Coffee Lake?

[Isfn]

I haven't seen much info on Coffee Lake builds. Is there any? I am thinking of this:

Supermicro X11SCL-F https://www.newegg.com/supermicro-m...on-processor-intel-xeon-pro/p/N82E16813183671
1 x 8GB RAM ECC UDIMM https://www.newegg.com/supermicro-8gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/1X5-000K-00252
Intel Celeron G4900 https://www.newegg.com/intel-celeron-g4900/p/N82E16819117871
2 X 4TB WD Red https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16822236599
A m.2 drive for boot device

This will be for very light use, just basic storage, sharing, streaming (no transcoding) over 1Gb LAN. No parity or dedup.
Would 2 x 4GB make any difference vs 1 x 8GB?
Would I need to upgrade CPU and/or RAM if I decided to use encryption?

 

[Jailer]

Would I need to upgrade CPU and/or RAM if I decided to use encryption?

Unless you have some sort of company policy or statute requiring it, skip the encryption.

 

[zorak950]

I use a Coffee Lake-based Xeon in my build and it hasn't given me any troubles. I've found m.2 to be finicky for a boot device though; FreeNAS doesn't seem to play super nicely with them yet. Of course that's just my personal experience; I don't have any real data to back it up. Still, if I were to do it again I'd probably go with a SATA SSD.

Unless there's a significant price difference I'd go with 2x4 over 1x8; that motherboard is designed for dual-channel memory, so by using one stick instead of two you're wasting half your available bandwidth. Not that you'd be likely to notice or care in the real world, but still.

I'm fonder of encryption than most people around here, but as long as you're confident you won't be using your server for any sensitive data I wouldn't worry about it. Just bear in mind FreeNAS doesn't currently offer a convenient way to encrypt (or unencrypt) a pool after it's created, so whichever you choose you're going to be married to it.

I'm assuming you're mirroring the data drives, in which case it all sounds good to me as long as you're sure about the no transcoding thing.

 

[PhiloEpisteme]

A m.2 drive for boot device

I'm going to second the idea to use an SSD as the boot device. Even if you get it working perfectly with FreeNAS as a boot device the M.2 slot is VERY fast and is a bit of a waste for the boot device. You You can pick up a cheap, reliable SSD that would be perfect for a boot device. If you're out of bays to house drives you can always pick up a small SATADOM that'll do the trick nicely. If you're out of SATA ports you can pick up a cheap HBA. It isn't the end of the world to boot from M.2, just that if you ever want to add a SLOG or L2ARC the M.2 speed is more useful in those two applications than as a boot device.

1 x 8GB RAM ECC UDIMM https://www.newegg.com/supermicro-8gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/1X5-000K-00252

I always suggest folks buy the largest modules for the DIMMs on your machine; the reason is that you can upgrade your RAM later without having to toss any old modules. FreeNAS likes ram, so you may find yourself wanting to upgrade in the future. I disagree somewhat with @zorak950; in my view FreeNAS cares less about memory speed than the total available memory. Long term you may want more memory so the larger modules helps you grow.

Would 2 x 4GB make any difference vs 1 x 8GB?

Yes, very different. With a single drive you cannot use any sort of redundancy in your vdevs. Keep in mind that FreeNAS is more than just network storage; it is an appliance used to keep your data safe. It does this by allowing users to use vdevs with redundancy such as mirror vdevs, RAIDZ1, RAIDZ2, or RAIDZ3. With two 4TB disks you can mirror them giving you 4TB of space and if one of your drives fails you don't lose any data. With 1 8TB drive you have no redundancy and so if that drive goes bad or a bit flips in it you'll lose some data.

Would I need to upgrade CPU and/or RAM if I decided to use encryption?

If you decide to use encryption you may need to bump the processor. If the one you're picking is cheap enough you could go with it anyway and call it a wash if it doesn't have enough muscle.

No parity or dedup.

If you're not interested in any kind of parity in your build you may find another solution cheaper/easier that also fits your needs. Is there a reason you're opting for FreeNAS for your build?