Build advise

[iqpascal]

Hi,

I would like to replace my NAS build of 2012 based on Ubuntu with a Freenas build or perhaps Freenas on esxi.

Current usage: Lots of (raw) photo's, backups from the PC's in the house and some other media (mostly movies). Current build runs 2 lightweight vm's, plex, some docker instances etc.
Current build: i7-2600, 8 GB memory, 6 x 2TB disks

The nas should be used for all above usage, some virtual machines (that's why I would also consider using an ESXi base) for for instance plex, pfsense, pihole, testing stuff etc

I've got my eye on the next build (mostly based on what I've read here)

• Motherboard: Supermicro X11SSM-F
• Memory: Kingston 16GB DDR4 2400MHz (perhaps two of these?)
• CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 v6 (is it overkill and could I better go for a pentium G4560 of something else?)
• CPU Fan: Noctua NH-U14S
• Case: Fractal Design Node 304
• Boot drive: Some not to large drive (yet to be determined)
• NAS drives: Either 6 x WD RED 4 TB, or 5 x WD RED 6 TB. Pricewise 4TB would be better with just 2TB room less when using ZFS Z2)
• Power unit: TBD

I am really out of the CPU world (or building a nas) so I am not sure how powerfull a G4560 for instance really is and if it could fit my needs.

Questions:

• Will this all fit in the case (note: I realize the Fractal only has 6 bays but I would assume that the SSD could be placed somewhere in the case as well)?
• CPU advise?
• Perhaps memory advise as well. 16GB or 32GB perhaps other memory is better or cheaper?
• ESXi base or just run the virtual machines within Freenas?
• Any other advise?

Thanks a whole lot!

 

[r0nski2000]

I am not a Plex user, but depending on your clients, the Plex server will likely need to transcode the source video - it would need CPU or GPU resources, depending on you configuration..

Edit: forgot to add, I use pfsense under ESXi and I am happy with how things are working(but I don't know any better, so take with a grain of salt). Also, as far as I know, ESXi 6.7 lost the ability to PCI passthrough the built-in sata controller on this MB - I had to delay my update from 6.5 for that reason.

 

[HoneyBadger]

There's a fair bit to unpack here in your setup, so let's go through step by step.

First off, you've selected a microATX motherboard, and that Node 304 is mini-ITX - so it won't physically fit. Given the rest of your desires and requirements, I'd suggest "larger case" as the solution here.

Given your desire to run VMs on FreeNAS (or FreeNAS as a VM) I would stick with the Xeon. Definitely go up to 32GB of RAM as well; you'll need to dedicate a bare minimum of 8GB to FreeNAS.

While I'm not a huge fan of running VMs on top of FreeNAS, running FreeNAS as an ESXi VM would require you to add an HBA to your build, as well as another small drive to act as a VM datastore that the FreeNAS VM itself would reside on. It adds more complexity to the solution as well, certainly; running the VMs within FreeNAS might be a better option. You'll just want to adjust your maximum ARC value (primary RAM cache) downwards by an amount roughly equal to however much RAM you assign for jails/plugins/bhyve VMs - hence the suggestion to get more to begin with.

 

[rvassar]

While I'm not a huge fan of running VMs on top of FreeNAS.... (snip)

You'll just want to adjust your maximum ARC value (primary RAM cache) downwards by an amount roughly equal to however much RAM you assign for jails/plugins/bhyve VMs - hence the suggestion to get more to begin with.

I'll second this... I've been playing around with Jails & VM's with only 16Gb of RAM, and it's not pretty. But I'll caution against adjusting the ARC value too aggressively for Jails. Jails share the kernel, and most of the RAM overhead is in the extra PID's.

I ran as many as three jails at one point, Plex, Zoneminder, and a BSD jail for shared network services like MySQL. I never got the Zoneminder GUI to work, gave up and deleted it. Plex likes to break in odd ways every time there's a patch. It's probably moving as well. The VM's I tried all had time wander / sync issues, NTP hunted around and stepped in half-second jumps. So far the network services Jail is solid, and I can't complain about the MySQL speed being directly on the NAS ZFS pool. Given that I plan to move up to >4Tb drives in the next year or so, I'm probably going to need 32Gb soon.

 

[Yorick]

HW transcode support making its way to FreeNAS means you may be better off with an E3-1225 v6, for that Plex use case.

If you're running lightweight VMs on top of FreeNAS, 32GB of RAM.

Drives: WD Red is a great choice. If you're good with the warranty hoops, you can also shuck some WD Elements 8TB and get HGST Ultrastar @5400 rpm. Nice. Start with one and see whether that's an HGST in there, then buy some more if you struck gold, keep at least one case for RMA; otherwise stick it back in, return, buy your WD Reds.

I have the Fractal 804 and like it a lot. For a use case like yours, it's perfect. I'm booting from an M.2 on an X11SSH-F. Nothing wrong with X11SSM-F and booting from Intel 320 40GB or even from USB.

 

[iqpascal]

Thank you all.

Feel a bit stupid about the case I thought I checked the form facor. Obviously not good enough *duh* But the fractal 804 looks nice too.

After your advise I'll probably do a test run with running VM's on Freenas first and see if I like it on 32GB and the Xeon.

 

[iqpascal]

Hi,


I bought the X11SSH-F (because it supported the M2 slot) and Kingston Memory (2x16GB) KSM24RD8/16HAI.


I now get 5 short beeps and 1 long beep when booting up. From what I google this is a memory issue. Did I buy the wrong memory? Or am I missing something else?

 

[Yorick]

You did. You bought registered ECC RAM. What you need for this board is Unbuffered ECC, which is more expensive. DDR4 was right.

When in doubt, check crucial for compatible memory.

For the m.2 slot, keep in mind that is pcie only, not sata. There are a number of inexpensive pcie m.2 drives, Corsair among them. Pcie m.2 may also be advertised as NVMe. This particular board uses x2 for that m.2 slot.