Cheap, Home Build?

[Harrisonm65]

Has anyone here built a FreeNAS server for use at home using none server grade hardware? Im talking a really small build, maybe with older parts you already had lying around from previous PC builds etc. Nothing too fancy. If so, how does it perform and what are you using it for i.e. just a small home Plex server etc?

Im only asking as Im curious that after reading a little bit in these forums, most people seem to be using server grade kit or have builds that look to be for a business case (in my eyes anyway). Made me think if the community here got involved in small, low cost builds and what results they had.

 

[Antoshka]

Hi,

I'm a novice here and I've spent only one week investigating this topic, but the main recommendation is to use server grade hardware due to quality/features and etc.
Yes, it isn't cheap, but you can get some used parts from ebay with pretty nice prices.
In my personal opinion, current community helps more with high end builds and technical questions, so I can recommend to read [deleted] that provides cheap options by parts or by full builds (you can find 174$ build here).

I suggest to tell your budget for the planning build, it could help local experts with more accurate recommendation.

[Mod note: no redirecting people to other forums, please. -JG]

 

[mpeck]

Hello,

Same for me, I started to take an interest in FreeNAS a few days ago. At the moment I'm looking through the different topics of this forum and the official documentation to get a feel for FreeNAS' "philosophy" and to take note of the recommendations that stand out the most.

My goal is then to start my first build.

Why using server-grade hardware? Here are a few points that I've noticed and this only reflects my personal opinion:
- NAS contain for many people critical data (documents, photos, creations,...) and the key words are data integrity, reliability and availability on the long term. Of course, do not forget that NAS are not a backup solution but contribute to the global backup strategy of our data.
- Advanced features that are not necessarily available in consumer grade hardware: IPMI, ECC RAM,...
- Futurproof to upgrade its needs over time.
- Possibility to find this type of second hand hardware.
- Quality of the support ans after-sales service?
- ....

And of course also by passion and for the pleasure of working with this type of equipment!

If it is to make a NAS build for simple needs like Plex or to experiment, consumer grade material will do the job.
In my case, I will probably test FreeNAS on hardware from old PCs that I have kept over the years. This will allow me to play around with FreeNAS and evaluate the features available before I start building something more serious. :)

 

[Yorick]

eBay is your friend. Here's a good board with CPU for under $50. Add some cheap ECC and you're cooking

Super Micro Computer X9SCL-F, LGA 1155, Intel Motherboard for sale online | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Super Micro Computer X9SCL-F, LGA 1155, Intel Motherboard at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

That particular listing offers 16GB RAM for an extra 60, not bad. You can get a single 8GB stick for 30, so maybe do that if you ultimately want 32.

 

[JoHayo]

Hello people, nice to see I am the only newbie even nowadays :D

I own a mini ITX computer bought in 2014 for gaming and software development (I5-4590, 8Gb DDR3 RAM, 1To SSD/HD hybrids Seagate drive).

When my 500Gb external USB backup drive became too small, I set up a NAS with OpenMediaVault on a Raspberry 3 and 2Tb external USB drives.
After regular failures (managing only 1Tb), the incremental backups became a mess and I stopped using it last year.

But now, the number of pictures I want to save is growing a lot, so I thought it could be time to give FreeNAS a try. Before OMV I considered this solution but I quickly understood it needed investment on hardware, and I did not want to spend too much money. That's still the case atm.
I am aware it is far from best practices, but I installed FreeNAS on a VMware and use the 500Gb drive in a pool. I can use it from the Windows host.

The only documents that are really important to me are pictures, and I think performance is not essential at all as the most demanding task of the NAS will be running Nextcloud to be able to see those pictures from anywhere.

