BUILD First Build X11SSH-CTF

[PlaydohMask]

This will be my first freenas build and I'm hoping people can help me with the build :). The server will be for home use as a secondary file backup and a streaming server for the various devices. I don't think more than 2 persons will stream at a time so the build is probably an overkill. However, I'm also fairly lazy and I would rather not have to upgrade the machine again in a few years time.

Chasis: Fractal Design r5
Mobo: X11SSH-CTF (Probably a little overkill but the 10Gbps lan seems very useful for the next few years, especially since network is probably the bottleneck)
CPU: Xeon E3-1245 V5
CPU cooler: ???? (Haven't decided, any suggestions?)
Memory: 2x 16gb [Samsung M391A2K43BB1-CPB 16GB DDR4-2133 ECC Un-Buffer LP Server Memory]
Boot device: ???? (Thinking of getting a sata dom, however, they're fairly expensive. Is running 2 sata dom suggested?)
PSU: ???? (Haven't decided, I think most gold standard 650W or 750W PSU should suffice?)
UPS: ???? (Potentially moving to Asia soon where they use 220V which limits my UPS options).
HDD: 6x6tb in raidz2 [Mix of WD Red 6tb, Seagate nas 6tb and/or HGST Deskstar 6tb]

 

[Dice]

Welcome to the forums.

I'll offer you some comments on your choices:

Mobo: X11SSH-CTF (Probably a little overkill but the 10Gbps lan seems very useful for the next few years, especially since network is probably the bottleneck)

Granted your future plans, this seems to be valid.

CPU: Xeon E3-1245 V5

Virtually no reason to exceed a E3-1230v5. The day that CPU runs out of juice, the 1245 won't do the trick either. (here's potential cash for boot drive saved!)

CPU cooler: ???? (Haven't decided, any suggestions?)

Use the stock cooler or, Cooler Master EVO 212, or the slightly higher end (but still cheap): be quiet! Pure Rock. I myself have had a lot of luck with Noctua coolers, yet they tend to be overly expensive, and should probably be considered <excessive overkill>.

Memory: 2x 16gb

Good starting point.

Boot device: ???? (Thinking of getting a sata dom, however, they're fairly expensive. Is running 2 sata dom suggested?)

You are fine with the cheapest possible SSD you can find. Still faaaar more reliable than USB-sticks. You do not need to bother with mirroring the OS, if you keep good track on your config files and save backups of these (There is a thread called something like useful scripts, which includes very good automatic options for surveillance or email backup of the config file).

PSU: ???? (Haven't decided, I think most gold standard 650W or 750W PSU should suffice?)

sure.
Many users seem to prefer the quality of the Seasonic.

UPS: ???? (Potentially moving to Asia soon where they use 220V which limits my UPS options).

Cannot help you on that department.

HDD: 6x6tb in raidz2

Valid, generally. Do you already own the mix of drives?
While it might be argued there are some advantages of spreading risks across batches or brands while incorporating drives in a raidz, there is quite little consensus of this being the <necessary approach>. In fact, most just doesn't and it works fine.
Burning in the hardware properly is key, regardless (check excellent stickie threads).

 

[PlaydohMask]

Thanks for the comments :).

Virtually no reason to exceed a E3-1230v5. The day that CPU runs out of juice, the 1245 won't do the trick either. (here's potential cash for boot drive saved!)

Checking ark, the 1230v5 doesn't have integrated graphic? That doesn't seem correct to me / :
http://ark.intel.com/products/88182/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1230-v5-8M-Cache-3_40-GHz

Use the stock cooler or, Cooler Master EVO 212, or the slightly higher end (but still cheap): be quiet! Pure Rock. I myself have had a lot of luck with Noctua coolers, yet they tend to be overly expensive, and should probably be considered <excessive overkill>.

I also really like Noctua coolers. Which do you think would be good? I don't mind spending a little more on the cooler if it is a Noctua one :).

You are fine with the cheapest possible SSD you can find. Still faaaar more reliable than USB-sticks. You do not need to bother with mirroring the OS, if you keep good track on your config files and save backups of these (There is a thread called something like useful scripts, which includes very good automatic options for surveillance or email backup of the config file).

Thanks. I'll grab a normal sata ssd in this case.

Valid, generally. Do you already own the mix of drives?

I currently own 2x4TB WD Red. They're just being used as an external storage. I debated about reusing them, however, I don't have the space to temporarily transfer the current 6tb of data to.

 

[Ericloewe]

Checking ark, the 1230v5 doesn't have integrated graphic?

It's literally useless on that board.

I also really like Noctua coolers. Which do you think would be good? I don't mind spending a little more on the cooler if it is a Noctua one :).

