Does FreeNAS really need 8Gb of RAM? (2024)

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  • Thread starterNeth
  • Start dateOct 16, 2015

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Neth

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Oct 8, 2015
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  • Oct 16, 2015
  • #1

Hi!

What's your experience when it comes to RAM usage for FreeNAS?
I'm new to FreeNAS, but when reading different articles etc on the internet I've understood that FreeNAS "needs" 8Gb of RAM to funtion properly. However, now that I have FreeNAS installed and check the memory usage under Reporting it shows that it hardly uses 2Gb of RAM, even when streaming a FullHD movie.

I have 8 Gb of RAM in my server on which I am running FreeNAS. I decied to not run any virtualization or such since FreeNAS alone needed all my RAM. But now I'm not so sure....

So. what's the experience on the board - is 8Gb RAM really needed?

Edit: Adding Image

Does FreeNAS really need 8Gb of RAM? (3)

M

mav@

iXsystems

iXsystems

Joined
Sep 29, 2011
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1,428
  • Oct 17, 2015
  • #2

All loads are different, and 8GB is average safe-side recommendation. There were rumors that somebody managed to run ZFS on 32-bit architecture with 256MB of RAM, but it does not mean you can run any serious server with that. FreeNAS itself uses not so much, depending on number of enabled services. But ZFS requires RAM for caching, that is critical for performance. If memory is not enough to store all required metadata, then data access becomes slower. On systems with less then 4GB ZFS by default completely disables prefetch, that significantly reduce performance. Sequential file read in your example is hardly a serious load that requires or can really use much RAM, but there are other much more complicated loads.

joeschmuck

Old Man

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Does FreeNAS really need 8Gb of RAM? (5)

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  • Oct 17, 2015
  • #3

What period of time you are showing us is very small, 1 hour and you rebooted in that period of time it looks like. Change the period to 1 week or 1 month and lets see the results please.

As to the question you asked, FreeNAS will run fine on 6GB of RAM in my opinion however 8GB is the default safe lower limit to avoid RAM shortages when people start loading Plugins and extra jails. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by not running any visualization, if you mean not running jails or not running FreeNAS on a virtual OS.

F

Fuganater

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  • Oct 17, 2015
  • #4

How much storage do you have? I have 10TB and I am using 7GB of my 8GB RAM.

C

cyberjock

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19,526
  • Oct 17, 2015
  • #6

I've done several one-on-one scenarios with various people in the forums that had things not working right. Things as simple as zpool creation, updating the OS, and other things you'd expect to "work" don't work with 6GB of RAM (no RAM for the video card allocated). They upgraded to 8GB and it suddenly started working.

So yes, 8GB is the mininum.

Neth

Dabbler
Joined
Oct 8, 2015
Messages
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  • Oct 18, 2015
  • #7

Thank you all for your replies.

I guess the answer stands clear, 8Gb is needed to ensure proper functionality. The main reason being ZFS.
That ensures me in my decision, I'll just keep going with running only FreeNAS and nothing else (ie. no virtualization) on my setup - which has just 8Gb of RAM.

Sidenotes:

joeschmuck said:

What period of time you are showing us is very small, 1 hour and you rebooted in that period of time it looks like. Change the period to 1 week or 1 month and lets see the results please.
...
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by not running any visualization, if you mean not running jails or not running FreeNAS on a virtual OS.

True, I have only been running FreeNAS for a couple of days and have had to reboot several times and even reinstall the OS due to problems with CIFS. I've got another thread for that issue, see link below:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...for-usr-pw-although-guest-access-is-on.38630/

By virtualization i mean running for ex ESXi,

Fuganater said:

How much storage do you have? I have 10TB and I am using 7GB of my 8GB RAM.

I have 4x2TB disks which gives me 5TB available storage space in my RAID.

DrKK

FreeNAS Generalissimo
Joined
Oct 15, 2013
Messages
3,630
  • Oct 18, 2015
  • #8

Fuganater said:

How much storage do you have? I have 10TB and I am using 7GB of my 8GB RAM.

Just for the record, that's by design. In FreeNAS, generally speaking, it's set so that the ZFS MFU/MRU ARC will consume all of your RAM pool minus 1GB, just as a reserve.

JJT211

Patron
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Jul 4, 2014
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  • Oct 19, 2015
  • #10

Give it a few days or even a week. ZFS takes some time to start utilizing all the RAM it needs.

Simultaneously transcode a few videos if you wanna see it spike up faster.

Neth

Dabbler
Joined
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  • Oct 19, 2015
  • #11

Yep, you are correct. Checked the Reporting -> Memory today and all RAM is now being used. :)

joeschmuck

Old Man

Moderator

Does FreeNAS really need 8Gb of RAM? (13)

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  • Oct 20, 2015
  • #12

I figured it would eventually jump up and if it didn't, then I'd want to know what you are doing to keep RAM utilization so low :)

wreedps

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  • Oct 23, 2015
  • #13

I have 192GB and its "alright" Does FreeNAS really need 8Gb of RAM? (15)

jgreco

Resident Grinch
Joined
May 29, 2011
Messages
18,681
  • Oct 24, 2015
  • #14

I originally boosted the minimum memory from 6GB to 8GB in response to repeated frequent issues people had here in the forums with really bad things happening on smaller memory configurations. It isn't clear that those same problems exist any longer, but on the other hand, 8GB of RAM is not particularly expensive any longer and there's still a lot of anecdotal evidence that smaller configurations are problematic.

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