So my question is : may someone tell me in which extent it is a bad idea to set up the main pool with a single new 2 or 4 Tb internal drive to keep about 1Tb of data + incremental snapshots, and one of the 2Tb drives as a manual/automatic backup at home, and I will find a way to use the other 2Tb drive as a remote backup? Thank you very much

 

[Harrisonm65]

If it is to make a NAS build for simple needs like Plex or to experiment, consumer grade material will do the job.
In my case, I will probably test FreeNAS on hardware from old PCs that I have kept over the years. This will allow me to play around with FreeNAS and evaluate the features available before I start building something more serious. :)

This is pretty much where I am at too. I need more drive space anyway, so buying a pool of new drives is something Im going to have to do, even if my set up is a consumer grade one. As its my first step into this world though, I wanted to keep the costs low. Apart from the drives (which Im still considering) Ive managed to put together a machine for approx. £80 using mostly old kit I had lying around. Once its all set up and working, I will see how it performs and then decide if better hardware is required.

 

[rayearth2000]

I been using my old i5-2400 for Freenas for over 3 year, everything is work grade. It is my file server and plex server. looking for hardware upgrade now.

 

[alamoudi.moh]

well, i echo that as well, i have started my build with the follow

HP EliteDesk 800 G1 SFF PC >> which I bought cheap from my previous employer and was using it as PLEX Server, that has the following specs:
Intel Q87 Express
Intel 4th Generation Core i7 Processors
16G DDR3 RAM
2x WD blue, which i am planning to convert to WD RED of 4TB each (4 drives)
(but my only issue is that i only have 3 SATA port in the motherboard, I would definitely look into SATA expansion, but the issue comes to where would I keep these HDD, the case is mini ITX (sort of, for me it is micro ;P ), any thoughts in this? will it work if I find an external 4 bay HDD enclosure?


basically, i would need the FreeNAS as:

1. media server
2. file share for non-critical data, i am sort of old school with different HDDs placed in different locations
3. later,,, as DVR for IP Cameras

 

[kappclark]

Has been fun using consumer-grade hw to make a very resilient and responsive server -- so it can be done ! and lots of fun putting it all together (rather than simply calling HP and ordering the latest)..plus you have all this wonderful community !

 

[alamoudi.moh]

well, i echo that as well, i have started my build with the follow

HP EliteDesk 800 G1 SFF PC >> which I bought cheap from my previous employer and was using it as PLEX Server, that has the following specs:
Intel Q87 Express
Intel 4th Generation Core i7 Processors
16G DDR3 RAM
2x WD blue, which i am planning to convert to WD RED of 4TB each (4 drives)
(but my only issue is that i only have 3 SATA port in the motherboard, I would definitely look into SATA expansion, but the issue comes to where would I keep these HDD, the case is mini ITX (sort of, for me it is micro ;P ), any thoughts in this? will it work if I find an external 4 bay HDD enclosure?


basically, i would need the FreeNAS as:

1. media server
2. file share for non-critical data, i am sort of old school with different HDDs placed in different locations
3. later,,, as DVR for IP Cameras

@Yorick i would appreciate your opinion and value it

 

[Heracles]

3. later,,, as DVR for IP Cameras

Hi Alamoudi,

That role is pretty heavy on a NAS. So much that there are hard drives that are specially designed to answer that need. The fact is that this use case represents a ton of writes and relatively low reads. There is no way to speed up writes beyond the capability of your hard drives. Usually, to handle that much writes, one needs many drives in parallel to spread out the writes on them.

So with only 2 drives, so a single mirror, I would say that your system is not really up to the task.

 

[Yorick]

Usually, to handle that much writes, one needs many drives in parallel to spread out the writes on them.

I’d find that surprising. According to https://m.reolink.com/ip-camera-bandwidth-calculation/, even a 4k camera only generates 8Mbps. These would be sequential writes, something ZFS is quite good at.

Not that I’ve actually tried this use case, mind you. I am happy to hear that there are details I am not considering. Just, on the face of it, it seems it’d not be an issue.

 

[Yorick]

will it work if I find an external 4 bay HDD enclosure?

Look at the Resource called “Don’t be afraid to be SAS-sy”. You’d use a SAS HBA, SAS enclosure with SAS expander - and SATA disks. Works great, a bunch of folk here do that.

It might be easier and cheaper to migrate into a node 804 or define r5 / r6 or something along those lines, though.

 

[Heracles]

even a 4k camera only generates 8Mbps.

Hey Yorick,

The same way Seagate has drives specialized for NAS like the IronWolf I am using, they also have drives specialized for video recording. You can go on their website for a first look at the difference between the NAS drive and the video recording ones.

