade to 0.686.3.3011

I don't yet have any performance to report, as I just got the system up and am still working on getting the RocketRAID drivers installed. My CD burner just pooped out, so I can't burn the ISO to upgrade to the new 0.686.3011 (stable), so I'm still on the last nightly build (2933).

My NAS is for home network use, for storing family photos, videos, music, homework for the kids, and for streaming to the home theater receiver and network computers. I installed the 80G drive just to get things running while I work on the RR drives. Started thinking about it and now plan to add another 80G IDE drive and make a separate soft RAID 1 array for encrypted data (we'll see if that works alongside my 1.5TB RocketRAID RAID 5 array). Looking forward to getting it all up and running. Will report back later.

Tony :]

Mainboard: CompaQ IPAQ 2.0 Desktop based on i815EG chipset (modified - one ATA channel is a hot-swap (for Multibay devices eg. CD-ROM, 2nd HDD or FDD drive).
Specification of this machine here: http://h18002.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/10832_div/10832_div.HTML
CPU: Intel Celeron 700MHz, (replace to 1GHz when I find him in my stuff ;) )
RAM: 2x256MB SDRAM @ 133MHz
Lan: embedded
Boot device: at this time: 128MB ad0s1 parition of HDD, USB key or CF256MB card w/ ATA adapter in plans...
HDD configuration: ATA 10MB sigle HDD drive as ad0s2 actual (testing), in plans 250GB drive (with two partitions - i815 chipset limit) for data
FreenasVersion: 1st: 0.686_stable, actual: 0.686.3011 with mods:
- wget (console based)
- webgui for wget (not finished yet)
- webserver (webgui and startup script from 0.687.b1 + access and error logs mod)
- BTG client with webgui by Nelson Silva - in progress...

Mainboard: Chaintech something or other from Taiwan with NVidia chipset
CPU: AMD Sempron(tm) (1600.01-MHz 686-class CPU)
RAM: real memory = 805240832 (767 MB) - 17% utilized
LAN: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection Version - 6.2.9
Boot Device: acd0: CDROM <ASUS CD-S520/A5/1.22> at ata1-master UDMA33
HDD Configuration:
IDE - 2 x 120 MB on softraid
ad0: 114473MB <WDC WD1200JB-00GVA0 08.02D08> at ata0-master UDMA100
ad1: 117246MB <Maxtor 4R120L0 RAMB1TU0> at ata0-slave UDMA133
USB -
da0: 152627MB (312581808 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 19457C)
da1: 476940MB (976773168 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 60801C)
FreeNAS Version: 0.686.2 (revision 2891)

I had serious problems with the on-board Realtek LAN causing complete hangs with no log messages. Just prior to quitting FreeNAS, I found some obscure message about FreeBSD having problems with Realtek LAN controllers. Used a 3COM PCI 10Mb card to test and it work. Purchased Intel Gb card (it is really hard to find a low end card without Realtek). I now have on-board serial, parallel and Ethernet disabled. At one point in the process, I was booting off 32 MB USB stick.

I am using:
CIFS/SMB
FTP
AFP
UPnP

Mainboard: MSI K9N SLI
CPU: AMD Athlon X2 3800+ AM2 (65W)
RAM: 2GB OCZ PC8000 Dual Channel
Lan: Intel Pro/1000PT
Boot device: 2GB USB Flash Drive (Transcend JetFlash)
HDD configuration: Once I'm past the "Missing" Drive bug (http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1998142&forum_id=507590) It'll be:
6x Samsung 500GB in Geom RAID5
2x Samsung 1TB
FreenasVersion: 0.686.3 (revision 3011)

ow right, stability:
except from the freenas bug, it's very stable, had a few issues (some sort of crash after a few minutes) with 0.685.x but under 686 no more.

I'm only using Samba and FTP though. And it's a dedicated fileserver just for me, but it holds well with multiple users accessing (although then, FTP gets faster)

Mainboard: Jetway J7F4K1G5D
CPU: Via C7 ('Esther' m: 0x6d0 s: 0)
RAM: Kingston 1GB DDR2
Lan: internal 2 x Realtek RTL8100C (external Intel 82541GI/PI for testing)
Boot device: Network (Pxe, NFS)
HDD configuration: 2 x 250 GB Seagate ST3250410AS on internal Via VT8237R Plus
FreenasVersion: 0.686.2 (revision 2891) with moded kernel (mfs size, C7 recognition, non stock em + rl drivers, pxe boot)
Case: Chenbro ES34069

Works fine, and with padlock crypto is a wonder.

Mainboard: Epox 8K-TA3+
CPU: AMD Thunderbird 1.4Ghz
RAM: 1024 MB Non-ECC PC-133
Lan: Cheap 10/100 card I had laying around cfg'd in 100TX Full duplex mode.
Boot device: WD Caviar 3.2 GB HDD (I FINALLY found a use for this drive :) )
HDD configuration: 3 WD 120GB in RAID 5 configuration
FreenasVersion: 6.9
Network: 6 PC's on a wireless linksys 10/100 router being migrated over to a Linksys 24 port 10/100/1000 gigabit managed switch.


Right now, this box is just sitting on my local network as I just took about 1/2 hour yesterday and built it / cfg'd it. It is only an FTP / SMB box but will be reconfigured soon enough to be a test box with SQL and Oracle.

There are some impressive systems on this list just doing file storage!....

Just built, reusing all old hardware:
CPU: Pentium-2, 233Mhz Gateway
Ram: 64MB
Lan: 100Base-T PCI card
Boot device: CD-Rom (6x), settings stored on Floppy
HDD configuration: 3.2GB IBM HDD, formated ext2 (plan to add others later)
FreeNAS version: 0.686.4 stable
Network: Home LAN 3-5 pc's: Ubuntu, Windows, Mac
Purpose: Parents need a central server to dump pictures and files instead of spread around.

I had a similar setup (P2-233Mhz, 96MBram, four 40GB drives, USB flash drive boot), back in FreeNAS version 2 or 3 that ran for a year or so at my place. Rearranged my home LAN and installed LTSP on Kubuntu and just added extra drives to that server (P2/200Mhz+ clients boot diskless off the P4 server across the network for the kids and ubiquitous logins from anywhere in the house). I like the option of using ext2 disk formats as that is compatible with my largely Debian installation base (so I have easier ways to recover from disk issues on FreeNAS).

John

i have this configuration.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/4U/7043/SYS-7043P-8R.cfm

CPU - xeon 3,2 ghz.
4 X gb ECC RAM.
4 X 74 GB RAID 5 hardware.