Building first FreeNAS

[freenachos]

Hello!

NAS purpose: SMB shares to 1 Windows 10 HTPC client

Recycling:
Case: Fractal Design XL R2 http://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/cases/define-series/define-xl-r2-black-pearl
Boot/SSD: 2 X 120GB SSD
CPU: Pentium G4560

Purchased:
Motherboard: X11SSM- F https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C236_C232/X11SSM-F.cfm
Storage: 12 X 4TB WD RED
RAM: Crucial 2 X 16GB DDR4 2400 ECC Unbuffered http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/ct16g4wfd824a

Recommendations required for:
a) Power Supply (considering Corsair RM750x - Will 750W suffice for 12 hard drives??)
b) CPU cooler (considering Cooler MAster Hyper 212x or DEEPCOOL GAMMAXX 400)
c) Second hand HBA
d) 5.25 to 3.5 drive cage

Thank you very much for your kind advice!

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

a) Power... Here is what sucks the most juice...

12 drives at 5 watts max = 60 watts (running, not startup)
G4560 = 54 watts max

That gets you to 114 watts. Double that to 250 watts to accommodate everything else and initial startup. Let's call it 500 watts just to be safe. So, yeah, the RM750x will be just fine. If you can save a few bucks and get the RM550X, do so. That's plenty of capacity. Chances are, you'll be under 150 watts most of the time.

b) CPU Cooler... The G4560 should come with an Intel-approved fan. Use it. FreeNAS isn't typically loading up your CPU so you don't need aftermarket cooling solutions.

c) HBA... Any LSI-chipped card is great. Your motherboard already has eight ports so any eight-port HBA will be fine.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[Inxsible]

Here's a link to proper power supply sizing : https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/proper-power-supply-sizing-guidance.38811/

 

[MDD1963]

Do not be wasting a pair of SSDs on a boot drive (minimal reads/writes, OS mostly memory resident after bootup), use a pair of mirrored $12/ 8GB USB flash drives for that; save your SSDs for cache drives for speed, and spinning drives for storage...

 

[IQless]

Do not be wasting a pair of SSDs on a boot drive (minimal reads/writes, OS mostly memory resident after bootup), use a pair of mirrored $12/ 8GB USB flash drives for that; save your SSDs for cache drives for speed, and spinning drives for storage...

If the purpose of this NAS is SMB share for 1 windows machine I highly doubt he will need a cache drive.

Storage: 12 X 4TB WD RED

Have you been thinking about what kind of pool layout you want?

 

[freenachos]

a) Power... Here is what sucks the most juice...

12 drives at 5 watts max = 60 watts
G4560 = 54 watts max

That gets you to 114 watts. Double that to 250 watts to accommodate everything else. Let's call it 500 watts just to be safe. So, yeah, the RM750x will be just fine. If you can save a few bucks and get the RM550X, do so. That's plenty of capacity. Chances are, you'll be under 150 watts most of the time.

b) CPU Cooler... The G4560 should come with an Intel-approved fan. Use it. FreeNAS isn't typically loading up your CPU so you don't need aftermarket cooling solutions.

c) HBA... Any LSI-chipped card is great. Your motherboard already has eight ports so any eight-port HBA will be fine.

Cheers,
Matt

Thank you Matt. Very much appreciated :)

Here's a link to proper power supply sizing : https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/proper-power-supply-sizing-guidance.38811/

Thank you!

Have you been thinking about what kind of pool layout you want?

Any advanteges or disadvantages with
i) One VDev with 12 X 4TB RAIDZ2
ii) Two VDevs with 6 X 4TB RAIDZ2 each

Ta.

 

[Dice]

Thank you Matt. Very much appreciated :)
Any advanteges or disadvantages with
i) One VDev with 12 X 4TB RAIDZ2
ii) Two VDevs with 6 X 4TB RAIDZ2 each

i)
+ space efficiency
- resilvering time (and subsequently risk of drive failure during resilver)
- increased cost when upgrading (cost of another 12drives for equal size vdev)
- potential risk of degrading performance (a single slow drive will cause the entire vdev/pool to slow down)

ii)
Invert the above points.
+ doubling the amounts of vdevs essentially doubles performance.

