Hi,
I'm looking to build my first FreeNas server and budget is not really a concern (within reason).
What I am looking for is 10 hard drives (I'll probably go with 12 or 14 TB drives) with the ability to expand in the future. We create video courses for Youtube and other places, and all our videos are 4K, so you can probably imagine we are eating through hard drive space. I have 2 x Synologsy ds918 with expansion bays each doing about 75 TB of space. I plan to keep one of these to backup FreeNas and to get rid of the other one.
I'm looking at a case like the Fractal design R6 that can fit 10 X 3.5" drives (I have to buy 4 extra brackets to fit all 10 drives).
In addition, it has 2 dedicates 2.5 " brackets which I can use for 2 X SSD's Mirrored for booting.
I've been researching the motherboards and am pretty much decided on a SuperMicro board. Right now I am thinking the X10SRH-F. This supports 10 SATA drives plus the SSD's by the looks, but it has support for up to 4 x 1GB RJ45 Lan ports. I was looking at 1 or 2 10G RJ45 ports.
Does anyone have a recommendation for another SuperMicro board that is well supported by FreeNas and has single or dual 10G RJ45 ports. Or, should I just buy the 10G Nic's? If so, are the Chelsio 10GbE NICs still the way to go?
I'm planning to run FreeNas, but also looking to run one or more VM's. Would probably go with 96 or 128GB ECC Ram.
I'm stuck on the CPU, any advice? I am happy to go with future flexibility by adding a more powerful CPU or even a dual CPU system, especially given I plan to use VM's. I am not sure what is or is not possible, but I'd like to have a render system on this system - Is that a dumb idea? We have tons of videos to render as we havd 39 courses and more being added regularly. We have a dedicated Windows 10 machine that my team can connect to and render videos.
Silence is very important to me. The case is already relatively quiet and is built to reduce noise, and I'd probably replace the fans with Noctua to get as quiet experience as possible. The server would be next to me in a largish office. So I want to do everything possible to make a machine as quiet as possible.
Right now we are using Google File stream for the company data allowing each team to download what they need to use and upload. I plan to setup some sort of process to continually sync the data from google file stream to freenas. So really this is a backup to the live data which resides on google team drive because my team is remote and don't work at my location.
Am I on the right track, is there better options for me to consider. Remember I'm not looking to save money, I want to do things right and allow for future upgradability. As I would be maxing out the case initially, I was thinking I could add a 24 bay expander and SAS card later, right? Or should I be looking at a rackmount server now?
Any help/advise sincerely appreciated.
Thanks
I'm looking to build my first FreeNas server and budget is not really a concern (within reason).
What I am looking for is 10 hard drives (I'll probably go with 12 or 14 TB drives) with the ability to expand in the future. We create video courses for Youtube and other places, and all our videos are 4K, so you can probably imagine we are eating through hard drive space. I have 2 x Synologsy ds918 with expansion bays each doing about 75 TB of space. I plan to keep one of these to backup FreeNas and to get rid of the other one.
I'm looking at a case like the Fractal design R6 that can fit 10 X 3.5" drives (I have to buy 4 extra brackets to fit all 10 drives).
In addition, it has 2 dedicates 2.5 " brackets which I can use for 2 X SSD's Mirrored for booting.
I've been researching the motherboards and am pretty much decided on a SuperMicro board. Right now I am thinking the X10SRH-F. This supports 10 SATA drives plus the SSD's by the looks, but it has support for up to 4 x 1GB RJ45 Lan ports. I was looking at 1 or 2 10G RJ45 ports.
Does anyone have a recommendation for another SuperMicro board that is well supported by FreeNas and has single or dual 10G RJ45 ports. Or, should I just buy the 10G Nic's? If so, are the Chelsio 10GbE NICs still the way to go?
I'm planning to run FreeNas, but also looking to run one or more VM's. Would probably go with 96 or 128GB ECC Ram.
I'm stuck on the CPU, any advice? I am happy to go with future flexibility by adding a more powerful CPU or even a dual CPU system, especially given I plan to use VM's. I am not sure what is or is not possible, but I'd like to have a render system on this system - Is that a dumb idea? We have tons of videos to render as we havd 39 courses and more being added regularly. We have a dedicated Windows 10 machine that my team can connect to and render videos.
Silence is very important to me. The case is already relatively quiet and is built to reduce noise, and I'd probably replace the fans with Noctua to get as quiet experience as possible. The server would be next to me in a largish office. So I want to do everything possible to make a machine as quiet as possible.
Right now we are using Google File stream for the company data allowing each team to download what they need to use and upload. I plan to setup some sort of process to continually sync the data from google file stream to freenas. So really this is a backup to the live data which resides on google team drive because my team is remote and don't work at my location.
Am I on the right track, is there better options for me to consider. Remember I'm not looking to save money, I want to do things right and allow for future upgradability. As I would be maxing out the case initially, I was thinking I could add a 24 bay expander and SAS card later, right? Or should I be looking at a rackmount server now?
Any help/advise sincerely appreciated.
Thanks