Need help to decide PLEX/DLNA/FreeNAS etc. & RAID

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clutchtime

Honorable
Mar 21, 2013
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0
10,530
Hi, as the title suggests ,I'm confused.

My Current System Config:
CPU: Intel i3-4150
RAM: 16 GB 1600MHz
Board: Gigabyte GA-H97N-WiFi
Disks: 8 x 4 TB disks (different makes ,same performance bracket) + 1 x 500GB SSD
RAID Controller: LSI MegaRAID 9240-8i (Can be flashed to M1015)
Case: SilverStone DS380B
Router: Netis AC1750 (Backup TP-Link wdr 4300)

My Requirement: (Max Performance all the way)
To download torrents directly onto the box, store various media ,DC++ sharing(i should be able to point my desktop to use the storage box) and streaming onto devices like PS4,Oppo Blu-Ray Player, Laptops,etc.
Basically i was wondering if it was possible to have a software that allowed for file sharing and media playing at the same time.
And i was wondering if i should use RAID 5/10/ or any other that allows for atleast 1 disk to fail so that i dont lose all my data :)

I have tried FreeNAS (the latest release), but it just keeps on having issues and issues and issues. Was wondering if there was some other more efficient software that didnt continuously have problems.

All recommendations are much appreciated ,and just to tell you that currently im running FreeNAs RAID z1 with 5 drives 90% free and it has incredibly slow performance (maybe 20-25MBps), any suggestions for that too?

Thanks.

 
Solution
skittle
Max performance you will not get from RAIDZ.
BTRFS looks like much more throughput than ZFS from recent benchmarks (kernel kernel 3.19)
https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:822493/FULLTEXT01.pdf (RAID5 fileserver benchmark page 21)
*undergrad thesis paper with some obvious issues that should inspire some further testing by a more thorough experimental design.

This is what I would set up:
Debian, CentOS, or Ubuntu LTS
Filesystem: BTRFS RAID5
Filesharing: Samba + a upnp server (miniupnp) and/or media transcoding upnp server (plex, emby, universalmediaserver)
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Alabalcho

Titan
Jan 13, 2011
14,019
435
76,290
You've spend a lot of money on hardware. Spend some on software, too.
WHS2011 (you can still get it from various places) plus eg TVserity/Plex

Stick with hardware RAID 5, this will let a disk to fail and be rebuild. I would make two volumes, four drives each, but I don't know the capabilities of your RAID controller,
 
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McHenryB

McHenryB

Admirable
Jan 31, 2015
2,019
0
6,460
You don't have enough RAM for ZFS with the disks you specify. The rule of thumb is at least 1GB RAM per TB disk storage.

As you don't specify what problems you have with FreeNAS it's difficult to comment on that aspect. But rest assured that FreeNAS is as good a quality as any other free or paid for software. (Although a lot of people prefer NAS4Free, which is a fork of FreeNAS.) ZFS is much better than hardware RAID, but you have to give it sufficient resources for good performance. And don't even think of using deduplication.
 
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clutchtime

Honorable
Mar 21, 2013
43
0
10,530
@Alabalcho , I have taken over a year to source these parts at the right price, managed to get all but the HDD's for under 350$ so ill consider that an awesome score.
WHS 2011 is not a bad idea but frankly i shifted out of windows and onto mac for the simple reason that windows has way too many viruses and malware, that my anti-virus also failed to detect (used Spyhunter and Anti-Malware Bytes and Kaspersky ,all useless.)

RAID 5 is giving me rubbish performance , i wouldn't mind RAID 10 if performance is vastly improved. One array is all i want.

@McHenryB , you are very right, you do need a lot of RAM but hey i tested FreeNAS wit just 2x3TB hard disks last night after optimisation for highest I/O and test it maxed out at 35MBps. Someone want to tell me the problem if you know (Low transfer Speeds)? Disks individually tested-all fine. Wifi is running DC++ at over 100MBps so router is fine. RAM is fine,CPU,Mobo,Fans,all fine. Yet low performance. Am i doing something wrong with FreeNAS? Anyway my USB stick just did not boot FreeNAS for the last time and I'm sort of out of options.

FreeNAS exact problems:
All my drives are hot swappable and so once while upgrading the box we removed all the drives with the cage and once we plugged it back in, all was lost.
Installed a RAID Card recently, all lost again.
It want drives in the original order for some reason .
Changed 2 USB Sticks on the suspicion of Bad install, Stick shows up consistently within BIOS but fails to boot FreeNAS.


Kindly Advise.
 
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skittle

skittle

Splendid
Dec 27, 2006
4,036
3
23,960
Max performance you will not get from RAIDZ.
BTRFS looks like much more throughput than ZFS from recent benchmarks (kernel kernel 3.19)
https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:822493/FULLTEXT01.pdf (RAID5 fileserver benchmark page 21)
*undergrad thesis paper with some obvious issues that should inspire some further testing by a more thorough experimental design.

This is what I would set up:
Debian, CentOS, or Ubuntu LTS
Filesystem: BTRFS RAID5
Filesharing: Samba + a upnp server (miniupnp) and/or media transcoding upnp server (plex, emby, universalmediaserver)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
C

clutchtime

Honorable
Mar 21, 2013
43
0
10,530
@skittle , thanks for your advice. Read the whole document and concluded BTRFS is awesome! But it has a lot of kinks in it yet :(

That being said im exploring the Three OS'es , I have tried ubuntu LTS briefly but dont know the exact config or settings to tweak to get max performance .That being said, CentOS might be worth a shot then debian . Need to ask you though ,how is the GUI and configuration/tweaking.etc. in thes e2 OS'es. Need to pick which one ill explore first.

Thanks.
 
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