Hey everyone,
So i built a server several years ago that is finally starting to break down due to my inexperience at the time, and simple opportunistic aquisition of some left over hardware. Now that i am getting drive failures, i would like to rebuild to something a little more conservative and reliable, reusing whatever hardware i can. This server is for home use, pretty much exclusively for general network storage and plex transcoding. Never more than 2 or 3 TVs getting HD streams simultaneously, its worked pretty well for that purpose so far.
So currently :
Motherboard - Asus P8CWS
Memory - 8GB (non ECC i believe)
Processor - Xeon E3-1225 v2 (3.2GHz)
RAID Card - LSI Megaraid 9260-4i
HP SAS Expander
Case - Norco RPC-4224 (I know, i know. fans failing all over, backplane is garbage, etc, etc. Its done well for about 4 years now but it needs to go.)
Hard Drives - 3TB Seagate Constellation drives x6. Seperate 500GB hybrid solid state drive for the OS.
OS - Windows server 2008 R2
So yes, i never even ended up using most of the drive bays. Hence my looking to downsize, and using cheaper, larger NAS drives.
New proposed build :
Case - Lian Li PC-Q26
Motherboard - ASRock E3C224D4I-14S Extended mini ITX Server Motherboard
Memory - At least 16GB of ECC RAM (given the guidelines in the hardware PDF, I will do 32GB if i can)
Processor - Not sure if i can use my current processor in the ASRock motherboard as it seems to do pretty well with my plex transcoding currently, otherwise I'd take recommendations
Hard Drives - Western Digital Red drives. Not sure if there is a recommended size, otherwise i will just go with the 6 or 8TB drives with separate 500GB hybrid solid state drive for the OS.
OS - Freenas Coral running RAID Z2 (unless there might be a reason i should stay away from it?). I am a Freenas newb, but i will be able to become familiar with it before cutting everything over to a new server. I'm decent enough with linux that learning Freenas doesn't intimidate me.
HBA Card - would like to get a HBA card with external SAS connectors so i can get another enclosure (8 + bays) for when i start running low on space (I'm at about 32TB of space used so far, and thats not getting any less). However, i haven't really seen much about how freenas works with these external sas enclosures. Any advice would be appreciated.
My biggest concerns is keeping the costs to the minimum they can be while still getting quality and longevity out of any new system i build. Also, my proposed build is pretty much taken directly from the "Hardware 2016 R1c.pdf" file from these forums. The hardware recommended seems a few years old however, not sure if there is new hardware i should be considering. But i know that looking only at mini ITX limits my options quite a bit.
Thanks for reading, if you have any questions or if i missed anything, please let me know.
So i built a server several years ago that is finally starting to break down due to my inexperience at the time, and simple opportunistic aquisition of some left over hardware. Now that i am getting drive failures, i would like to rebuild to something a little more conservative and reliable, reusing whatever hardware i can. This server is for home use, pretty much exclusively for general network storage and plex transcoding. Never more than 2 or 3 TVs getting HD streams simultaneously, its worked pretty well for that purpose so far.
So currently :
Motherboard - Asus P8CWS
Memory - 8GB (non ECC i believe)
Processor - Xeon E3-1225 v2 (3.2GHz)
RAID Card - LSI Megaraid 9260-4i
HP SAS Expander
Case - Norco RPC-4224 (I know, i know. fans failing all over, backplane is garbage, etc, etc. Its done well for about 4 years now but it needs to go.)
Hard Drives - 3TB Seagate Constellation drives x6. Seperate 500GB hybrid solid state drive for the OS.
OS - Windows server 2008 R2
So yes, i never even ended up using most of the drive bays. Hence my looking to downsize, and using cheaper, larger NAS drives.
New proposed build :
Case - Lian Li PC-Q26
Motherboard - ASRock E3C224D4I-14S Extended mini ITX Server Motherboard
Memory - At least 16GB of ECC RAM (given the guidelines in the hardware PDF, I will do 32GB if i can)
Processor - Not sure if i can use my current processor in the ASRock motherboard as it seems to do pretty well with my plex transcoding currently, otherwise I'd take recommendations
Hard Drives - Western Digital Red drives. Not sure if there is a recommended size, otherwise i will just go with the 6 or 8TB drives with separate 500GB hybrid solid state drive for the OS.
OS - Freenas Coral running RAID Z2 (unless there might be a reason i should stay away from it?). I am a Freenas newb, but i will be able to become familiar with it before cutting everything over to a new server. I'm decent enough with linux that learning Freenas doesn't intimidate me.
HBA Card - would like to get a HBA card with external SAS connectors so i can get another enclosure (8 + bays) for when i start running low on space (I'm at about 32TB of space used so far, and thats not getting any less). However, i haven't really seen much about how freenas works with these external sas enclosures. Any advice would be appreciated.
My biggest concerns is keeping the costs to the minimum they can be while still getting quality and longevity out of any new system i build. Also, my proposed build is pretty much taken directly from the "Hardware 2016 R1c.pdf" file from these forums. The hardware recommended seems a few years old however, not sure if there is new hardware i should be considering. But i know that looking only at mini ITX limits my options quite a bit.
Thanks for reading, if you have any questions or if i missed anything, please let me know.
