[Discuss] Home server

[Richard Pieri]

On 1/26/2015 6:46 PM, Tom Metro wrote:
> That's what I've heard as well. Apparently ECC RAM is also highly
> recommended.

ZFS makes extensive use of RAM for cache. You don't actually need it for 
small scale use. I ran it just fine with Debian + ZFS on Linux on a 2GB 
system. I switched to Btrfs because keeping up to date with ZFS on Linux 
on Debian was tedious at the time. It's since gotten much better but I'd 
still go with FreeBSD for ZFS. Having the file system supported in the 
kernel is a whole lot better than dealing with third party repositories.

ECC is mandatory if you want to ensure end to end error detection and 
correction. If you only care about on-disk bit rot then you can get by 
with non-ECC.


> Other options to consider:
> http://www.nas4free.org/ (also based on FeeeBSD; I don't recall how it
> distinguishes itself from FreeNAS)

NAS4Free is a continuation of the m0n0wall-based FreeNAS 7.

No comment about Open Filer. Never used it and I'd rather not have to 
deal with the RHEL/CentOS bloat if I have the choice.

Regarding the tape-like system, I think that you'd be better off trying 
to adapt a tape system like Amanda. The vatpe (virtual tape) interface 
would be a good start.

-- 
Rich P.