2 GB RAM and running a RAID-Z1 NAS

[mrjayviper]

Hello. I'm just wondering if it's "ok" to run a home-based NAS on 2 GB RAM. The only activity that will be happening is when I'm transferring Blurays I ripped to MP4 (via handbrake) or when we're watching a movie (streaming via Plex).

Thanks a lot

 

[SirDice]

Hello. I'm just wondering if it's "ok" to run a home-based NAS on 2 GB RAM.

Sure, it'll work. For a long time my server couldn't take more than 2 GB, until I replaced the entire machine with something better. But it had been running without issues.

 

[phoenix]

My home file server was a 32-bit Pentium4 3.0 GHz with only 4 GB of RAM, proving a ZFS pool with 4x 120 GB IDE drives (raidz1), later upgraded to 4x 250 GB SATA drives (raidz1), later upgraded to 4x 500 GB SATA drives (2 mirrors). Required a bit of tuning to get kmem and ARC settings correct, but it worked quite nicely for several years.

This past summer (or was it the summer previous?), I migrated to the pool to a 64-bit AMD Athlon II system with 4 GB of RAM, and it's now running on a 64-bit AMD Phenom II system with 8 GB of RAM. It's also using 4x 1 TB drives (2 mirrors), with /-on-ZFS.

Upgraded from FreeBSD 7 through to 9.2 without issues or data loss.