Cheers.

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

NAS purpose: SMB shares to 1 Windows 10 HTPC client
Any advanteges or disadvantages with
i) One VDev with 12 X 4TB RAIDZ2
ii) Two VDevs with 6 X 4TB RAIDZ2 each

Dice is correct in his answer: efficiency versus performance.

You have just one client, right? With one VDEV of 12 drives - even if you had five clients all streaming videos - you're not going to run into performance issues. (Maybe if you were doing 4K videos. Even then, two or three clients would probably be fine.

How much storage space do you anticipate needing in year one? Year two?

Code:

Size GB	 Cost USD	   Per GB
 1,000	   $ 63		 0.06300
 2,000	   $ 83		 0.04150
 3,000	   $109		 0.03633
 4,000	   $125		 0.03125
 6,000	   $184		 0.03067  <--- Sweet Spot
 8,000	   $250		 0.03125
10,000	   $310		 0.03100 

In your above configurations, you have 32TB or 40TB both at a cost of $1,500 for drives and $100 for an HBA. So, $1,600

The price per gig of 4TB drives is the same as 8TB drives. So I'd seriously consider doing this...

6 x 8TB @ RAIDZ2 = 32TB storage for $1,500 (and you don't need the $100 HBA)

For $100 less, you get the same amount of storage without using up all your drive bays, leaving room to expand. (You'll also be using less power, require less cooling and have a longer run time on UPS battery power. But those are way secondary to having the ability to expand.)

If you need less than 32TB in the first two years, I'd go with the 8TB drives. By the time you're ready to expand, 10TB (or 12TB?) drives will be the same price as 8TB drives are today, give or take. Add six 10TB drives as RAIDZ2 with an HBA to your pool and you'll be at 72TB with double the performance thanks to the second VDEV.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[Dice]

Planning ahead in terms on what sort of upgrade scenario you'd want find yourself in in 2-4 years time. The years pass quickly.
IMO FreeNAS requires some planning in order for you to have a pleasent experience down the line, once it is time to pour more cash into the build.

A multitude of aspects join in creating a tsunami of hurdles once the system reaches approx +10 drives.
RAM, PSU, Case, HBA, cable management all ...seem to be either geared for <8 drives (HBA+...give a few) or ...ready for +24 drives.

If you already have an idea of how much you'll expand the storage requirements, and your intentions to either continue building on the same machine or "restarting" with a completely new setup once this one is filled is really worth contemplating in the first design stage. It will pay off great dividends.

 

[rvassar]

Just a power supply thought... I took a quick look at the specs, it looks OK on watts, etc... 62.5 amps @ 12v, so it has some inrush capability. But it only has 8 x SATA power plugs, which implies you're going to use Y-splitters to expand your power plug count by fully 50%. Once you get into this category of storage (by drive count), most enterprise equipment will implement some kind of staggered drive spin up to lessen the load on the PSU & cabling.

If you don't need the IOPS, I would consider using denser drives like Matt suggested.

 

[freenachos]

Planning ahead in terms on what sort of upgrade scenario you'd want find yourself in in 2-4 years time. The years pass quickly.
IMO FreeNAS requires some planning in order for you to have a pleasent experience down the line, once it is time to pour more cash into the build.

If you already have an idea of how much you'll expand the storage requirements, and your intentions to either continue building on the same machine or "restarting" with a completely new setup once this one is filled is really worth contemplating in the first design stage. It will pay off great dividends.

Thank you Dice. Very insightful!

If you don't need the IOPS, I would consider using denser drives like Matt suggested.

Noted. Will opt for Matt's suggestion. Thank you Matt and rvassar!