Building NAS for first time, compatibility of parts

[Paul_Olli]

Hello,

as you are aware I'm new to this forum and nas thing overall. I am okay with hardware, but the software side is not as strong.
Purpose for nas:
1) storing backups of several macbooks
2) storing digital photos and important documents
3) storing movies (and hopefully streaming them to tv by dlna)

As for the parts, I have come to conclusion that if you're gonna make it, make it with ECC. (based on readings in this forum)

Case: Fractal Design R5 (was choosing between node 804, but R5 is cheaper, quieter and has better resell value)
http://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/cases/define-series/define-r5-white-window

PSU: Corsair RM550x, it has a nice wattage headroom and got a splendid review from Tomshardware
https://www.amazon.com/Corsair-RM550x-Modular-Supply-Certified/dp/B015YEICJ2

Mobo: Supermicro X11SSM-F, cheapest supermicro board with 8 SATA ports. Is it too bad that it can't detect double-bit errors?
https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C236_C232/X11SSM-F.cfm

RAM: Hynix DDR4 ECC 2400Mhz 16GB single stick, able to change out for Samsung if needed
HMA82GU7AFR8N-UH
https://memory.net/product/hma82gu7...-2400-udimm-pc4-19200t-e-dual-rank-x8-module/

CPU: Intel i3 6100, seems fine for start, keeps an option to upgrade it to 4/8 Xeon E3 when needed.
https://ark.intel.com/products/90729/Intel-Core-i3-6100-Processor-3M-Cache-3_70-GHz

Boot disk: not chosen yet, maybe wise community can recommend something simple that is sure to work with Freenas. (SSD prob)

Storage disks: also not chosen, WD Red seems to be the popular option. For 2) I will definitely form some kind of raid. Striped and Mirrored maybe? (raid 10)
For 1) I am not sure. Losing a backup is not a severe problem, since the files will still be on laptop. Just have to replace the HDD fast. It is not a problem to have raid for that too, maybe community can confirm if it's worth it.
For 3) I would prefer to not use raid. Movies aren't a sensible data and can maybe even stored using something like WD Green?

EDIT_01: Is there a certain capacity to prefer for most important raid? For example, is 4TB more reliable than 6TB?

Is there something I might have missed? Am I even able to create a FreeNAS for those simple tasks, software is not my strongest side.

Best Regards,
Paul

 

[kdragon75]

EDIT_01: Is there a certain capacity to prefer for most important raid? For example, is 4TB more reliable than 6TB?

The bigger the disk, the longer to rebuild or resilver the array if a disk goes bad. This is important as during rebuild the disks are under heavy load and are more likely to fail. If you are running RAIDZ1 if a second disk fails during rebuild, you are dead in the water. In cases where IOPS are not as important, like yours, using RAIDZ2 is advised. That way two disk can fail before you need to concern yourself.

You could make two pools, one just striped and one RAIDZ2 but then you are just breaking up your space more. If you are using large disks and care about your data use RAIDZ2.

 

[BigDave]

If you are running RAIDZ1 if a second disk fails during rebuild, your dead in the water.

This is proper advice but I would phrase it as "you've permanently lost all your data" rather than you're dead in the water.

 

[Paul_Olli]

I am probably going 4x4TB raidz2 for backups and documents.
As far as compatibility goes, does it all match?
And what kind of disks to prefer, can greens or barracudas be used for movies?
Are any other nas drives besides Reds viable?

 

[kdragon75]

I am probably going 4x4TB raidz2 for backups and documents.
As far as compatibility goes, does it all match?
And what kind of disks to prefer, can greens or barracudas be used for movies?
Are any other nas drives besides Reds viable?

With only 4 drives I would go with striped mirrors (RAID10ish)

You can use any drive you want but the "Green" Drives don't do well in a NAS. They spin down after a SHORT idle time. This sounds great because it saves power but when streaming a movie, you read a chunk and the drive spins down, you read a chunk and the drive spins down... This causes excessive mechanical wear as the heads park each time. If you don't care about top performance get 5400RPM drives. I personally always use HGST Ultrastar drives. Most "enterprise" or "NAS" grade drives are fairly good in the 4TB sizes.

 

[Inxsible]

I am probably going 4x4TB raidz2 for backups and documents.

