# ZFS Advice - ram size and cpu



## none (May 25, 2011)

hail,

I'd like to know from here how far can I go using D945GCLF2D and 2GB RAM (as it is all it can handle) and make it a file server, using two pools. The first using two 750GB disks, and the other using 4 1.5/2.0 TB disks. Is 2GB RAM enough for it?

thanks,

none


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## olav (May 25, 2011)

Should work fine on a 64 bits system.


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## gkontos (May 25, 2011)

If you need a personal file server then maybe, with a lot of tuning, 2GB can be enough.
For anything else don't go under 4GB.


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## vermaden (May 25, 2011)

none said:
			
		

> I'd like to know from here how far can I go using D945GCLF2D and 2GB RAM (as it is all it can handle) and make it a file server, using two pools. The first using two 750GB disks, and the other using 4 1.5/2.0 TB disks. Is 2GB RAM enough for it ?



I personally have dual core Intel T8100 2.1GHz CPU with 965GM and 2 x 2TB low power disks put in ZFS mirror, along with 1 GB RAM on FreeBSD/8.2/amd64 ... and that without ANY ZFS tweaks works very well, I often put a lot load on that box, for example load of 5-6 with ffmpeg processes if I need to convert videos or something like that and this amount of memory is enought, so I think that Your 2 GB is definitely sufficient. My pool is also very 'full', 90% at the moment, I also do not have any problems with that.


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## gkontos (May 25, 2011)

Vermaden,

How often do you reboot?


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## vermaden (May 25, 2011)

gkontos said:
			
		

> Vermaden,
> 
> How often do you reboot?



Never, uptimes about 40-50 days broken by random lack of power (no UPS).


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## phoenix (May 25, 2011)

2 GB works fine for a home server with only a small number of clients.  If you install 32-bit (i386) FreeBSD, you will need to hand-tune /boot/loader.conf and may need to reboot every other week or so.  If you install 64-bit (amd64) FreeBSD, you shouldn't need to do any tuning, but it couldn't hurt.  

My home media server is a single-core P4 with 2 GB RAM, running 32-bit FreeBSD.  Has 2, sometimes 3 clients, and it does double-duty as my desktop machine as well.  The pool is a hodge-podge, with one raidz1 vdev using SATA1 disks, and one mirror vdev using IDE disks.


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## gkontos (May 25, 2011)

My SOHO file server which runs a few other services as well:

```
FreeBSD 8.2-STABLE #5: Thu May 19 15:45:59 EEST 2011
    gkontos@hp.aicom.loc:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/ML110G3 amd64
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.20GHz (3200.14-MHz K8-class CPU)
  Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0xf64  Family = f  Model = 6  Stepping = 4
  ...
real memory  = 4294967296 (4096 MB)
avail memory = 4111314944 (3920 MB)
```
Services as shown in /etc/rc.conf 

```
sshd_enable="YES"
named_enable="YES"
samba_enable="YES"
dhcpd_enable="YES"
squid_enable="YES"
apcupsd_enable="YES"
apache22_enable="YES"
mysql_enable="YES"
syslogd_flags="-a 10.10.10.1"
snmpd_enable="YES"
ddclient_enable="YES"
clamav_clamd_enable="YES"
clamav_freshclam_enable="YES"
nagios_enable="YES"
munin_node_enable="YES"
bsdstats_enable="YES"
smartd_enable="YES"
```

Full root on ZFS since 8.0-Release with a raidz1 for data. The system was purchased 6 years ago and its first OS was FreeBSD 6.0-Release...


```
gkontos@hp>zpool status
  pool: tank
 state: ONLINE
 scrub: none requested
config:

        NAME              STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        tank              ONLINE       0     0     0
          raidz1          ONLINE       0     0     0
            label/zdisk1  ONLINE       0     0     0
            label/zdisk2  ONLINE       0     0     0
            label/zdisk3  ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

  pool: zroot
 state: ONLINE
 scrub: none requested
config:

        NAME           STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        zroot          ONLINE       0     0     0
          mirror       ONLINE       0     0     0
            gpt/disk0  ONLINE       0     0     0
            gpt/disk1  ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors
```
However, tuning was necessary after all:

```
vm.kmem_size="2048M"
vfs.zfs.arc_max="1536M"
```


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## none (May 25, 2011)

First of all, thanks for all here 

I really thought I could make it this way, but I'd like to hear from here as I was sure many people have done this before. My server today is a Pentium 4 1.7GHz and just 256MB RAM, but I have no ZFS on it (just the two 750GB disk in gmirror/gstripe config). It serves me as wiki, file server and apache, but used to do postfix and webmail as well.

I have this Atom board, and it takes only one stick of RAM. BIOS says I just can use 2GB sticks, but I tried to search for anyone using 4GB on it, no luck on that. So I hoped 2GB would make it as to change to another motherboard would make me not use this I have and spend more money on another just for the 4GB RAM issue.

It's in fact a low usage server, just will have my movies and files, will have (as has today) the place for my p2p client to store its files, but even though it will be of low usage. So by what I saw here, it will do the job just fine. And as I will run amd64 FreeBSD on it, the server today is not capable, but this Atom is.

Well, if anyone has or knows someone that does this Intel Atom board and this person can use 4GB sticks, please say as it will help on memory issues, but apart from this thanks for the help, really thanks,

none


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## vermaden (May 26, 2011)

gkontos said:
			
		

> Services as shown in /etc/rc.conf




```
# grep enable=YES /etc/rc.conf    
rpcbind_enable=YES
nfs_server_enable=YES
rpc_lockd_enable=YES
rpc_statd_enable=YES
mountd_enable=YES
transmission_enable=YES
samba_enable=YES
dropbear_enable=YES
powerd_enable=YES
hiawatha_enable=YES
fsck_y_enable=YES
```

Services in short words: NFS/CIFS/HTTP/TORRENT/SSH/SHELL


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## DungeonMaster3000 (May 26, 2011)

@none - sounds like you have an intel 330. If so, 2GB ram is max supported but does run x64... So with amd64 installation and a bit of tuning you should be able to get away with it.


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## none (May 26, 2011)

DungeonMaster3000 said:
			
		

> @none - sounds like you have an intel 330. If so, 2GB ram is max supported but does run x64... So with amd64 installation and a bit of tuning you should be able to get away with it.



Great, thanks all you for the info, problem for me is solved. 2GB+FreeBSD amd64 will make it 

Thanks again,

none


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