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I found some nice information about tuning FeeeNAS 7.x from a few sources last week.

A blog post HERE made by Learned By Error details some settings to use for tuning FreeNAS for increased network performance. That post combined with information from the FreeBSD Wiki article called ZFS Tuning Guide and a U.S. Department of Energy article called TCP Tuning Guide – FreeBSD Tuning helped me determine the optimal tuning settings for my system. Prior to the TCP settings I was only getting around 25-30 MBps between my PC and the server. Now, with the new settings, I am getting up to 80-90 MBps (bursts) with common speeds of 55-60 MBps.

Here are the settings I currently have under System -> Advanced -> sysctl.conf

Well, I deviated slightly from my previous home server plans. I am using FreeNAS (based on FreeBSD) as the operating system which runs from a USB Flash Drive. The storage drives are arranged using the ZFS file system which has very high performance and redundancy. The software includes Samba support which allowed me to configure it to use Active Directory integration for access control. All in all I am very impressed with the performance of this free open-source software. It does take some technical know-how to configure correctly for optimum performance but I wouldn’t have it any other way

Well, I finally went ahead and built a new home server to replace my current Athlon 64 X2-3800 powered system. Here are the specifications of the new system which I am in the process of installing Windows Server 2008 x64 SP2 on.

• AMD Athlon II X2 245 Processor
  • Dual-Core 2.9 Ghz, 65watt maximum power consumption
• 4 GB DDR2-800 Memory
• Biostar TA790GXE Micro-ATX Motherboard
  • On-board Audio, Video, Gigabit networking
  • On-board 6 SATA ports which support Raid 0/1/0+1/5 levels
• Hard Drives:
  • Operating System: Hitachi 80GB SATA
  • Storage: 3x Samsung Spinpoint F2EG 1.5 Terabyte
    • Configured in Raid 5 Array with a total of 3 TB of usable storage
• Operating System: Windows Server 2008 Standard x64 SP2

Just received my new LCD monitor from NewEgg.com on Thursday. My previous Samsung 203B started developing problems with the display flickering which has become more and more prevalent lately. So, I picked up a Samsung 2443bwt 24″ widescreen monitor. It has very nice image quality which I need because I spend so much time on the computer every day. The 2443 also seems to have some additional Windows Vista compatibility that I have not experienced on my other monitors. The display darkens whenever the display is waiting for content, like waiting for a web page to load, etc.

The 203B was sent in for repair under warranty, free shipping and all, so I will end up having the 24″ as my main monitor with a 20.1″ as a secondary display. Now I need to find out what to do with the 19″ Hyundai L90D+ monitor that WAS my secondary.

Well, it’s been a while since I have upgraded my main PC that I use all day long.

My previous specs were:

• AMD Athlon X2-6000+
• 6 GB DDR2-800
• ATI Radeon x1950 Pro Video Card
• Windows XP x64

My system now consists of:

• AMD Phenom II 940 (Quad core, 3Ghz)
• Foxconn DigitalLife A79A-S motherboard
• 8 GB DDR2-800
• ATI Radeon 4850 512mb Video Card
• Windows Vista Ultimate x64 SP1

Yes, with the new build I made the switch to Vista. While the OS has some quirks, after some time spent configuring it the OS isn’t 1/2 bad. Time will tell though, only running the new system for 2 days now

Main reason for the upgrade was to speed up the processing of HD video. We purchased a Canon VIXIA HG20 HD video camera just prior to Alexander’s birth. The HD quality video brought my system to its knees so I am hoping the upgrade will help.