Greetings everyone. Firstly, for those that take the time to read through this trying to help answer my questions, thank you in advance! I know it's a lot of reading, but I'd rather be more detailed than not.
I repurposed an old "gaming" rig last year and turned it into a freenas box. I more or less wanted to play around with something, and freenas is where I landed. I LOVE how stable it is, despite my personal learning curve. And yes, I realize consumer grade hardware is NOT ideal or secure for FreeNas, but it was free and I was just playing around.
The reason I needed a 2nd machine at all was to remove the tasks of torrenting and plex server off of my primary machine, so I didn't have to leave my high end gaming rig on 24/7.
So here I am today. I have purchased some older server grade hardware (what I would consider server grade anyway). I am looking for validation that the hardware will work well to fit my needs as well as get some answers to some questions, so I will break this post down into a couple of categories, hardware I have purchased for the build and what I am using, what I need the machine to do, and what my questions are.
1. Hardware I have purchased or am repurposing:
a. Intel Xeon E5-2670v2 lga 2011
b. SuperMicro X9SRi-F
c. 8x8gb Hynix HMT31GR7CFR4A-H9 - ECC RDIMMS
d. 2x60gb Patriot Flare 2.5" SATA3 SSD (for OS mirror)
e. Hyper 212 EVO cpu cooler - repurpose
f. 6x4tb WD RED WD40EFRX HDD - 4 new, 2 <3 years old. Planning on raidz2.
g. An older Rosewell Legacy QT01 ATX case (I have ordered adapters to make sure I can fit the 6 hdds and the 2 ssds inside the case)
2. What I need this build to do:
a. PLEX - serve up to 3 TV's with up to 4k resolution videos/movies/ shows.
b. Torrent - my current FreeNAS machine runs deluge and I tend to share for lengthy periods, so I somtimes have 1000+ torrents sharing at once (thank you ATT fiber for my 1/1gbps connection)
c. Sickrage - I use it to auto download some of the stuff I want
d. File storage - I use the machine to house some file backups as well as an disk image of my main gaming rig (so I can do a quick restore if I ever have to reinstall the OS or someting like that).
3. Questions I have and clarifications I need:
a. In general, does the hardware look ok? The RAM showed to be directly compatible with that specific motherboard on SuperMicro's website.
b. SuperMicro's website says the board has 2 SATA 3.0 ports, 4 SATA 2.0 ports, and 4 SATA ports via SCU. My confusion is around the SCU ports. I have used the search function here and trusty google, but I am still confused (or at least I'm not 100% positive in my knowledge). Can I plug this into one of the "SCU" ports on the motherboard and then plug the other ends of that breakout cable into 4 sata drives? Or do I need to purchase a HBA like this to be able to plug in all 8 of my SATA drives? Of course I need to make sure the HBA is crossflashed into IT mode so it's just acting as a bus adapter and not a JBOD or RAID card (see, I told you I have read some of the forums here). My confusion also is the physical SCU plug, if you look at photos of the board, it looks exactly the same as a SATA plug...is that correct? If I can just use the SCU ports to hook up 4 SATA drives directly with a breakout cable, does the motherboard have 2 SCU ports and would that enable me to use 2 breakout cables to hook up my 8 SATA drives (I like the clean look of the breakout cables)? I'm confused whether that motherboard has 4 SCU ports or just 1 SCU port for 4 SATA drives and I'd like to plug in two breakout cables into my 8 drives for a clean look.
I think some of the hardware may be overkill for what I need it to do, but who knows what I will want it to do in the future and I had room in my budget.
Also, my knowledge of FreeNAS is still pretty limited. I haven't had to make many adjustments since I finished setting it all up about a year ago. It took me a month to figure out how to set up a couple of the jails that I had to do manually.
I repurposed an old "gaming" rig last year and turned it into a freenas box. I more or less wanted to play around with something, and freenas is where I landed. I LOVE how stable it is, despite my personal learning curve. And yes, I realize consumer grade hardware is NOT ideal or secure for FreeNas, but it was free and I was just playing around.
The reason I needed a 2nd machine at all was to remove the tasks of torrenting and plex server off of my primary machine, so I didn't have to leave my high end gaming rig on 24/7.
So here I am today. I have purchased some older server grade hardware (what I would consider server grade anyway). I am looking for validation that the hardware will work well to fit my needs as well as get some answers to some questions, so I will break this post down into a couple of categories, hardware I have purchased for the build and what I am using, what I need the machine to do, and what my questions are.
1. Hardware I have purchased or am repurposing:
a. Intel Xeon E5-2670v2 lga 2011
b. SuperMicro X9SRi-F
c. 8x8gb Hynix HMT31GR7CFR4A-H9 - ECC RDIMMS
d. 2x60gb Patriot Flare 2.5" SATA3 SSD (for OS mirror)
e. Hyper 212 EVO cpu cooler - repurpose
f. 6x4tb WD RED WD40EFRX HDD - 4 new, 2 <3 years old. Planning on raidz2.
g. An older Rosewell Legacy QT01 ATX case (I have ordered adapters to make sure I can fit the 6 hdds and the 2 ssds inside the case)
2. What I need this build to do:
a. PLEX - serve up to 3 TV's with up to 4k resolution videos/movies/ shows.
b. Torrent - my current FreeNAS machine runs deluge and I tend to share for lengthy periods, so I somtimes have 1000+ torrents sharing at once (thank you ATT fiber for my 1/1gbps connection)
c. Sickrage - I use it to auto download some of the stuff I want
d. File storage - I use the machine to house some file backups as well as an disk image of my main gaming rig (so I can do a quick restore if I ever have to reinstall the OS or someting like that).
3. Questions I have and clarifications I need:
a. In general, does the hardware look ok? The RAM showed to be directly compatible with that specific motherboard on SuperMicro's website.
b. SuperMicro's website says the board has 2 SATA 3.0 ports, 4 SATA 2.0 ports, and 4 SATA ports via SCU. My confusion is around the SCU ports. I have used the search function here and trusty google, but I am still confused (or at least I'm not 100% positive in my knowledge). Can I plug this into one of the "SCU" ports on the motherboard and then plug the other ends of that breakout cable into 4 sata drives? Or do I need to purchase a HBA like this to be able to plug in all 8 of my SATA drives? Of course I need to make sure the HBA is crossflashed into IT mode so it's just acting as a bus adapter and not a JBOD or RAID card (see, I told you I have read some of the forums here). My confusion also is the physical SCU plug, if you look at photos of the board, it looks exactly the same as a SATA plug...is that correct? If I can just use the SCU ports to hook up 4 SATA drives directly with a breakout cable, does the motherboard have 2 SCU ports and would that enable me to use 2 breakout cables to hook up my 8 SATA drives (I like the clean look of the breakout cables)? I'm confused whether that motherboard has 4 SCU ports or just 1 SCU port for 4 SATA drives and I'd like to plug in two breakout cables into my 8 drives for a clean look.
I think some of the hardware may be overkill for what I need it to do, but who knows what I will want it to do in the future and I had room in my budget.
Also, my knowledge of FreeNAS is still pretty limited. I haven't had to make many adjustments since I finished setting it all up about a year ago. It took me a month to figure out how to set up a couple of the jails that I had to do manually.