BUILD First build, sanity check

[eliland]

Greetings good people!

I've been lurking this forum and planning my build for some time now and even briefly fiddled with the interface in a VirtualBox installation, so it's soon time to invest in some hardware. The server will be used to stream video and music files to my Windows HTPC (running Kodi) and potentially other devices via CIFS/Samba (no transcoding needed), back up my own photos and videos, and in the near-ish future run a jail with a LAMP-style web server for my own use.

I really want this to last and do the job for a long time, so I'm thinking future proofing, FreeNAS 10 (when it's stable), latest generation of hardware (X11, Skylake) instead of the tried and tested (X10, Haswell), and so on. Within reason, ofc.

Case: Fractal Design R5
Mobo: Supermicro X11SSH-F-O
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1220 V5
PSU: Seasonic G-550
RAM: 2x Samsung ECC DDR4 16GB 2133 MHz (the ones tested by Supermicro to match the X11)
HDDs: 2x Western Digital Red 5TB NAS (mirrored)
EDIT: Oh, and FreeNAS will be running off a USB-stick now that it apparently is working with XHCI and 9.10/10.

These are all things I've often seen recommended, so I'm fairly confident it's a good set of hardware, but there are two things I'm not 100% sure about:

- I've had to reduce the number of drives to two due to cost (I'm in Europe and a lot of these parts are rare and expensive). I would love to have 4-5 drives in a RAIDZ2 setup, but just two mirrored with ~5TB total available storage should be plenty for at least a year or two. Ease of setup, maintenance, performance, and recovery from a disk failure is an additional bonus. I can always make another pool with a RAIDZ2 vdev when I run out of space. Correct?

- No UPS yet. I know. Not brilliant. But again it's a cost issue... How likely is it I will lose a pool if a power outage occurs? Also, there hasn't been a single unplanned power outage in six years where I live, so that's also something to consider. All important data (own photos and videos) will also be backed up to the cloud, btw.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I can always make another pool with a RAIDZ2 vdev when I run out of space. Correct?

Yes. You could also add to your original pool, one mirror vdev at a time.

How likely is it I will lose a pool if a power outage occurs?

ZFS is pretty resilient to power loss, but people do sometimes lose data that way. If you only need 5TB of storage, you could cut way back on the other components and put the savings into a UPS.

 

[Mirfster]

I would love to have 4-5 drives in a RAIDZ2 setup, but just two mirrored with ~5TB total available storage should be plenty for at least a year or two.

No offense, but chances are that once you get into using FreeNas and are acclimated to a NAS that projection is not going to last. Also, keep in mind that it is recommended to not go beyond 80% capacity. ;)

 

[eliland]

ZFS is pretty resilient to power loss, but people do sometimes lose data that way. If you only need 5TB of storage, you could cut way back on the other components and put the savings into a UPS.

Yeah, right now the NAS won't need a lot of juice frankly. But I can imagine adding another 10-15TB in a couple years. I could consider going with an X11SSL-F and an i3-6300. That should save me something like $200 which is enough for a decent UPS, but then I'd be limited to dual core (theoretically good for Samba with a significantly higher MHz, not so good for jails and whatever creative uses I might find for it later) and only 4 extra SATA ports for a RAIDZ2 vdev. Decisions, decisions...

No offense, but chances are that once you get into using FreeNas and are acclimated to a NAS that projection is not going to last. Also, keep in mind that it is recommended to not go beyond 80% capacity. ;)

The thought has occured to me :D
I'm already contemplating ripping my bluray and dvd collection to x264/5... But still. I've managed with 1TB for all my film and tv series for ages. I just delete old stuff as new stuff comes in. I'll be alright.
/famous last words

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I'd be limited to dual core...

Random data point: today my PowerEdge T20 FreeNAS is running four Ubuntu Server VMs (in VirtualBox), Plex Media Server, Sonarr, SABnzbd and BTSync, and my G3220 is mostly idle.

 

[eliland]

You make a good point. I think I'm settling for an i3-6300 then. That'll save me a few bucks so by the time I'm actually putting my faith in this box I should have enough for a UPS as well.
Thanks for the good advice, guys!