First build, low power consumption NAS

[pawel30w]

Hi All,

First of all I'd like to say hello and express my appreciation on how much good information I have found on this forum!

I am looking to build my first home NAS/Server running FreeNAS. I am total beginner and most of the knowledge it's from this forum and serverbuilds.net (learned basically during last few weeks). I have already read NASKiller 4.0 Topic on serverbuilds.net.

Regaring the NAS, the requirements I think will be:

It's easier for me to start with things that this server will not be required to do:
- Run game servers,
- Host Website
- Run many VM's and other complex stuff.

What this NAS will do:
- Run FreeNAS with Nextcloud
- Store and share backups, photos, videos etc. (NextCloud)
- Store and share 4k movies (Plex)
- Deal with 1-4 home users.
- be a platform for learning new stuff

What this NAS may do:
- Store and run future home CCTV

Other requirements:
- Low power consumption (35-40W TDP CPUs only)
- Cost under £650 ($850)

• Motherboard make and model
  • GIGABYTE C246M-WU4
• CPU make and model
  • Intel Core i3-8100T, 4-Core,3.10GHz,8GT/s,DMI3,6MB,14nm,Socket LGA1151 or
  • some E3 or E5 Xeon?
• RAM quantity
  • 16GB ECC RAM (2x8) for start (with option to extend to 32 in future)
• Hard drives:
  • Already have 2xWD REDs (more discs to come in future)

I am going with ECC route so only i3 or Xeons. I have read somewhere that for future home CCTV i3 will work better than Xeons(?). And the last thing is the power consumption, the above i3 is 35W and I would not like to go above that.

As far as my (limited) knowledge goes that's the core items of the NAS. Please let me know what are your thoughts about them?

P.S. I am based in Bristol, UK and it's hard to get the SuperMicro MB's in reasonable prices. Thats not good as I can see most of the servers here are based on SuperMicro.

Thanks,
Pawel

 

[Inxsible]

Run FreeNAS with Nextcloud

Running Nextcloud itself doesn't take too many resources. Having said that I run Nextcloud in a Proxmox container with 1 GB of RAM and a single vCPU. I do have the data folder on my FreeNAS box however.

Store and share 4k movies (Plex)

If you want to transcode, you will need a CPU with a large PassMark value. i3-8100T has a passmark value of 5311 which is very low for 4K transcoding. Look for a CPU with a passmark greater than 10000 for 4K transcoding.

What this NAS may do:
- Store and run future home CCTV

I don't think this will work very well. VMs etc are better left for proper hypervisors like ESXi or Proxmox. Although FreeNAS has started down the path, it's still much in the initial stages and running VMs in Bhyve is not as smooth as using tried and true options. FreeBSD also usually lags behind in terms of driver support for cameras etc. You might be better off with a Proxmox or ESXi build and then using FreeNAS as a VM.

Low power consumption (35-40W TDP CPUs only)

Why? It's not like your CPU is going to run at max wattage all the time that you would have to worry about power consumption. Low TDP is achieved usually by lowering your clock frequency which means that it will run longer on the lower frequency for the same task. Low TDP processors are generally good for handheld devices where heat and temperature are more of a concern compared to a server build which will probably stay in a closet or a room.

Motherboard make and model

• GIGABYTE C246M-WU4

It supports ECC & non-ECC so that's alright but It has a bunch of other ports etc that are totally useless for the application. A server doesn't require DVI, DP, 8ch audio ports etc. You would be better served by an older generation board. I know the used market in the old world isn't as great but you can still find sellers who'd be willing to ship it to the UK. For eg. X9SCM-F -- this board should cost you less than 50 quid -- many sellers would also have free shipping. Of the 3 servers that I have, the very first one was built with brand new components(because it was my first build and I didn't know any better), but the subsequent 2 were built completely of used components from ebay. They turned out to be cheaper than my first server and also much more powerful in specifications. Also never had a problem with any of the motherboards, cpu or RAM that I have bought off of ebay. I do go through testing of each component that I buy obviously, but once those tests pass, there's not much that can go wrong.

If you do choose to go that route, obviously your choices for CPU, RAM etc will have to change as well.