First build for personal use - Hardware advices

[hugo-contreras]

Hi there,

I'm working on my first NAS that I gonna build in a near future and I'm looking at the hardware recommandations in this forum and on the web. It looks like most of the time, high-end, "enterprise level", expensive, hardware is recommanded. But as I said I'm looking for something for my personnal use si would like to keep the config under the 400$ (without the disks). My goal is to achieve a configuration that can support a Flex Media server and store my "important" data and to make it accessible everywhere. For the FreeNas configuration I was thinking at a first pool with one drive of 6TB for movies, tv-shows without redundancy and an other pool with 4 drives of 6TB in RAID10 for 12TB for photos,... According to my own research I ended up with a hardware configuration that looks like this:

- Motherboard: ASRock B365M Pro4
- Processor: Intel Pentium Gold G5400 (3.7 GHz)
- RAM: Crucial DDR4 16 Go 2666 MHz CL19 Dual Rank X8
- SilverStone SST-CS380 (I'm not finding anything cheaper unfortunately)

For the disks I would see based on the discounts available, but I know that I need 5 6TB disks to start.

Well I'm looking for any advices, I don't know if I'm totaly misunderstanding the hardware required for such a system but I hope not.

Thank's for your time.

 

[PhiloEpisteme]

It looks like most of the time, high-end, "enterprise level", expensive, hardware is recommanded.

You are right that generally enterprise level stuff is recommended but I disagree that it must be high-end or expensive for home use. Lots of folks around here have posted builds with used server hardware that will more than run what you're looking to do under your cost target. I don't have the links off hand but check out the resources section as I believe @Chris Moore has posted several such builds.

4 drives of 6TB in RAID10 for 12TB for photos

I'm going to nit here a little just to help with clarity in your build and future questions. ZFS and thus FreeNAS does not have RAID10. Nor does it have RAID0, RAID1, RAID5, RAID6 etc but it does have analogues of these. ZFS gives you access to pools in which to store your data. Pools are made of up vdevs. vdevs are made of disks. If a single vdev within a pool fails your entire pool fails. Thus, you need redundancy at the vdev level. For this reason ZFS supports various redundancy types at the vdev level. Mirrors of n drives, RAIDZ1, RAIDZ2, and RAIDZ3 specifically which tolerate n-1, 1, 2, and 3 drive failures respectively. Often times users stripe vdevs together within the same pool to increase performance and storage space. A setup with one pool made up of two vdevs, each a mirror composed of two drives would be the ZFS analogue of RAID10. The ZFS terminology primer is useful in this regard. This nit makes a lot more sense when you consider that the RAID5 analog in ZFS is RAIDZ1, which could easily be confused with RAID1 whose analog is a mirrored vdev.

RAM: Crucial DDR4 16 Go 2666 MHz CL19 Dual Rank X8

Whatever route you take I suggest that you get the biggest modules your board supports. This allows you to easily add more memory without having to replace any old modules. Make sure you have at least 8GB total, of course.

4 drives of 6TB in RAID10 for 12TB

This is a totally acceptable pool layout. Keep in mind that in the end this will be 1 pool, 2 mirrored, 2-disk vdevs. Each vdev can tolerate a single disk failure before you lose data. Using striped mirrors like this improves IOPS over other layouts but has a lower percentage of usable vs raw space, in this case 50%. If IOPS is less important to you than redundancy you may consider a 6-disk RAIDZ2 vdev layout. RAIDZ2 gives you 2-disk failure tolerance in the vdev and a better percentage of usable space vs raw space. It costs IOPS of course and is a bit more expensive on account of 2 more drives.

Hope this helps. Definitely check out some of the used suggested gear, you may be surprised by what you can build with used parts at a reasonable price. Some of the pre-built stuff even comes in a server chassis. If you don't want to go that route I imagine you could easily put together a build based on a supermicro X9 for under $400 including a decent case.

 

[hugo-contreras]

Thqnk you very much for your help !

You are right that generally enterprise level stuff is recommended but I disagree that it must be high-end or expensive for home use.

I'm more than happy to heard that ! And I definitely used Chris Moore resources to help me. But in my initial search when I looked for a supermicro motherboard for example, I only found very expensive ones... Maybe because it's hard to find in France, I don't know...

The ZFS terminology primer is useful in this regard.

I started to read it but I have to admit that I should spend more time on it before starting my build.

Using striped mirrors like this improves IOPS over other layouts but has a lower percentage of usable vs raw space, in this case 50%.

I chose a miror configuration like this because indeed for this pool I need a high IOPS.