Is this hardware OK for regular home server use?

[WillL84]

Hi guys, I'm looking at using an older PC as a NAS. We don't do any streaming or anything, just file storage. I don't have drives yet, still deciding which to get and what capacity.

The PC has a Q600 CPU, ASUS P5N-D board and 4GB DDR2-800 (going to get 4GB more). Will this be fine for just storage use? TIA

 

[Samuel Tai]

Minimum RAM is 16 GB.

 

[WillL84]

Minimum RAM is 16 GB.

Oh dang, read somewhere that it was only 8GB. Guess I'll search for some newer hardware as that board only supports 8GB lol

 

[Samuel Tai]

You could try your luck with OpenMediaVault. Minimum RAM there is 1 GB.

 

[zebekias]

Oh dang, read somewhere that it was only 8GB. Guess I'll search for some newer hardware as that board only supports 8GB lol

I run a home file server on plain FreeBSD (9.x) + ZFS for years with 8GB (ECC) without any issue, after limiting ARC to 4GB. Without limiting ARC I was getting kernel panics after running for a few days.

 

[awasb]

You could use OmniOS as a ZFS filer. Even 2GB will suffice. It is a matter of patience.

@WillL84 a home server to do what kind of storage? Backups? Block storage? File exchange?

 

[WillL84]

You could use OmniOS as a ZFS filer. Even 2GB will suffice. It is a matter of patience.

@WillL84 a home server to do what kind of storage? Backups? Block storage? File exchange?

Mainly backups and general storage

 

[awasb]

As Samuel pointed out: 16 GB is the recommended minimum RAM for current TrueNAS. I would add that it should be ECC memory. Backups are critical (as far as you‘ll have to rely on integrity).

The disk size and pool layout (and therefore the size of your storage) will depend on the amount of data you will backup/share and the targeted network speed. What will you need?