Budget build with used Xeon, SuperMicro MB, and ECC memory

Joined
Mar 30, 2019
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First, I want to thank all those that have contributed to the forums. Hopefully I've done enough reading to benefit from your wisdom and make the right choices.

I'm on disability, so when I say limited budget, I really mean it. So please bear that in mind when considering my parts selection. And based on past experience, I'm only somewhat paranoid when it comes to loosing data

I want to build a FreeNAS server primarily for backups. I don't have a lot of data (<3TB) but I do believe in really protecting what I have. I'll only be adding about 5-10GB of data per year, so I should be in a pine box long before I run out of space.

I already have the following:
Case: Fractal Design Node 804
Power Supply: choice of EVGA 550W (modular)or EVGA 850W (semi-modular)
HDD: 2 x 4TB WD Red (less than six months old)

I'm considering purchasing the following package for $165 USD , including shipping, to complete the build:
MB: SuperMicro X10SLM-F
CPU: Xeon E3 - 1220v3
RAM: 8GB ECC memory

Boot drive would be a mirrored pair of USB thumb drives, and it will be on a UPS.

I plan to mirror the two 4TB WD Red drives. Yes, I know mirroring "wastes" space, but I don't need a lot of space and I love data redundancy. Besides, if you think that's wasteful, I plan to add a third drive to the mirror in a couple of months!

Excessive? Two months ago I had the USB bridge board in 4 bay drive enclosure go bad. Lost all four drives. But despite the primary and backup of some of the data both being in that one case, I didn't loose any data. Why? Because I had three other backups to fall back on. Paranoid? Not me. Okay, maybe a little...

I suspect the first thought might be that the Xeon is likely far more powerful than needed. But to put it in context, with the package price above, I'm effectively paying $40-$50 USD for the Xeon E3 - 1220v3 and the 8GB of ECC memory. If you figure in the shipping charges if bought separately, I'd need to get processor and RAM for about $30 USD or less, to end up with a lower total cost.


So, any thoughts or suggestions?
 
Joined
Jan 4, 2014
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Curious to know what made you decide on FreeNAS over an off-the-shelf NAS?
 

Evertb1

Guru
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May 31, 2016
Messages
700
I'm only somewhat paranoid when it comes to loosing data
Welcome to the club. If your data is important to you nobody should call you paranoid if you want to protect it as good as you are able to.

I want to build a FreeNAS server primarily for backups. I don't have a lot of data (<3TB) but I do believe in really protecting what I have. I'll only be adding about 5-10GB of data per year, so I should be in a pine box long before I run out of space.
This one is a bit tricky. If you are having almost 3 TB data already your pool won't last long with the 2 drives you have. Taking in account that there will be some overhead and ZFS needs free space to function properly you will not have much more then 2.80 Tib or 3.08 TB usable storage space. But with your very modest growth rate it just might be possible. If you want to check for yourself you can find a zfs calclulator here.

I already have the following:
Case: Fractal Design Node 804
Power Supply: choice of EVGA 550W (modular)or EVGA 850W (semi-modular)
HDD: 2 x 4TB WD Red (less than six months old)
Nothing wrong with the case and the HDD's. I can't say much about the EVGA PSU's. Never owned one and you did not provide us with the models. With your plans a 550W psu should be sufficient but using the 850W would not harm either. I doubt it will make much of a difference in power consumption. Just take the best one.

MB: SuperMicro X10SLM-F
CPU: Xeon E3 - 1220v3
RAM: 8GB ECC memory
Those components are fine and if they are healthy now, they should be well being able to serve you for some years to come.

Lots of luck with your build
 
Joined
Mar 30, 2019
Messages
3
@Seymour Butt

Why Free NAS?

1 - The Software
2 - The hardware
3 - Me


Software
For my purposes, FreeBSD and FreeNAS exist to support ZFS. To the best of my knowledge, the best file system to protect your data is ZFS when installed on proper hardware. I've wanted ZFS since I first learned about it. With a little help from Moore's law, Amazon, NewEgg, and eBay, I can now have it.


Hardware
The off the shelf NAS boxes have the same problem the four bay enclosure I mentioned in my post had, and more. Proprietary power supplies of unknown and often questionable efficacy, proprietary motherboards, and sometimes proprietary disk formats which tie you to that proprietary hardware.

Take Synology as an example. Synology was using BTRFS until a problem developed with it and they had to revert to whatever they were using before it.(ext3?, Ext4?) Maybe the BTRFS problems are resolved. Maybe not. EIther way, I think ZFS is the way to go. They also offer their own take on the "insert any drive" approach popularized by Drobo. But if you use it and you run into a hardware problem, those disks are only going back into another Synology box if you want your data back.