With only 4 drives I would go with striped mirrors (RAID10ish)

I agree. You get more IOPS, faster re-silver times because there is no parity checksums. But you do lose the 2 drive redundancy and only get 1 drive redundancy per vdev, but still the same 2 drive redundancy over the pool as you would get in RAIDZ2

And what kind of disks to prefer, can greens or barracudas be used for movies?

I currently use only NAS drives and Enterprise drives in my NAS, BUT, I have used desktop drives in my NAS before without issues and I am building a new bigger NAS system which will only have desktop drives (to save money - because my new chassis can support 16 drives and NAS drives cost a lot more when you have to buy a big chunk of them together).

Are any other nas drives besides Reds viable?

There is Seagate Ironwolfs. They used to come only in 7200RPM -- these run a lot hotter than I would like (45C-46C). But now Seagate has bifurcated their Ironwolf drives into Ironwolf (5900RPM) and Ironwolf Pro (7200RPM). So maybe the 5900RPM ones might run cooler, but I have no personal experience with them. Also, the last I checked, the 5900RPM ones were only available in 1TB,2TB,3TB & 4TB. If you need larger sizes, you would have to have the 7200RPM. If you are willing to spend more then Enterprise drives are great. I have 4 Seagate Constellations in my NAS and have never had problems. They run cooler than my 2 Ironwolfs too. My Ironwolfs send me SMART temperature alert everyday. The 4 Constellations have never sent me one.

 

[Inxsible]

Also, if you have not already bought the parts then I would suggest going a generation or 2 older. That will save you a lot of money because DDR4 is quite expensive at the moment. Going with X9/X10 and DDR3 RAM would be easier on the pockets.

 

[Inxsible]

EDIT_01: Is there a certain capacity to prefer for most important raid? For example, is 4TB more reliable than 6TB?

It could be. But that depends on the manufacturer and the batch/lot number.

For eg. Seagate made the worst 3TB drives a while back which made many lose trust in Seagate. But currently that is not the case. They have fixed their issues and now Seagate seem to be reliable.

 

[kdragon75]

I agree. You get more IOPS, faster re-silver times because there is no parity checksums. But you do lose the 2 drive redundancy and only get 1 drive redundancy per vdev, but still the same 2 drive redundancy over the pool as you would get in RAIDZ2

This is not quite true. In a 4 drive RAIDZ2 ANY two drives can fail. In RAID10, you can only lose ONE drive per mirror but two max if one is on each vdev. The extra IO is not free as in beer. It is a calculated risk.

With Z2 one drive failed, you have 0% chance that another failure will cause catastrophic data loss.
With 10 one drive failed, you have a 33% (1 out of 3) chance that your array will be lost.
Once you factor in odds of a second failure during rebuild with a 4TB drive, it DOES happen but not often. Less often than a single drive failure and subsequent recovery but that's why we run regular smart checks and disk scrubs.

My Ironwolfs send me SMART temperature alert everyday. The 4 Constellations have never sent me one.

Just to add to the discussion about drive temps, cooler is generally better BUT the real killer are thermal cycles. The constant thermal expansion and contraction is hard on the heads and all parts of the disk. Its better to run warm and constant than to have an AC cycling on and off blowing right on the drives.

Also, if you have not already bought the parts then I would suggest going a generation or 2 older. That will save you a lot of money because DDR4 is quite expensive at the moment. Going with X9/X10 and DDR3 RAM would be easier on the pockets.

This.

 

[Paul_Olli]

With only 4 drives I would go with striped mirrors (RAID10ish)

Thought of it too as alternative. How would it differ in terms of performance and total usable space? As I've understood, ZFS does not gain any constant read/write boost from raid10, but neither does raidz2(am I right?).

You can use any drive you want but the "Green" Drives don't do well in a NAS.

Cool, so I just have to avoid certain models. Is it even okay to mount some older drives (that have sata connection) that I have laying around as JBOD?

There is Seagate Ironwolfs. They used to come only in 7200RPM -- these run a lot hotter than I would like (45C-46C). But now Seagate has bifurcated their Ironwolf drives into Ironwolf (5900RPM) and Ironwolf Pro (7200RPM).

Based on this review, I'll take Ironwolfs then, idling is the same, but performance is better. And they are a tad cheaper.
https://us.hardware.info/reviews/7265/3/nas-hdd-review-18-models-compared-tested-models

Also, if you have not already bought the parts then I would suggest going a generation or 2 older. That will save you a lot of money because DDR4 is quite expensive at the moment. Going with X9/X10 and DDR3 RAM would be easier on the pockets.

