ASUS PRIME Z390-A FREENAS, ZFS "NAS" FILE STORAGE only PERIOD

Adayton01

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I have capacious Intel server case, lots of fans for general cooling. Asus Prime Z390-A M/B newly purchased for this project, 64 gigs RAM,

Intel I-7 -8700 / LGA1151 CPU, 700 Watt PSU, four Seagate 4 TB desktop hard drives. One or two Intel quad port gigabit nic cards. The SOLE PURPOSE for this is to supply

generic NAS file server ONLY......No " jails", no Containers, etc.

My question is the M/B has only 4 SATA port on-board raid controller which I believe I do not wish to use as this is not preferred freenas/ZFS protocol. Is there a way to set this M/B

to JBOD or " pass-through mode OR is there a modern HBA PCIE card that I can buy to supply 4 to 8 SATA ports to feed the hard drive pool? I believe I would

be establishing the structure as raid 5 ( Z1 or Z2 ?? ) TIA for help.
 
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SweetAndLow

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Warning - Backhanded and condescending comments will not be tolerated.
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Hey @Adayton01, welcome to the forums.

Asus Prime Z390-A M/B newly purchased for this project, 64 gigs RAM
You may already know this, but for a variety of reasons boards such as this are not ideal. In general they have features which are not useful for FreeNAS such as audio support, HDMI, etc. All of these features are things you pay for that you won't use where your money could be better spent on feature you would use such as IPMI, server grade parts, etc.

That alone isn't a deal breaker though. Its just a trade off is all. The bigger point to consider is the lack of ECC support. There are trade offs there that you may or may not be comfortable with. Definitely worth researching before committing especially valuable and irreplaceable data to it.

four Seagate 4 TB desktop hard drives
Depending on your case you may consider getting 5400rpm drives. Performance is not significantly increased with the higher rpm drives and higher rpm drives produce excess heat.

My question is the M/B has only 4 SATA port on-board raid controller which I believe I do not wish to use as this is not preferred freenas/ZFS protocol. Is there a way to set this M/B

to JBOD or " pass-through mode OR is there a modern HBA PCIE card that I can buy to supply 4 to 8 SATA ports to feed the hard drive pool? I believe I would
Yes, there are cards on the market that will provide additional ports. Many people opt for cards like this one which offer two internal SAS ports which can be used to connect to 4 SATA drives each.
 

Adayton01

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Strange that you bought completely wrong hardware when it had a "SOLE PURPOSE" to be a freenas server.

But to answer you question
https://www.ixsystems.com/community/resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

https://www.ixsystems.com/community/resources/freenas®-quick-hardware-guide.7/
Strange that you bought completely wrong hardware when it had a "SOLE PURPOSE" to be a freenas server.

But to answer you question
https://www.ixsystems.com/community/resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

https://www.ixsystems.com/community/resources/freenas®-quick-hardware-guide.7/

I understand and KNOW that the M/B is just a consumer mid level " gaming " board. HOWEVER, I only wanted a NEW M/B that would

provide reasonable performance without a high price server cost. Although this is most certainly not ideal it should fit my use case which

is simply to provide mass storage for *.ISO, *.VMDK and other typically large VM files related to my ESXI Vmware home study lab. While an expert guru such as yourself would most certainly nit-pick a most superb but lower cost build, I went with off the shelf consumer parts that I am comfortable piecing together. Thank you for the links to guides.
 

SweetAndLow

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I understand and KNOW that the M/B is just a consumer mid level " gaming " board. HOWEVER, I only wanted a NEW M/B that would

provide reasonable performance without a high price server cost. Although this is most certainly not ideal it should fit my use case which

is simply to provide mass storage for *.ISO, *.VMDK and other typically large VM files related to my ESXI Vmware home study lab. While an expert guru such as yourself would most certainly nit-pick a most superb but lower cost build, I went with off the shelf consumer parts that I am comfortable piecing together. Thank you for the links to guides.
It's probably cheaper to do a server build. lol

Your hardware will work, read through those guides i linked and you should be able to find a HBA that works for you. usually ~$30 usd.

EDIT: check this thing out, this whole chassie, power supply, motherboard, cpu, memory, controller and back plane was less than your motherboard and cpu.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMicro...842364?hash=item2cecc433fc:g:PkoAAOSwXFldA9Al
 

kdragon75

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This is not JUST a NAS. If your hosting VMs, there are a number of other considerations.

Do you plan to use iscsi or nfs? Are you setting your volume to async or are you planning on using a slog? How many hosts are connected? Do you know that you can only use one Ethernet port per connection even with "lacp"? This is just a few off the top of my head as I'm calling asleep.

Not trying to say you won't be successful, just making sure you plan accordingly.
 

kdragon75

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It's probably cheaper to do a server build. lol

Your hardware will work, read through those guides i linked and you should be able to find a HBA that works for you. usually ~$30 usd.

EDIT: check this thing out, this whole chassie, power supply, motherboard, cpu, memory, controller and back plane was less than your motherboard and cpu.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMicro...842364?hash=item2cecc433fc:g:PkoAAOSwXFldA9Al
Some people just like new things even if they are not better.
 
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I understand and KNOW that the M/B is just a consumer mid level " gaming " board. HOWEVER, I only wanted a NEW M/B that would

provide reasonable performance without a high price server cost.
You'll certainly get reasonable performance out of the board. If you get addicted to FreeNAS like I did and end up looking at a backup build or if this build gets old and slow over time and you go to replace it you'll find lots of great and cheap used hardware online. For my first build I got all new server grade parts. For my second build I purchased all used server grade parts. Used is a great way to go to save some money. :)

One or two Intel quad port gigabit nic cards
Oh also, curious what you plan to use those quad ports for? The board itself looks to have 1 intel NIC on it as well.
 

Adayton01

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You'll certainly get reasonable performance out of the board. If you get addicted to FreeNAS like I did and end up looking at a backup build or if this build gets old and slow over time and you go to replace it you'll find lots of great and cheap used hardware online. For my first build I got all new server grade parts. For my second build I purchased all used server grade parts. Used is a great way to go to save some money. :)


Oh also, curious what you plan to use those quad ports for? The board itself looks to have 1 intel NIC on it as well.
I presumed that freenas could be configured with teamed nics for redundancy and perhaps separate lanes of traffic. Just learning all this networking stuff so I really do not know all the limitations.
 
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I presumed that freenas could be configured with teamed nics for redundancy and perhaps separate lanes of traffic. Just learning all this networking stuff so I really do not know all the limitations.
One approach you may choose to take is to stick with the single NIC on the board itself and see if you're maxing out its bandwidth. If you're not, then you save the money. The nice thing about additional NICs is that they can be added at any time.
 
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