Reliable NAS4Free Full Install in a Budget

[JoseMR]

Hello, since the introduction of NAS4Free Full RootOnZFS, I saw few Full users running it from USB drives, while NAS4Free Full RootOnZFS meant to be installed in a pair of HDD/SSD's for maximum redundancy and reliability, this is not the case anymore.

NAS4Free Full users can use quality USB3.0 flash drives and benefit from all the RootOnZFS features with either single or mirrored installs, since I've tested here HDD/SSD and some USB3.0, I can confirm NAS4Free Full RootOnZFS can be used on USB happily, and to maintain this test routine myself, I will personally run Full RootOnZFS in a mirrored pair of Samsung Flash Drive Fit 32GB USB 3.0 drives.

Also I have to note that I have an SSD whit a dedicated SWAP partition, and a simple zpool for all the heavy writes such as media server trancoding, logs, databases etc., this is essentially not required and SWAP can be also placed in the USB3.0 devices, and any shared/dataset can be used for this purpose, however I wanted the speed and a dedicated disk to avoid constant writes to the storage array.

Also don't forget that you now can perform hassle free Firmware Upgrades in NAS4Free Full RootOnZFS as well for convenience.

Below picture show the USB drives I've used in my recent test lab setup:

Dual_Samsung_Fit.jpg

Below picture show them installed in my Supermicro X8SI6-F motherboard:

Mirrored_NAS4Free_Full.jpg

Best regards!
José