Any FreeNAS users?

[Si.]

Just wondering if there were any FreeNAS users here, and how you find it?

I've been running it on my Microserver under ESXi5 and I'm finding the performance to be rather rubbish. Really slow transfer speeds on both CIFS and FTP. only getting approx. 2-3MB/sec over gigabit ethernet. I'm also finding it rather inconsistent with transfer speeds having large peaks and troughs, not a steady rate as I would expect.

 

[Essexraptor]

Which version are you running bro?

Running 7 natively on mine (32 bit version) , software RAID 5 array over Gig network and file transfers on CIFS and to Linux machines high 70's to mid 80's



Can't fault it to be honest

 

[Si.]

Just upgraded to 8.0.4, same problem.

I've made a few changes and I'm getting what appears to be batches of transfers, it will run 40mb/s for a few seconds, then 0 for a few seconds and so on.

 

[ShadowMan]

Are you running it as a VM within ESXi5? Did not think the Microservers supported VT-d which would limit the throughput into the VM.

I thought the point of FreeNAS was to run it on the hardware layer of the box to present the controllers and disks as a consolidated RAID array out to the network?

 

[Si.]

Yea, that could be the problem. I seem to get nice sustained read speeds, it's just writes it struggles with.

I'm thinking of scrapping the ESXi setup and just installing 2008 R2 on there instead.

 

[Essexraptor]

Just upgraded to 8.0.4, same problem.

I've made a few changes and I'm getting what appears to be batches of transfers, it will run 40mb/s for a few seconds, then 0 for a few seconds and so on.

When you have a closer look at 8 though and the specs to run it at top lick with a ZFS pool you'll see that the relatively puny CPU in the N40L is just not up to it

To run it succefully with any great performance your looking at a quad with 8GB min of RAM for a 6TB array

Hence my comments elsewhere in the forums that FreeNAS 8 is, or appears IMO, to be aiming more towards commercial/enterprise sector