From where I am buying, older i3s are actually more expensive, motherboards are about the same as latest ones. I would only save on ram and that is about 80 euros. I would give up 64 gb ram support, some performance and longer support. Searching for bargains in ebay is a good way of getting older parts for cheap, but where I live, we don't have one.

I am thankful for the responses I get, seems like a supportive community.
I still have some dumb questions and there might be more over time.
Would it be easy to set up home cloud(accessing files outside home network) using only GUI? Do I need to contact ISP to make it possible?(they often have some kind of protocols to disable incoming connections(for security reasons))
If I have zpool fully created and set up, is it possible to create smaller partitions of it or limit the size of certain folder? (apple's time machine uses space as much as there is available, keeping also older backups to hop back in time when needed)
EDIT_1: For DLNA streaming, there should be installed something called miniDLNA? Is this doable in GUI?

 

[kdragon75]

If I have zpool fully created and set up, is it possible to create smaller partitions of it or limit the size of certain folder? (apple's time machine uses space as much as there is available, keeping also older backups to hop back in time when needed)

Yes, sort of. You can add data sets and set quotas (limits) on them.

EDIT_1: For DLNA streaming, there should be installed something called miniDLNA? Is this doable in GUI?

No clue if that is provided plugin. Personally I can't stand FreeNAS plugins. It's time to learn outside the GUI.

 

[Paul_Olli]

No clue if that is provided plugin. Personally I can't stand FreeNAS plugins. It's time to learn outside the GUI.

Over time I sure will. But for start, I would prefer getting my bussiness done through GUI.

 

[Inxsible]

EDIT_1: For DLNA streaming, there should be installed something called miniDLNA? Is this doable in GUI?

I don't know of a standalone DLNA plugin. But if you install the Emby plugin then DLNA is also an option. I believe Plex also provides DLNA. But then again, why not simply use Emby or Plex as your media server instead of using DLNA?

 

[tfran1990]

this post will be subjective, this is what i did.
i noticed you mentioned the i3 6100, for your first build you could always grab a HP prolient ml10. if you snag one from tiger direct when there onsale its too good to pass up.
server is 169$ comes with everything but HDD and 4g of ecc ram. you would want to buy some more ram for sure.(+~100$)
so for around 300$ + the HDD,you can get your first freenas up and running. i was going to make my own from selected parts but i was able to find the ML10.
where i live i was able to find enterprise HDD from frys, that are factory refurbished. 56$ for each 2TB enterprise HDD,they run cool, they have TLDR active and have been running for almost a year with no problems/errors.

you can always move the mobo and everything to a new case later, for better airflow and more drives.

 

[Inxsible]

if you snag one from tiger direct when there onsale its too good to pass up.

Don't know if TigerDirect will ship to Estonia though !

 

[tfran1990]

Don't know if TigerDirect will ship to Estonia though !

ya that is one thing you have to check on.

 

[tfran1990]

wow i just saw this 45$ https://www.frys.com/product/9256489?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG
i bough 7, 5 have been running smooth for almost a year.sometimes you can find "hidden gems" you just have to look.

 

[Paul_Olli]

I don't know of a standalone DLNA plugin. But if you install the Emby plugin then DLNA is also an option. I believe Plex also provides DLNA. But then again, why not simply use Emby or Plex as your media server instead of using DLNA?

Plex sure is a nice solution, I just need to be sure it will direct play, not transcode. Anyway it seems there are multiple options to choose from and there won't be a problem getting it work. Streaming to computer is easy, tv is the critical part.

Don't know if tigerdirect will ship to Estonia though !

Can't even access their webpage for some reason.

I took some cheap Kingston SSDNow A400 120GB as boot drive, have to give up one slot though.

 

[Inxsible]

Plex sure is a nice solution, I just need to be sure it will direct play, not transcode. Anyway it seems there are multiple options to choose from and there won't be a problem getting it work. Streaming to computer is easy, tv is the critical part.

I stream to the TV with Emby without any issues. I used to use Plex before, but then I switched over to Emby. And streaming vs transcoding depends on the format of the file you have. Select a format that you are happy with use that.

 

[Paul_Olli]

I stream to the TV with Emby without any issues.

I will sure check it out. Is it like plex with one system being the server and others clients?
EDIT_1: Does it support HDR, 4k and atmos?
EDIT_2: I am especially conserned about audio/video codec support.