freeNas recently updated to version 8.3 and one of the new features is zfs v28 with dedup and such. I'm going to try it out since Nexenta doesn't support AFP and Time Machine (freeNAS does natively.) I've heard great things about the latest version, so I'll let you guys know how my testing goes. I'll see if it will import my zfs volumes made through nexenta properly.
MB/s
96 HD Video Playback
106.3 2x HD Playback
105.4 4x HD Playback
129.6 HD Video Record
83.4 HD Playback and Record
3.4 Content Creation
54.0 Office Productivity
59.3 File copy to NAS
92.7 File copy from NAS
14.3 Dir copy to NAS
20.8 Dir copy from NAS
48.1 Photo Album
Sequential was very strong with the velicoraptors, but IO slowed me down quite a bit. I was pretty surprised by the playback numbers, I didn't expect to push that kind of speed. Office productivity was also very high compared to other NAS I've seen.
EDIT:
FreeNAS numbers are in:
MB/s
78 HD Video Playback
87 2x HD Playback
92 4x HD Playback
178 HD Video Record
58 HD Playback and Record
7.8 Content Creation
42 Office Productivity
57 File copy to NAS
78 File copy from NAS
4.3 Dir copy to NAS
19.1 Dir copy from NAS
32.5 Photo Album
Still strong numbers when compared to off-the-shelf NAS units. I think the HD Video Record is a little messed up on both of them. Content Creation is up on FreeNAS. Overall, NexentaStor is certainly faster. The great part about zfs is that I was able to easily remount my drive array to FreeNAS without any problems. I recreated permissions and off I go. I mainly did the switch because NexentaStor seems to no longer be supported much. FreeNAS is taking off with numerous easy to use plugins and Time Machine access built in.
I was able to get time machine up and running relatively easily. I accidentally named by CIFS share the same name as my AFP share and things went bonkers, but its all running smoothly now. The UI is much more intuitive than Nexenta. However, the biggest selling point for me is how well documented freeNAS is compared to Nexenta.
Also, I upgraded the Hackintosh to a SSD and it flies now. Upgrading was extremely easy. Instead of messing with Time Machine, I just cloned my HDD to the new SSD with Carbon Copy Cloner. I then loaded the boot loader while still on my HDD through OSX, restarted, swapped boot options, and booted directly into the SSD without any issues. The clone took 30 mins to copy 100GB of data. Much easier than reinstalling. All my licenses were kept in order as well, even CS6. No need to reactivate.
I purchased an HP N54L during a sale recently. They are normally ~380, but I was able to pick it up for $229 after rebate. The N54L is a nicely packaged microserver that is perfect for running a small fileshare server. The server runs an AMD Turion II dual core processor at 2.2Ghz, so it is much faster than most NAS systems offered in the same price range. It also accepts up to 8GB of ECC Ram, which I easily filled. It does not come preloaded with software, which is a good thing IMO. I was surprised to see a 250GB HDD sitting in one of the drive-bays, an added bonus (that I didn't use.)
Switching from the i3, Supermicro board system to the N54L was very easy with FreeNas and is one of the reasons I switched from Nexenta. Nexenta doesn't like being installed on a USB drive. I powered down the i3 server, swapped the USB stick into the new system, moved the HDDs over to the N54L, and powered it up. The only change I needed to make was to the network interface settings and I was up and running. It literally took 5 minutes to perform an entire system swap while retaining all my data. Hardware agnostic ZFS and FreeNas makes moving around so easy.
I ran a quick NASPT test to see how it stacked up to the much more powerful i3 system and am happy with the results:
The N54L is obviously slower, but it certainly holds its own, especially considering the price and expanded use of the machine compared to dedicated NAS systems.
Full specs (upgraded):
AMD Turion II 2.2Ghz Dual Core
8GB Kingston 1333 ECC (2x4)
3x500GB Velociraptor RAIDZ2
GBe
If you guys are looking for a nice power sipping all-purpose server then definitely check out the N54L. Other than the perform, the build quality was good too. I really like the small size.
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