EMB-BT1 home nas

[adrhc]

Hi, I noticed the new EMB-BT1 (http://www.aaeon.com/en/p/mini-itx-emb-bt1/) and I want to build a NAS using it. My primary concern is power consumption then the ability to access the external connections: LAN, USB, HDMI, DC power connector. I will use 2 x 3.5" HDD (Seagate NAS HDD) and 1 x USB 2.0 HDD (Samsung 1T).
I have few questions:
1) How would one compute/know what PSU to consider (60W or more) ?
EMB-BT1 requires ATX 12 V Specification 2.0 (or later version). I'm sure that for my needs (EMB-BT1, 2 x 3.5" HDD + 1 x USB 2.0 HDD) 60W should be more than sufficient but what if I can't find a such low power PSU; would one more powerful (e.g. 150W) hurt or consume more power only because the PSU is more powerful ? (yeah, I know nothing obout electricity :) )
2) Should I search for a case specifically made for the EMB-BT1 in order to have access the side-connectors ?
I mean EMB-BT1 is indeed Mini-ITX but it has a particular shape for the side with connectors (the one containing the DC power connector) which I suspect it's not standard.

 

[LostFate]

So... Skipping straight to your questions...

1) A PSU will only use the power it requires (including the power lost during AC/DC conversion). I have a 1200w PSU in my desktop and in no way, shape or form, is it using anywhere near that. In all honesty, you want to have your PSU running around 60 to 70% it's maximum rating in order to be running efficiently (and the less you tax it, the longer it'll last).

2) Pro tip: Do not use any uncommon, unrecommended, or unsupported hardware. You will receive essentially no support and 9 times out of 10, you will run into horrible problems. FreeNAS isn't designed to be a lightweight fileserver. While you may be able to get it to run on super low-end systems like this, it's not likely going to work very well. For one, realtek NICs are known to be absolutely terrible all the way around but more so for BSD based systems.

 

[anodos]

You really need ECC RAM if you're using FreeNAS, which means that if you want an atom you should stick to the server-grade stuff (avoton) like the C2750.

 

[adrhc]

Is ECC really required ? Won't FreeNAS work without it ?

 

[LostFate]

Yes, but there is an extremely strict "no whining" policy when you lose all your data. It's stated 800 million times on these forums alone as to why you should stick with ECC. At the end of the day, it's your data, your budget, your FreeNAS build, and your responsibility.

 

[anodos]

Is ECC really required ? Won't FreeNAS work without it ?

It works in the same way a car without seatbelts work.
When non-ecc ram goes bad it has a decent chance of corrupting your files. We see it pretty frequently here. This is not really a freenas thing but a zfs thing. That being said vendors push ECC hard on servers and workstations for good reason on nonzfs platforms - data integrity is important.

 

[adrhc]

Can't I just use EXT4 (ok, may be less FS performance) instead of ZFS with FreeNAS ?

 

[anodos]

Can't I just use EXT4 (ok, may be less FS performance) instead of ZFS with FreeNAS ?

Nope. FreeNAS is based on FreeBSD and not Linux. The price delta between the crap atom board you want and one with a C2750 is relatively small, but there is significant benefit to using ZFS.

FreeNAS spends the majority of its time idling away. In those circumstances the difference in power consumption between an Atom and a Xeon is relatively small. We're not dealing with 2003-era P4s here.

 

[cyberjock]

@adrhc

I think you should probably spend more time reading around (our manual, our stickies, other people's posts) before you go further. It's very clear you are jumping into this without knowing the basics, and that will almost always end up with someone that is very unhappy with FreeNAS later.

 

[adrhc]

I already started to do this :)

 

[LostFate]

God speed, man...

 

[adrhc]

Ok, I could use EMB-BT1 with the E3825 which has ECC. I'm settled with the question 1 but what about question 2 ?

 

[anodos]

Ok, I could use EMB-BT1 with the E3825 which has ECC. I'm settled with the question 1 but what about question 2 ?

Max memory supported with an E3825 is 4GB. Minimum requirement for FreeNAS is 8GB. Also you want more CPU for running ZFS unless you're only interested in looking at a webgui.

 

[cyberjock]

Bro, slow down. You are NOT going to get this in a day or two, let alone an hour or two. Here's why you are still incorrect:

http://ark.intel.com/products/78474/Intel-Atom-Processor-E3825-1M-Cache-1_33-GHz

Notice the max is 4GB of RAM. That's not enough for FreeNAS. The *minimum* is 8GB.

That motherboard also has Realtek, which means you almost certainly will have to add an Intel NIC to the system. Do you really want the one PCIe slot you have to be filled with a NIC from the first minute you use the system?

No, that board is a terrible choice.

PLEASE. Slow down and do *lots* more reading. People will add you to their ignore list if you are ignoring our already provided documentation and you'll find yourself not getting answers later. ;)

 

[Ericloewe]

Very important thing to keep in mind:

ONLY SERVER ATOMS (C25xx and C27xx) SUPPORT Extended Page Tables.

EPT support may be mandatory in FreeNAS 10.x, so non-Server Atoms are even more out of the question than they were.

 

[anodos]

Very important thing to keep in mind:

ONLY SERVER ATOMS (C25xx and C27xx) SUPPORT Extended Page Tables.

EPT support may be mandatory in FreeNAS 10.x, so non-Server Atoms are even more out of the question than they were.

Is that because of bhyve support?

 

[Ericloewe]

Is that because of bhyve support?

Yeah, for reasons that I do not know (i.e. too busy and/or lazy to investigate) the bhyve support seems to render CPUs without EPT useless - I'm guessing because it's loaded by default or something.

There's talk that the Celerons and Pentiums don't support the whole instruction set, but non-server Atoms don't claim any support at all.

 

[marbus90]

Please do yourself the favor and search for hardware according to this listing:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-checklist-dos-and-donts.24623/

Also USB is not recommended for data disks since USB isn't designed for data integrity. On top of that USB3 isn't working that fine, so you'll be stuck at USB2 anyway.