Synology's hardware looks very nice but there isn't a non-proprietary part of significance in it. Same with QNAP. (Okay, maybe their memory expansion modules, but you get the point...) Now, as a Mac user since 1985, I can definitely appreciate that there are benefits to proprietary hardware. But for any server, and especially for data storage, I want dull, boring, reliable, and maintainable. That means easily obtained, standardized, interchangeable parts.

Take power supplies for instance. Well, first of all, I can pick a power supply that I'm sure is more than up to the task. I'm tired of dinky little proprietary power supplies that burn out far sooner than one should reasonably expect them to, and which can only be obtained from one source at a price that is far greater than it would be for an off the shelf quality ATX power supply. I've gone through close to a dozen USB drive enclosures of various sizes over the last 15 years, which all died because of inadequate power supplies. Inadequate PROPRIETARY power supplies. Maybe Synology's power supplies are better? Or QNAP's? Or whoever else? But that's a chance I don't have to take.

But I wouldn't even need to buy a power supply and wait a couple of days (or more) for it to be delivered. If necessary, I could appropriate the power supply from the gaming PC I built for my teenage son. ("Sorry kid, no more Fortnite till the Amazon delivery arrives") Or the motherboard dies? I can go to Amazon, New Egg, eBay, or even Ali Express, and have a new motherboard as good as the one that just died, knowing that I can reuse the CPU and ECC memory.

But i might not even have to do that. My next project is going to be a home built pfSense router. For a CPU, it won't need anything more powerful than a Celeron. The Celeron could be a temporary replacement for the XEON, if necessary. If I pick a motherboard that has the same socket and can use the same DDR3 ECC memory as the NAS, it could be swapped in as well, and my NAS is up and running in under an hour. (And I've got my current router to fall back on.)

In essence, in an emergency, I can scavenge from what I already own. The mix and match benefit of carefully chosen standardized parts can really pay off. Especially when finances are tight like mine, but even when they aren't. The only thing I don't already have planned to have an onsite replacement for would be the ECC memory. (I suppose I could cover that by building the router with ECC memory but that would be....overkill)

Speaking of memory... I don't know how high you'd have to go in Synology's or QNAP's product line to find ECC memory. Do any of them even offer it?

Anyway, I hope that is enough to show why I've ruled out an off-the-shelf NAS. In addition, given that I will only have to spend about $200 to complete my planned build beyond the parts that I already have, there are very few, if any, off-the-shelf NAS that would be as cheap.

So, better for my needs, and cheaper.


Me
Even if there was no benefit, I'd want to build it myself unless the result would be inferior to buying it off the shelf. As mentioned above, I recently finished building a PC for the first time. I really enjoyed doing it. It is EXACTLY what i wanted. My son thinks of it as "his" gaming PC. I'm not sure how he reconciles that with the fact that it triple boots macOS, Windows, and Linux.
 
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Joined
Mar 30, 2019
Messages
3
@Evertb1

Good to know about the amount of usable free space. So I may need to move to bigger drives sometime before I end up in a pine box. I can live with that. I just checked and I"m at about 2.3 TB now so good for a few years as it is.

Despite all my reading here, I hadn't even considered the possibility that the particular model of power supply would be considered significant. I like how you think. :)

The power supplies are both bronze rated:

EVGA 850 110-BQ-0850-V1 80+ BRONZE 850W
https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817438086
EVGA 550 B3, 80 Plus BRONZE 55W
https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817438120

The components are a pull from a single working server, so I know they work together at the moment.


Thanks for you input.

PS - Thank for the link to the disk space calculator.
 
Joined
Jan 4, 2014
Messages
1,644
Just listening to you, I realise that you're going to be fine. You have the right attitude. There is a steep learning curve with FreeNAS and passion, tenacity and perseverance are qualities that will help get you to the other side. A helping hand from forum members will also help to smooth the bumps along the way.

The Forum Guidelines are a good place to start to understand some of the do's and dont's of participating in the forum. As you build your FreeNAS server, it will be helpful, for forum members assisting you, to include details of your FreeNAS hardware and software configuration in your signature block.
 
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danb35

Hall of Famer
Joined
Aug 16, 2011
Messages
15,466
Boot drive would be a mirrored pair of USB thumb drives, and it will be on a UPS.
We'd generally encourage a small SSD instead--they're cheap, they're much more reliable (to the point where, IMO, a single SSD is more reliable than a mirrored pair of USB sticks), and they also perform better. But with that said, as long as you keep a backup of your config database, boot device failure really isn't a big deal.
 
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