And Another One

[dchild]

Hi,

I'm a SAHM, former sysadmin, currently gearing up to retrain to go back into the (paid) workforce, and amongst other things, reorganizing my computer gear. I've wanted a NAS for a while to centralise backups and media storage; as I'm adding a laptop and desktop to my network for the kids to use, this is becoming more important. I've looked at prebuilt NAS, and always come away from browsing with a sense of deep dissatisfaction. *sigh*

It will have three types of files on it. i) Disk image files - mostly pretty big. ii) Zipped folders of archived photos/documents. iii) Media files - video and audio. I want it to run plex to stream the latter to the TV and laptops/tablets/phone. Devices/computers/VMs on my local network will back up to the NAS, and those backups will be duplicated onto external USB drives, and at semi-regular intervals, I'll be manually(?) adding backups from family members.

So, right now, I currently have an empty ATX case that can take up to 11 (possibly more) spinny disks, plus two SSDs behind the mobo tray. It used to hold my esxi server - but the esxi server only needs a couple of spinny disks so it's been relegated to a smaller case. My top candidate for a mobo is the Supermicro X10SRi-F, which a local store has in stock - most of my usual sources don't stock any supermicro boards so the choice is limited. I'm still researching processor options and hunting down the best option out of what I can buy locally for RAM.

It's a slow process, but I'll end up with something much more than the prebuilt can offer at a much higher price point... right?

 

[gpsguy]

Welcome to the forums!

You sound like a good candidate for a FreeNAS server.

It's a slow process, but I'll end up with something much more than the prebuilt can offer at a much higher price point... right?

 

[Nick2253]

I agree. You do sound like a good candidate for FreeNAS.

ii) Zipped folders of archived photos/documents.

This jumped out at me, in particular. One of the benefits of ZFS is the built-in compression, which is pretty good. I don't know your backup scheme or your workflow, but you might be able to do away with the zip archives all together, and have your data live directly on the disk, if you know what I mean, without losing any space over the zips. This may or may not be a benefit, but I just thought I'd bring it up.

Devices/computers/VMs on my local network will back up to the NAS, and those backups will be duplicated onto external USB drives, and at semi-regular intervals

FreeNAS is not the best at handling external USB drives. Usually, people who duplicate backups to external USB rely on a network share, and transfer it over the network to a USB drive attached to their PC. As a warning to your wallet, ZFS replication between FreeNAS servers works super well, so who am I to begrudge you two servers? :D

It's a slow process, but I'll end up with something much more than the prebuilt can offer at a much higher price point... right?

FreeNAS is insanely capable. Much more so than anything pre-built. However, don't be lulled into a false sense of capability. ZFS is arguably the most demanding filesystem in existence, and it eats RAM like nobody's business. If you want to exploit all the capabilities of FreeNAS, make sure you feed the beast properly. Relying on previous experience with servers as a benchmark for resource needs will get you in trouble really quickly.

 

[dchild]

Re: zip folders. Mostly I'm just using them as a convenient way to handle an archive; I do not need the compression factor, I just like being able to treat them as a single file. Rarely do I open them; any files in active use are on my local computer.

FreeNAS is not the best at handling external USB drives. Usually, people who duplicate backups to external USB rely on a network share, and transfer it over the network to a USB drive attached to their PC. As a warning to your wallet, ZFS replication between FreeNAS servers works super well, so who am I to begrudge you two servers? :D

Oh, I wish. :P Maybe in a few years? But yeah, I did spot that about external drives - like most people I'll be attaching usb drives to another computer and transferring over the network.

FreeNAS is insanely capable. Much more so than anything pre-built. However, don't be lulled into a false sense of capability. ZFS is arguably the most demanding filesystem in existence, and it eats RAM like nobody's business. If you want to exploit all the capabilities of FreeNAS, make sure you feed the beast properly. Relying on previous experience with servers as a benchmark for resource needs will get you in trouble really quickly.

Yeah... I figured that out. I went round in circles for a little while looking at 'cheap' options. *sigh* I came to the conclusion that I'd still spend nearly as much as I would getting a synology and aside from not being limited to a small number of disks, it wouldn't work much better. But that supermicro board I'm starting with, it can take up to an entire terabye of RAM. That's about as good as I can find for something I'm hoping to get at least a decade out of!

I'm still planning to start with a small number of disks, but disks I can add without much hassle. Replacing the mobo (and ram and processor) because the cheap stuff can't cope (or killed my data) is much too much hassle.