esbowman
Cadet
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2017
- Messages
- 7
So, I've put together a list of parts and went over the handy guides here. Lots of info to think about. I'd like to post my list here and get a few eyes on it to make sure I'm headed in the right track. I was pricing a Synology box (1515+) and it was quickly hitting $2500 for only 16TB of storage, and that didn't even include 10GbE ports. Needless to say, now I'm here. :)
What I need:
Shared storage for two Windows machines. They will primarily be sharing 3d assets, textures, video footage, and various other assets related to creating motion graphics. I will be doing some video editing as well. I'm currently using two external RAIDS (one mirrored for backup) and have about 8TB of data that I need to transfer to the new NAS. I think I'd like to double or triple the current storage I have. I'm taking on more 4K work and VR videos as well, both of which require much more space. I'm considering using 6 drives in a RAIDZ2 so I have two drives for redundancy. If I use 8TB drives, I should get roughly 32TB of storage (16TB for redundancy). Finally, instead of buying an expensive 10GbE switch, I'm planning to use two 10GbE ports on the NAS to connect to my Windows machines, both of which have 10GbE. From what I gather that should get me about 700-800MB/s, which should be good for asset sharing, editing etc. Most of the time only one PC will be accessing the NAS at a time, sometimes two. I will also have 1 or 2 other computers (an old Mac Pro and newish MacBook Pro) accessing the NAS, but only for backups.
Here's the current list I've compiled:
Motherboard: Supermicro Mini-ITX SoC Xeon D-1521 4-Core, FCBGA 1667 Motherboard - X10SDV-4C-TLN2F-O
RAM: Crucial - 16GB (2 x 8GB) Registered DDR4-2133 Memory (Plan to install 32GB)
Case: Fractal Design Node 304
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNova 550 G3
Drives: Western Digital Red 8TB NAS Hard Drive 5400RPM 128MB Cache (Will buy 6 Drives)
Boot Drive: Samsung - 850 EVO 250GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (Will use this as the boot drive)
UPS: Have an existing UPS...CyberPower brand I believe. Might need to buy a new one.
Questions:
1) Would love to know thoughts about this build...what should I change? Things I should add?
2) I have an old external RAID that I plan to upgrade for mirroring the NAS. Is this a good idea? In a perfect money-filled world I would just build two NASs and mirror it.
3) Is it realistic to think I can work off the NAS and obtain a speed of somewhere between 700-800MB/s?
4) Regarding the purchasing of drives, I've heard you want to try to buy different batches. Like some from Newegg, some from Amazon, etc. to prevent buying all from a bad run. Is this worth sweating over?
5) Finally, I picked the Supermicro board because it had 2 built-in 10GbE ports. However, I noticed the following paragraphs from the Hardware PDF. Should I consider a different board?
Intel 10GbE NICs are said to suffer from a less-than-perfect FreeBSD driver that makes it difficult for them to achieve the speeds expected from 10GbE. Currently, Chelsio 10GbE NICs are the preferred choice for use with FreeNAS, and are the models shipped with iXsystems hardware.
Really looking forward to building this, and everyone's advice. Thanks so much!
What I need:
Shared storage for two Windows machines. They will primarily be sharing 3d assets, textures, video footage, and various other assets related to creating motion graphics. I will be doing some video editing as well. I'm currently using two external RAIDS (one mirrored for backup) and have about 8TB of data that I need to transfer to the new NAS. I think I'd like to double or triple the current storage I have. I'm taking on more 4K work and VR videos as well, both of which require much more space. I'm considering using 6 drives in a RAIDZ2 so I have two drives for redundancy. If I use 8TB drives, I should get roughly 32TB of storage (16TB for redundancy). Finally, instead of buying an expensive 10GbE switch, I'm planning to use two 10GbE ports on the NAS to connect to my Windows machines, both of which have 10GbE. From what I gather that should get me about 700-800MB/s, which should be good for asset sharing, editing etc. Most of the time only one PC will be accessing the NAS at a time, sometimes two. I will also have 1 or 2 other computers (an old Mac Pro and newish MacBook Pro) accessing the NAS, but only for backups.
Here's the current list I've compiled:
Motherboard: Supermicro Mini-ITX SoC Xeon D-1521 4-Core, FCBGA 1667 Motherboard - X10SDV-4C-TLN2F-O
RAM: Crucial - 16GB (2 x 8GB) Registered DDR4-2133 Memory (Plan to install 32GB)
Case: Fractal Design Node 304
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNova 550 G3
Drives: Western Digital Red 8TB NAS Hard Drive 5400RPM 128MB Cache (Will buy 6 Drives)
Boot Drive: Samsung - 850 EVO 250GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (Will use this as the boot drive)
UPS: Have an existing UPS...CyberPower brand I believe. Might need to buy a new one.
Questions:
1) Would love to know thoughts about this build...what should I change? Things I should add?
2) I have an old external RAID that I plan to upgrade for mirroring the NAS. Is this a good idea? In a perfect money-filled world I would just build two NASs and mirror it.
3) Is it realistic to think I can work off the NAS and obtain a speed of somewhere between 700-800MB/s?
4) Regarding the purchasing of drives, I've heard you want to try to buy different batches. Like some from Newegg, some from Amazon, etc. to prevent buying all from a bad run. Is this worth sweating over?
5) Finally, I picked the Supermicro board because it had 2 built-in 10GbE ports. However, I noticed the following paragraphs from the Hardware PDF. Should I consider a different board?
Intel 10GbE NICs are said to suffer from a less-than-perfect FreeBSD driver that makes it difficult for them to achieve the speeds expected from 10GbE. Currently, Chelsio 10GbE NICs are the preferred choice for use with FreeNAS, and are the models shipped with iXsystems hardware.
Really looking forward to building this, and everyone's advice. Thanks so much!