BUILD First Build: Discussion and request for comments

[dman4x4]

Hi there,
So, I wanna build a FreeNAS box. This thread is me thinking loudly/foolishly. Its kinda of public brainstorming, so please bear with me and help if you think you can.

Objective:

1. MediaServer (Plex)-> clients two Roku's connected to Plasma TVs + 1 LED Smart TV. Max 2 concurrent streams.
2. Backup phone data (mainly pictures/videos).
3. Backup 4 laptops 1 PC
4. Backup 3 tablets/iPads.
5. Archive 20 years of old video tapes (around 50 to 60 8mm and Hi8).
6. Archive hundreds of old paper photos and digital P&S/DSLR.
7. Maybe Personal Cloud

Sizing exercise:
This is to understand the approximate size for the setup. Lets think of each item:

1. ~300 movies (2GB per movie) = ~ 600GB
2. average of 8 active smart phones in the house at an average of 4GB per phone permanent backup (no incremental or differential) = ~32GB per year (assuming new phones every year).
3. Each PC/laptop require about 80GB backup -> 400GB
4. 3 Tablets/iPads * 10GB = 30GB
5. Lossless home video archival requires ~370MB/min, for a standard 2hours tape that equals to 44.4GB per tape. To archive a max of 60 tapes the space needed is 2,664 GB
6. I would guess there is an estimate of 500 to 700 paper photos that need to be archived. To scan these mostly 4"x6" pictures to digital format will take months. Anyhow, assuming 8MB per photo at 600 dpi PNG file, space required for 700 pictures is around 5.6GB

Total around 3.8TB. So, I'm thinking about building two identical zvol RAIDZ2 each with net capacity of ~5TB-6TB, one would be the backup of the other.

Form Factor:

• The main two I'm thinking of is either mATX/minitower or miniITX/minicube. The good thing about mATX is ability to use it as a desktop + FreeNAS. After thinking about it for few days I'm leaning towards the miniITX/minicube since I can configure it and forget about it in the corner of the house and just get my self a normal desktop. So, miniITX / minicube win.

Software:

• I looked around and found few NAS software. It seems FreeNAS is the most used and most reliable one. No further comment here.

Hardware:

• First Option
  • Case: Fractal Design Node 304 Mini-ITX: $95
  • Motherboard: ASRock Motherboard, Mini ITX DDR3 1600 LGA 1150 E3C226D2I: $225
  • CPU: Intel Core i3-4130 3.4 3 FCLGA 1150 Processor BX80646I34130: $120
  • RAM: Crucial 16GB Kit (8GBx2) DDR3L 1600MT/s (PC3-12800) DR x8 ECC UDIMM 240-Pin Server Memory CT2KIT102472BD160B: $170
  • HDD: 6x4TB WD Red WD40EFRX drives: $173x6=$1038
  • PSU: EVGA 430W 80PLUS Certified ATX12V/EPS12V Power Supply 100-W1-0430-KR: $35

Total Cost: $1683​

• Second Option
  • Motherboard/CPU: ASRock C2750D4I Mini ITX Server Motherboard FCBGA1283 DDR3 1600/1333: $400
  • (Everything else stays the same)

Total Cost: $1738

​

The first option got better CPU and is $55 cheaper. Any comment? Data from cpubenchmark.net:​

• i3-4130: 4819
  
• C2750: 3929

To Do:

• Understand FreeNAS more. Especially how to divide this hardware setup into two independent yet identical storage pools to use one for backup the other for production.
• Build a backup plan for the whole setup.

Any comments / criticism is welcomed....

Cheers,
Abdul

 

[BigDave]

Motherboard: ASRock Motherboard, Mini ITX DDR3 1600 LGA 1150 E3C226D2I: $225

The 1st option board has an internal USB port for your diskless FreeNAS operating system.
Upgrade that CPU
Board $224 and Xeon E3-1220 v3 $205 = $29 MORE... BUT that Intel Avoton C2750 Octa-Core CPU is getting
lots of folks excited...

 

[danb35]

You're not going to be able to build two RAIDZ2 volumes with six disks--you need at least four disks to create a RAIDZ2 volume.

 

[dman4x4]

The 1st option board has an internal USB port for your diskless FreeNAS operating system.
Upgrade that CPU
Board $224 and Xeon E3-1220 v3 $205 = $29 MORE... BUT that Intel Avoton C2750 Octa-Core CPU is getting
lots of folks excited...

I guess both boards have USB headers. About upgrading the CPU to a Xeon, would that important giving the fact that I won't be using transcoding heavily? If yes, then is it going to be E3-1220v3 or E3-1230V3?

Cheers

 

[dman4x4]

You're not going to be able to build two RAIDZ2 volumes with six disks--you need at least four disks to create a RAIDZ2 volume.

Thanks for the info. What would you change to make this setup a backup for itself?

Cheers

 

[danb35]

Well, if you want two RAIDZ2 pools, you'll need a minimum of 8 disks. That would give you two disks' redundancy on your primary pool, and another two disks' worth on your backup, meaning that at least five of your disks would need to fail nearly simultaneously before you'd lose any data. That's a lot of redundancy.

Another option would be two RAIDZ1 pools, each 3 x 4 TB disks, with a net capacity of ~ 8 TB each. This could tolerate the failure of at least two disks (one in the primary pool, one in the backup) without any data loss. RAIDZ1 is becoming disfavored for data security due to increasing hard disk capacity and relatively static error rates, but your having a backup would mitigate this significantly.

A third option would be to set up your main pool with 4 x 4 TB disks in two mirrored pairs, net capacity of ~ 8 TB, and your backup pool with a single mirrored pair of 2 x 4 TB disks, net capacity of ~ 4 TB. When it fills up, you can add another pair of disks to the backup pool to increase its capacity.

 

[dman4x4]

@danb35,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

First option isn't an option for me. I just can't do 8 drives.

Second option seems to be interesting. Two RAIDZ1 volumes....Now, if the main volume gets corrupted for any reason, would that affect the backup? Would a weekly cron job that backup the main volume just go backing up corrupted data? Or does FreeNAS/ZFS automatically alert/halt the system once it detects corrupted data and/or bad HDD?

Third option also looks interesting...but looks a bit complicated to manage compared to option 2.

How about doing RAIDZ3? with 6x4TB disks that would give me roughly 12TB.

Cheers

 

[danb35]

One of the distinguishing characteristics of ZFS is that it checksums everything. If a block in a RAIDZ1 volume is corrupted, the system will (1) determine the correct data from parity, and return the correct data; and (2) correct the corrupted block. If it's unable to serve correct data (say, because one drive has already failed), it will simply fail rather than return bad data.

RAIDZ3 is certainly a possibility; I didn't mention it because it sounded like you were wanting two separate volumes. You'll take a performance hit compared to a volume consisting of three mirrored pairs, but the redundancy will be better (you can lose any three disks, vs. one disk of each pair with the mirrored pairs).

 

[diedrichg]

Something to keep in mind - you will want to set a quota of 80% on the volume, as I understand it, there is some overhead that will eventually prevent you from accessing your data if you get around the 90% mark.