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On 18/04/17 00:28, Daniel Robinson via list wrote: > I wrote, "All I really want is to access the network disk hosted on the > microserver as though it was a local disk on the windows computers. " > > Set this up, working just how I wanted, think FreeNAS is here to stay, > yay! :) Despite all I said, now you've been more specific about what you want from it FreeNAS on the Microserver is quite probably a really good fit for your needs to be honest. Are either perfect? Nope. But if you stick inside the GUI and give it a really good thrashing before you settle it into a 'production' role it should be just fine. Ignoring what I just said about GUIs (not sure if you can do this in the GUI these days), if you do have a spare SSD or can stretch to getting one then adding it to your existing zpools as a fast ZIL/L2ARC cache should dramatically improve performance. https://www.penguinpunk.net/blog/freenas-using-one-ssd-for-zil-and-l2arc/ Only two commands once you've set the disk up. I guess you went with twin RAIDZ zpools in the end for your required redundancy? Make sure you have fully disabled any RAID options in the Microserver BIOS as well, and all drives are in plain SATA mode or else bad things *will* happen to your data... Remembering which list we're on, I'll refrain from going too [OT] as we're now venturing fully offtrack into Windows + FreeBSD territory but presuming you're using a "proper" version of Win7 you can add the NFS client software to Enterprise/Ultimate editions which gives you the choice of mounting the ZFS backed storage over either SMB or NFS - try both, 'cos they'll give you different performance levels largely depending on how well FreeBSD handles it's side. In my experience, Win7 lacks the modern badass features of the latest CIFS versions in Win10 but then the Win7 side doesn't implement NFSv4 properly either, so it's six of one and half a dozen of the other (just for a change). Try both for a bit - ZFS will let you set both types of sharing on any subvolume - and see which seems to be faster/more robust. Personally I'd dump both and probably just use iSCSI instead. Lots of resources online to get you going and it'll largely be point and click on both ends. But if as you say you're only using it for light use and not using junction links on Windows to effectively mount your entire steam library via the network performance shouldn't really be an issue. Is it basically going to be your backup server? I've just been ninja'd by MJE (*shakes fist*) again but yeah, figure out how the twin killer ZFS features work - COW snapshotting is just the best thing ever in file storage. Second by a tiny margin is the ZFS scrub feature - set them both on timers and your data is bulletproof AS LONG AS YOU DON'T KILL THE SERVER. ZFS, like RAID, still Is Not A Backup - for that you need to copy offsite (which is what I do - to other ZFS systems, of course). Also, just because I can't help myself, I have to ask what a Win7 "gaming server" is for? Do you do twitch and all that sort of thing with it to offload it from your main PC? Or is that just where you keep your entire Steam library? One thing I am *not* is a gamer so I have only a passing familiarity with these things from friends who's sense of fun hasn't been as horribly compromised as mine :] Cheers -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG https://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq