2018 Build optimization required

[prash85]

Hi all,

So I've been doing doing some research for the past few days and after going through various freeNAS forums, hardware built guides etc. I've identified below listed parts from my local IT store. Although I believe my final selection will have no issues running freeNAS 11.1 and serve as personal NAS/Cloud/media & web server (and a couple of lite dockers containers), the overall pricing has far exceeded my budget. I was wondering if anyone can review the list below and suggest any alternative parts (available in Australia) that will help bring the cost down? The ECC supported Motherboards and CPUs are insanely expensive. Should i just go with non-ECC types or is there anything "in-between" that i can look at? Any suggestions will be much appreciated.

Item No Item Description QTY Total (AUD)
1 Cabinate Fractal Design NODE 804 Windowed Micro-ATX (8x 3.5" bays) 1.00 $159.00
2 Power Supply Cooler Master MWE Gold 650W Power Supply 1.00 $125.00
3 Motherboard Supermicro X11SSH-F LGA1151 Workstation Motherboard 1.00 $470.98
4 CPU Intel Xeon E3-1230 v6 LGA1151 3.50GHz CPU Processor 1.00 $369.00
5 ECC RAM Kingston ValueRAM 8GB (1x 8GB) DDR4 2133MHz ECC DIMM Memory 1.00 $193.98
6 HDD Seagate ST4000VN008 4TB IronWolf 3.5" SATA3 NAS Hard Drive 1.00 $164.00

 

[kdragon75]

Hi all,

So I've been doing doing some research for the past few days and after going through various freeNAS forums, hardware built guides etc. I've identified below listed parts from my local IT store. Although I believe my final selection will have no issues running freeNAS 11.1 and serve as personal NAS/Cloud/media & web server (and a couple of lite dockers containers), the overall pricing has far exceeded my budget. I was wondering if anyone can review the list below and suggest any alternative parts (available in Australia) that will help bring the cost down? The ECC supported Motherboards and CPUs are insanely expensive. Should i just go with non-ECC types or is there anything "in-between" that i can look at? Any suggestions will be much appreciated.

Item No Item Description QTY Total (AUD)
1 Cabinate Fractal Design NODE 804 Windowed Micro-ATX (8x 3.5" bays) 1.00 $159.00
2 Power Supply Cooler Master MWE Gold 650W Power Supply 1.00 $125.00
3 Motherboard Supermicro X11SSH-F LGA1151 Workstation Motherboard 1.00 $470.98
4 CPU Intel Xeon E3-1230 v6 LGA1151 3.50GHz CPU Processor 1.00 $369.00
5 ECC RAM Kingston ValueRAM 8GB (1x 8GB) DDR4 2133MHz ECC DIMM Memory 1.00 $193.98
6 HDD Seagate ST4000VN008 4TB IronWolf 3.5" SATA3 NAS Hard Drive 1.00 $164.00

I don't know what available own there but can you get older gen hardware? Something DDR3? for a NAS and a few small odds and ends, you wont see a difference in performance. The other thing would be using cheaper drives (get more than one) as ZFS can't heal errors id it has no copies/parity to work with.

 

[Chris Moore]

I was wondering if anyone can review the list below and suggest any alternative parts (available in Australia) that will help bring the cost down?

The whole, 'available in Australia,' thing is the problem. Perhaps @Stux would suggest a source? Generally speaking, when looking at a value build, I always suggest going with used hardware. I built my system with an x9 series system board (3 generations old I think) instead of a new system board because it saved me hundreds, if not thousands, in the final price of my hardware. Not just the system board and CPU were less, the RAM and chassis were less expensive also. For example, I paid about $100 for my CPU and about $200 for my system board and the case I bought included a N+1 redundant power supply that is able to output 1500 watts and is Platinum rated. That might be overkill for you, but I only paid $350 for my case and that is about what you are looking to pay for your case and power supply together. It is all about shopping around for a bargain and knowing what you are looking for.

The ECC supported Motherboards and CPUs are insanely expensive.

Only if you buy beading-edge new... Like you are looking at...

Should i just go with non-ECC types

No.

or is there anything "in-between" that i can look at?

No.

Any suggestions will be much appreciated.

What are you looking to do with your system?

running freeNAS 11.1 and serve as personal NAS/Cloud/media & web server (and a couple of lite dockers containers)

Is actually kind of wide open and doesn't help much...

6 HDD Seagate ST4000VN008 4TB IronWolf 3.5" SATA3 NAS Hard Drive 1.00 $164.00

How many drives? You should not use less than two, so you can have a mirror and you need something for a boot drive because the data drive and boot drive must be two physically separate devices.

 

[Chris Moore]

PS. Spend for the drives because that is where your data is and the whole idea of using FreeNAS is about getting ZFS and ZFS is all about protecting your data, but it needs more than one drive to be able to do that.
You should look at the guides:

Slideshow explaining VDev, zpool, ZIL and L2ARC
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

Terminology and Abbreviations Primer
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/terminology-and-abbreviations-primer.28174/

There are many more resources on the forum under the "Resources" tab at the top.

 

[Stux]

Pc shop search engine
http://staticice.com.au

I get most of my parts via static ice. Harddrives psu etc.

I recommend the Corsair RMx range of PSUs. Ironwolf drives have worked well for me.

Not a huge used market, but I guess check ebay

Also check Newegg, as even with shipping they can be competetive. Amazon too

 

[prash85]

@kdragon75 @Chris Moore @Stux Thanks for the feedback.

Although i did manage to find some cheaper alternatives on staticice.com, the overall cost is still over budget so I am thinking of experimenting with an old Dell Precision T3500 (full specs below) and add 2x 4TB HDDs (RAID-1) and 1x 16GB DDR4 ECC RAM (to help with media streams and VMs). This way, with a starting cost of $900 I should be able to get full ECC supported NAS system. Can someone please do a sanity check on this plan?

Full Specs:
1 DELL PRECISION T3500 (Intel XEON W35656 CPU @ 3.2Ghz) Dual nvidia Quadro 2000 graphics card, 6 GB RAM, 500GB HDD - $250 (https://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/precn/en/q2wk6_dell_precision_t3500_spec_sheet.pdf)
2 Seagate ST4000VN008 4TB IronWolf 3.5" SATA3 NAS Hard Drive $328.00 (for 2x units)
3 Kingston ValueRAM 16GB (1x 16GB) DDR4 2133MHz ECC DIMM Memory $329.00

Edit: I realize the RAM is overspec'ed for current Dell motherboard however i am keeping this for compatibility with Supermicro X11 which i hope to upgrade to sometime in the future.

Regards,
PR

 

[Chris Moore]

Dell Precision T3500 (full specs below) and add 2x 4TB HDDs (RAID-1) and 1x 16GB DDR4 ECC RAM

Dell T3500 is a fine system to start with. I had a pair of them for a couple years as my primary and backup FreeNAS servers. They use DDR3 memory though. I would hate for you to buy something that won't fit. Six memory slots, max 4GB per slot, gives you a max memory of 24GB.

and add 2x 4TB HDDs (RAID-1)

We call that a mirror in ZFS. We don't use the same terminology as hardware RAID, and that is on purpose.

Terminology and Abbreviations Primer
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/terminology-and-abbreviations-primer.28174/

Slideshow explaining VDev, zpool, ZIL and L2ARC
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

1 DELL PRECISION T3500 (Intel XEON W35656 CPU @ 3.2Ghz) Dual Nvidia Quadro 2000 graphics card, 6 GB RAM, 500GB HDD - $250

Unless you need the graphics cards for something else, you don't need all that. I would suggest getting the lowest-end unit, even a bare-bones and building it up the way you want it. The only reason you need a display at all is for initial installation and configuration of the OS before the web GUI is up and running. There are two 32 bit PCI slots (not PCIe) that are not good for much, so if you have (or can get) an old PCI card with a VGA output, that would be all you need. FreeNAS only makes a local text display and you only need it for troubleshooting if there is a problem. When I used a T3500, I would unplug the monitor from it most of the time and just plug it in if I needed to reboot it.

2 Seagate ST4000VN008 4TB IronWolf 3.5" SATA3 NAS Hard Drive $328.00 (for 2x units)

Nice drives. No problems with that at all.

3 Kingston ValueRAM 16GB (1x 16GB) DDR4 2133MHz ECC DIMM Memory $329.00

Wrong kind of memory... You need 6 of the 4GB, DDR3-1600, PC3-12800, ECC UDIMM... The 4GB memory modules are the largest that the system will recognize, so maximum memory configuration is 24GB.

Edit: I realize the RAM is overspec'ed for current Dell motherboard however i am keeping this for compatibility with Supermicro X11 which i hope to upgrade to sometime in the future.

Not the same kind of memory between a 6 year old Dell workstation and a current generation system.

 

[prash85]

Dell T3500 is a fine system to start with. I had a pair of them for a couple years as my primary and backup FreeNAS servers. They use DDR3 memory though. I would hate for you to buy something that won't fit. Six memory slots, max 4GB per slot, gives you a max memory of 24GB.

My bad !! I completely overlooked the missing "DDR type" on the Dell datasheet. In this case i can just pickup some old DDR3 server RAM for around $100 which further reduce the cost. I guess if i can start with good quality HDDs, i can then keep upgrading the system around it as and when i can. Also as per my understanding the ZFS file system works better with more RAM rather then the type (DDR3/4) ??

Unless you need the graphics cards for something else, you don't need all that. I would suggest getting the lowest-end unit, even a bare-bones and building it up the way you want it. The only reason you need a display at all is for initial installation and configuration of the OS before the web GUI is up and running. There are two 32 bit PCI slots (not PCIe) that are not good for much, so if you have (or can get) an old PCI card with a VGA output, that would be all you need. FreeNAS only makes a local text display and you only need it fortroubleshooting if there is a problem. When I used a T3500, I would unplug the monitor from it most of the time and just plug it in if I needed to reboot it.

The graphics card are just part of the system and unless freeNAS 11.1 can utilize them for media trans-coding/Virtualization, I was planning to get rid of them as the unit will be running in headless mode.


Edit: On further review it seems the T3500 BIOS only support 2TB HDDs (upto 8TB). Now that's a show stopper :(

 

[sretalla]

I guess if i can start with good quality HDDs, i can then keep upgrading the system around it as and when i can

Careful here with assumptions that adding HDDs will be as simple as you think.

ZFS delivers the most efficient use of storage space at 6 devices in RAIDZ2. (perhaps not so bad with 8 as well)

If you start with fewer drives, when it comes time to add, you can't just add one and expand the array like with some other systems. (maybe one day, but it's currently at least 12 months away)

If you are looking for higher performance, starting with a mirrored VDEV of 2 disks will allow you to add drives and performance (2 at a time) as additional mirrored VDEVs to the existing pool... each time wasting 1 disk to parity and risking the whole pool if two drives are lost and are in the same VDEV... do lots of reading on how this works and think about what it will mean for what you need to do.

 

[Chris Moore]

Edit: On further review it seems the T3500 BIOS only support 2TB HDDs (upto 8TB). Now that's a show stopper :(

Not really, you can add a SAS controller to handle the data drives and run the boot drives on the in-built SATA. SATA drives run perfectly on a SAS controller. That's what I did.
Look in the links in my signature for one that says something like, "don't be afraid to be SASy ".

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[prash85]

Careful here with assumptions that adding HDDs will be as simple as you think.

ZFS delivers the most efficient use of storage space at 6 devices in RAIDZ2. (perhaps not so bad with 8 as well)

If you start with fewer drives, when it comes time to add, you can't just add one and expand the array like with some other systems. (maybe one day, but it's currently at least 12 months away)

If you are looking for higher performance, starting with a mirrored VDEV of 2 disks will allow you to add drives and performance (2 at a time) as additional mirrored VDEVs to the existing pool... each time wasting 1 disk to parity and risking the whole pool if two drives are lost and are in the same VDEV... do lots of reading on how this works and think about what it will mean for what you need to do.

Careful here with assumptions that adding HDDs will be as simple as you think.

ZFS delivers the most efficient use of storage space at 6 devices in RAIDZ2. (perhaps not so bad with 8 as well)

If you start with fewer drives, when it comes time to add, you can't just add one and expand the array like with some other systems. (maybe one day, but it's currently at least 12 months away)

If you are looking for higher performance, starting with a mirrored VDEV of 2 disks will allow you to add drives and performance (2 at a time) as additional mirrored VDEVs to the existing pool... each time wasting 1 disk to parity and risking the whole pool if two drives are lost and are in the same VDEV... do lots of reading on how this works and think about what it will mean for what you need to do.

I understand what your are saying however if the options are between maxing out my credit card today and spend whole weekend doing data migration in a few months, I'll have to go with later. Unfortunately in my case there is no ROI for this system so i am trying to focus on bare minimum with scalability.

 

[prash85]

Not really, you can add a SAS controller to handle the data drives and run the boot drives on the in-built SATA. SATA drives run perfectly on a SAS controller. That's what I did.
Look in the links in my signature for one that says something like, "don't be afraid to be SASy ".

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

That's one option but after a quick cost comparison, it seems the SAS systems (controller & HDD) are relatively expensive and also I'll be stuck with SAS type HDDs for any future upgrades. I guess I will have to do more research and reading this weekend.

 

[Chris Moore]

That's one option but after a quick cost comparison, it seems the SAS systems (controller & HDD)

You don't need SAS hard drives. SATA drives work perfectly on a SAS controller. It is designed to work that way.

and also I'll be stuck with SAS type HDDs for any future upgrades.

You are not listening.

SAS PCI-E 3.0 HBA LSI 9207-8i P20 IT Mode for ZFS FreeNAS unRAID
https://www.ebay.com/itm/162862201664
Price: US $69.55

Lot of 2 Mini SAS to 4-SATA SFF-8087 Multi-Lane Forward Breakout Internal Cable
https://www.ebay.com/itm/371681252206
Price: US $12.99

If you can't get hardware like this in Australia, you need to consider moving. This is common, easy to get, hardware. I have three controllers like this at my house that I am not even using, in addition to the three that I am using.