Of course, if all the camera does is to take a picture when motion is detected, any drive will sustain that easily. But most of the time, when one needs to record 24 / 7, it is pretty rare that a single camera will do it all. As soon as you have 2 cameras doing permanent writes, ZFS will have to jump from one to the others and will end up soon enough in an equivalent of random IO more than sequential.

I would compare this to VM. You can have a single low write VM in a Raid-Z2 storage that will do just fine. But usually, when you are running VM, you end up in the random IO more than sequential and mirrors quickly offer better performance. So by doing something like video recording, there is a very high probability to end up in a completely different class than what has been described as the target server.

Nice to talk with you,

 

[Yorick]

I just can't see there being an issue - we are talking 2MB/s of writes with two 4k cameras, half that with 1080p. Heracles, I suspect that you, like me, are theorycrafting. I just don't follow your theory. The "writes become random" bit, well, I'm not deep enough into ZFS to say much. It's async, so there's the 5s txg buffer - and, not sure how that translates into disk activity exactly. And, right back to "2MB/s of writes". Random writes drop performance, but not that drastically.

 

[Heracles]

we are talking 2MB/s of writes with two 4k cameras

even a 4k camera only generates 8Mbps.

Hi again,

From your own post, we go from 8 Meg per camera to 1 Meg per camera... So this is a good way to illustrate how much such a load can vary.

The "writes become random" bit, well, I'm not deep enough into ZFS to say much. It's async, so there's the 5s txg buffer

That reality has been discussed many times in the forum when comparing mirrors and Raid-Z. When you have only a few requests to serve at a time, each of them can grad more data at once and so the load is about sequential access. But when you have 50 clients all at once, each after their own data, FreeNAS will jump from one request to the other, so from one spot on the drive to another. Because there are so many at once, it can not grab as much per sync because it does not have the time before answering next request.

Another way to look at it is that FreeNAS does not know how big a file will end. For that reason, it can not reserve a space that will avoid fragmentation. Fragmentation itself is anothe reality that forbids sequential access and forces you in random access.

 

[Yorick]

From your own post, we go from 8 Meg per camera to 1 Meg per camera

No Sir :). 8Mbps is 8 Megabit per second. 2MB/s is 2 Megabyte per second. Capitalization was deliberate.

 

[alamoudi.moh]

It might be easier and cheaper to migrate into a node 804 or define r5 / r6 or something along those lines, though.

the point here is i would like to re-use the components that i have as my first build, this is purely my first build, so will I be able to get the node 804, which was one of the cases i am looking for if i would go with everything in one place instead of SAS enclosure with SAS expander, so what the motherboard i have, i have just go with SAS expender

So with only 2 drives, so a single mirror, I would say that your system is not really up to the task.

i do understand your point, i might go with WD purple for the IP cameras but can i mix HDD within FreeNAS in different pools, i know in QNAP, Synology from my research i would get into issues.

again, i am not that technical and i am new to this :)


thank you both

 

[jgreco]

Has anyone here built a FreeNAS server for use at home using none server grade hardware? Im talking a really small build, maybe with older parts you already had lying around from previous PC builds etc. Nothing too fancy. If so, how does it perform and what are you using it for i.e. just a small home Plex server etc?

Im only asking as Im curious that after reading a little bit in these forums, most people seem to be using server grade kit or have builds that look to be for a business case (in my eyes anyway). Made me think if the community here got involved in small, low cost builds and what results they had.

Not clear why you think not using server-grade hardware is better. It isn't generally much more expensive. It's generally quite a bit cheaper than the prosumer gamer stuff..

 

[Heracles]

can i mix HDD within FreeNAS in different pools

Hi again Alamoudi,

Yes, you can have different pools using different types of vDev built using different drives. The idea is to keep each one uniform. If one of a vDev in a pool is Raid-Z2, than all other vDev in that pool should also be Raid-Z2. If a first drive in a vDev mirror is a WD purple, so should be the second.

If you put a mirror of purple drives and a mirror of red drives in the single pool, you will not have the benefit of the specialized drives because ZFS will distribute the data over both mirrors.