2017 Best Build

[Brian881]

I would like to know what would be the best parts of 2017 to build a reliable NAS for a small office.
5 - 6 computers will be accessing the NAS locally for Photography and Video Editing.

I need about 20tb to start.

Most work will be accessed locally but some also needs to be accessed remotely.

What is the best for my needs
cpu:
motherboard:
Ram:
NIC:
HDD:

 

[Spearfoot]

I need about 20tb to start.

Does this mean that you have ~20TB of data you need to store? Or is this the total capacity you've calculated that you need, based on a maximum utilization rate?

 

[Brian881]

20tb Is the capacity that I will need in the net year.

 

[gpsguy]

This is a continuation of the OP's post from yesterday - https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/amd-freenas-build.55393/#post-386886

 

[joeschmuck]

This is a continuation of the OP's post from yesterday - https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/amd-freenas-build.55393/#post-386886

@Brian881 Please do not start up another thread on the same topic. I've closed yesterdays thread.

Will you be attempting to edit photos and video directly on the NAS or copying the files to a local computer and editing it there. This makes a huge difference in the system hardware and connectivity. And have you read the hardware recommendations resource previously pointed out to you?

 

[Brian881]

@joeschmuck OOPs sorry about that I have not used a forum before.
I took a look at some Hardware guides but I'm not sure if what i require is a high end build with a xeon or a smaller build with a pentium.
I think all images will be moved to the local machine and edited from there.

 

[joeschmuck]

I think all images will be moved to the local machine and edited from there.

This is a key factor. You need to know the expectations of the NAS before you can select proper hardware. There have been other people on this forum who have wanted to conduct video editing directly on the NAS. To do that meant 10Gb network which is a huge cost, high end parts and lots of RAM. If the files are to only be copied over and edited on a different computer, well that simplifies it some, however the next thing is how long does it take to copy over the video file? If 1Gb NIC is fine then you should be fine. If you need it to be faster then you may need 10Gb NICs and to rewire you office. Also keep in mind that if you plan on WiFi transfers, that will be very slow.

So my advice is to find out all the requirements you will need. Talk to the people using the system so you have a good idea.

As for hard drive space, if this is critical data then configure for a RAID-Z3 or multiple mirrors for easier expansion. Buy your capacity for at least a 3 year duration becasue the ZFS file system is not cheap to expand so do this up front.

Do you have a price in mind that you want to stay under?

 

[gpsguy]

Another question would be growth rate. While you've said you need 20TB over the next year, how much will you need in 2 years, 3 years, etc.

How will you back up the data? RAID isn't a backup. You might consider setting up a second FreeNAS server and replicating data from one to the other.

You'll also want to budget for a UPS. Should you have a power failure, a UPS can either carry the load and/or start a graceful shutdown of the equipment.

 

[Brian881]

4k is my budget. This will work on a 1gbe network. And yes the files will be moved to the local machine for editing. We will be working with some 4k files also.

Max space in the next 3-4 years will be 40tb

 

[CraigD]

I think you are in for a shock, drives are going to hurt when you buy them

This is the minimum spec I would buy new

This system is limited to 64GB of RAM, if your only use the NAS for storage I think you will be fine

CPU: $260 Xeon E3-1230 V5
Motherboard: $185 X11SSM or $419 X11SSL-CF 14 drive ports so storage can increased
Ram: $290 2x CT16G4WFD8213 double this if needed
NIC: onboard
HDDs: $2100 - $4000 Depending on sales 8x 7200RPM Seagate IronWolf 8TB - 10TB or 8x 5400 RPM WD Reds 8TB - 10TB, even 7200 RPM WD Red PRO 8TB -10TB

Additional: Case + Cables + USB Flash drive x2, PSU and a UPS

Have Fun

 

[Spearfoot]

20tb Is the capacity that I will need in the net year.

Forgive me for not stating my question plainly... Let's try again, forgetting about capacity for the moment.

Is 20TB the amount of data you plan to store right away? And the amount of data you intend to store in the next 3-4 years will be as much as 40TB?

 

[Brian881]

No currently I only use 4tb of storage I was planning to build a nas with 20tb which should be enough for 1 or 2 years.

 

[CraigD]

No currently I only use 4tb of storage I was planning to build a nas with 20tb which should be enough for 1 or 2 years.

8 4TB drive will not quite provide 20TB of usable space but it is close enough (I read you required `40TB usable)

 

[joeschmuck]

My advice would be the following setup:
Eight 6TB WD Red hard drives @ $215/each = $1720 (from NewEgg). This will give you approximately 32TB of storage minus 20% for a total of 26TB of actual storage. You need to leave a minimum of 10% free space always and it is recommended to retain 20% free space to maintain a healthy drive (fragmentation thing). If you were to use iSCSI then you would need to leave approx 50% available but that isn't the case here. I didn't make this stuff up, it's just the way it is. Also, purchase two spare drives, you will want these on hand for any hard drive failures you run across and replace them as they fail, don't wait 2 days because it's not safe if a second drive were to fail as well.

If in 3 years you find that you need to add more storage then I would recommend you add another vdev of 8 drives, they could be larger or smaller compared to your first set of drives and they will just expand your storage failrly easily. You also have the ability to just replace your existing drives with larger drives as they fail or earlier if you need more storage. If you replaced them with 10TB drives then you would have 44TB of storage (after the 20%), not too bad.

RAM should be 16GB minimum however I would purchase 32GB just because this is an office machine and you may use it for other things than video files. If you can afford it, get the whole 64GB. You will never worry about RAM again.

There are a lot of options for a Motherboard and CPU but based on what you are doing with this system I would recommend a Supermicro X11SSM-F which will handle 8 hard drives and also has IPMI which allows remote access to the motherboard (like a remote KVM). Also it is a very reliable board so far. The CPU could be darn near anything however I'd buy an E-1240v5 or whatever was on sale but in the same performance range (I own the E-1230v5 and love it). That would be the boxed CPU too so you would get the very quiet CPU fan.

Lets toss in one more thing to think about... the boot device should be a cheap SSD. If you got an old one that works laying around, it would be fine. This means you need a SATA port available. So you could use an add-on card or use a motherboard which has a lot of port.

One thing of warning.... If you are going to build this machine, before you purchase a thing ensure you fully understand what you are doing, how this will all connect, what it will not do, what problems you could expect. I believe that if you purchased the X11SSL-CF that you would need to flash the onboard controller into IT mode and possibly stay on top of reflashing this if you upgraded FreeNAS over the years. You could also adopt the idea that once it's working that you would never need to upgrade FreeNAS and that very possible.

This is not a difficult thing to build but if you have never done it well there are a few challenges for the new person. We all went through it and I'm still learning.

 

[danb35]

If you're needing 20 TB of storage, and anticipating wanting to expand to 40 TB, you may want to consider buying used server gear rather than building your own. This unit, for example, would be nearly a turnkey FreeNAS server for $1200. You'd just need to install FreeNAS on the included SATA DOM, possibly flash the firmware on the HBA, and add drives. It has a recent-generation motherboard and CPUs, plenty of RAM, and 36 drive bays, so there's plenty of room for expansion. Now, running dual E5s on a slightly-older board is going to burn more watts than running a single current E3 (edit: my system, which is very similar to this one, has averaged just over 300 watts over the last week, and that's with 20 drives installed), but you should be set for quite some time with this system.