FreeNAS recording setup question/advice please.

[Flibolito]

Hi guys and gals,

Sometime this summer I would like to set up a FreeNAS system with some left over components.
I would like to connect this device over my Gigabit Ethernet of my LAN Box machine directly to the Gigabit Ethernet port on the second machine I will put together. Redundancy is not a factor here at I just was fairly good speed out of it.

Here are the parts.
Intel E8400 3.0GHz
4GB RAM dual channel 800MHz
Zotac Eco 9800GT
Sigma 600w PSU
Coolermaster Case
Gigabyte P35 socket 775 (hardware raid 0 or software raid 0)

I am thinking a small HDD for the FreeNAS and 2x 2TB WD Reds in RAID 0.
Looking for about 160MB/s write speed sustained with minimal bottlenecks for smooth recording.

1. So going from Ethernet to Ethernet port should work no problem right? Crossover cable required?
2. Should take load off the southbridge/USB 3.0 controller and really smooth out recording performance right?
3. Any thoughts or advice or should I stick to the Samsung SSD for recording and just deal with the small size and the southbridge working overtime. I record high resolution and bit rate so write speeds get hammered.

Thanks for your input/advice.

 

[newtekie1]

I am thinking a small HDD for the FreeNAS and 2x 2TB WD Reds in RAID 0.

Install FreeNAS to a 4GB USB stick. No point in wasting an entire hard drive for the FreeNAS install.

Looking for about 160MB/s write speed sustained with minimal bottlenecks for smooth recording.

1000Mb/s = 125MB/s So, 160MB/s sustained is never going to happen if you are recording to a network device over Gigabit.

 

[Flibolito]

Good point newtekie. I forgot that Gigabit is pretty much "only" 125MB/s. Do you think that with a proper setup it will sustain the 125MB/s?
As that would be enough I believe for me to do what I need it so as long as it is sustainable. I should be able to get the back end to that performance even with that small RAID 0 overhead with those drive and the CPU running freeNAS.

 

[Disparia]

Haven't tested NIC to NIC before, but with some Intel Server NICs and a switch I've done 116MB/s sustained.

Are you having problems recording now? It's very possible that saving the recording to another machine won't help if you're having problems recording to a local drive. Unless your only problem is that you've run out of ports

 

[Aquinus]

It depends on the switch and both the destination and source adapters. At work I've seen 131MB/s on gigabit on a managed HP ProCurve (all copper). If you're only reading/writing that much data to only one machine, you could use a dedicated 2 port gigabit card on both ends and setup teaming which would achieve that goal, but it's not an easy one to achieve. 10Gbps cards are also expensive, even if CAT6 isn't too bad.

Your options are limited, friend, and whatever you do to achieve you're goal is going to cost you PCI-E lanes and money.

If you're interested in the teaming idea, you could go with two of these for less than 100 dollars for two. It's older tech, but it will get you where you're going if you have the PCI-E lanes to spare since it's only PCI-E 1.1.

I should note that I bought one of these and it's in my gateway and it works great. It also helps when your gateway has a 790X chipset with 32 lanes handy.

 

[Disparia]

^ Almost filled my pants with happiness when I saw a 10Gb adapter for $40 on Newegg the other day. When I checked it out though, it was without a transceiver which adds $200. Still, we're in a better place than the initial 10Gb pricing of $3000 and over $5000 for dual-port (yeah, I've been waiting awhile). Copper is now about $260, and 8-port switches for $800, so we're not too far away. Just need someone like Netgear or DLink to put out some entry level equipment to get people enticed. One of them has be after the "first 10Gb home router" title, lol.

 

[Flibolito]

Recording is not really an issue. lack of additional ports/storage and getting tough. Would a strong USB3.0 deliver better performance with say a raid 10 NAS consisting of 4 2TB WD Reds? So 4TB total space and should have 200+MB/s write speed minus RAID overhead/USB limitation. This way the recording/editing can be run straight off the NAS and I can record on my gaming rig while my i7920 machine does the editing. Just stepped it up to 12GB of RAM for that purpose.

Thanks Aquinus. That would be great for the X58 setup as I have plenty of PCI-E lanes there. So I guess in a perfect world It would be Gaming computer recording over USB 3.0 to the NAS and the editing done on the X58 connected using the intel NIC to the NAS. Since im building on I would be able to shove in a USB 3.0 PCI card and a NIC.

Thanks for the help as I will be starting the project soon and need to lay down a course of action.