Stock cooler is fine. If you want to burn money, get a 90mm Noctua cooler.

 

[PlaydohMask]

I purchased the items listed and started to install the X11SSH-CTF into the r5 but ran into an issue. The r5 has a middle preinstalled standoff but the X11SSH-CTF does not have a hole for that, as a result, the board is bent fairly badly. Is that normal?

 

[Mirfster]

The r5 has a middle preinstalled standoff but the X11SSH-CTF does not have a hole for that, as a result, the board is bent fairly badly. Is that normal?

I would not consider that a good situation...

 

[PlaydohMask]

I took off the preinstalled standoff, things are looking a lot better. I just hope nothing was broken.

Thanks for the sanity check :).

 

[Mirfster]

I took off the preinstalled standoff, things are looking a lot better. I just hope nothing was broken.

Thanks for the sanity check :).

No worries, I have seen similar stuff in the past. Usually, if you do want/need some support there you can simply take some side-cutters and snip off the top of the plastic standoff (if it is plastic) leaving the flat surface there to provide additional support so the board is not able to sag too much.

*** Just make sure you are not *pushing* on anything that you may not want coming out the other side or against anything that would get hot enough to actually melt it (Never a good feeling to smell something "burning" emitting from your case) .... ;)

Otherwise, if it is pretty solid without it then you should be fine.

 

[Ericloewe]

I purchased the items listed and started to install the X11SSH-CTF into the r5 but ran into an issue. The r5 has a middle preinstalled standoff but the X11SSH-CTF does not have a hole for that, as a result, the board is bent fairly badly. Is that normal?

For future reference, never, ever even think of leaving a standoff where there is no screw hole!

The whole "bent fairly badly" part scares me, but I don't see what components might be resting on the standoff.

But that's a secondary concern (mostly because it's rare). The huge issue is the very high probability of shorting something on the board, potentially frying components. Also known as "the thing standoffs are meant to avoid".

As for missing standoffs, that's a more nuanced discussion, but avoid those too.

And do not mix standoff types! Different sizes will lead to undesirable forces on the board, and different threads will inevitably be a pain in the ass.
I once managed to drive a 6-32 screw into an M3 standoff. It was a pain to fix that mistake and involved its own fair share of unpleasant force applications to the motherboard.

 

[PlaydohMask]

My PSU came in today and I installed all the hardware & FreeNas 9.10. Boots correctly, but now I need to figure out the software. Thanks for all the help everyone.

For anyone who is curious:
- I removed all the unnecessary standoff from the Fractal Design R5.
- PSU: Seasonic Snow Silent 750W
- 6x8TB seagate nas drives
- Samsung 850 evo 250GB as boot (overkill the price was close to the 128gb)

 

[PlaydohMask]

Ran some smartctl tests and also found out about solnet-array-test, which made things easier. The drives seems to be just fine but I didn't run int for more than 2 days. I still need to get around to running memtest86. I think I'll skip the CPU stress one as I don't think it'll provide much value.

I have a few software questions, should it be moved to another forum?

1. My writes to the freenas seems to be capped at around 11Mbps. Is there a better way to transfer my current external (usb 3.0) files? It seems like mounting NTFS file system is not recommended.
2. Is it possible to create jails on the freenas boot drive (250 gb ssd)? What is the recommended configuration? It seems like some of the jails (plex) would prevent the NAS drives from going to sleep if the jails are setup on the same pool?
3. Is it recommended to have a secondary NAS drive to do automatic backup important files in the same NAS box or should it be done manually to an external HDD?

Thanks everyone for all the help so far :).

 

[MikeeHig]

I have the same 3 questions

 

[mjt5282]

1) NTFS support is very old and not really supported, not recommended to go down that route.
2) I use SATADOM for my FN boot drives, they are fast and haven't failed in over a year. I would recommend a separate HQ SSD mirror pool for running jails. I bought some Intel S3700 240Gb SSDs for this purpose. Run iohyve debian8.4 for music audio streaming and plain separate FreeBSD jails for FreeBSD Plex Media Server and MRTG bandwidth plotting.
3) "First Rule in Government Spending, Why build one when you can have two at twice the price? ... Only, this one can be kept secret!"

Tape backup is recommended. Offsite transfer, rotating. Keep datasets small enough to copy to tape and/or singular disks which can be put into extra disk slots and replicated to. I do this method (not external USB) to replicate my music library to "cold storage" which is mostly offline. I also have offsite replication using rsync to my Systems Integration site. Keeping the ZFS datasets < 4Tb or 6Tb for cold storage makes sense.

I have also used (and hopefully continue to use) WD My Cloud (EX2) and previous models to pull data via rsync to separate locations. These little linux disks have ethernet and SSH capabilities so I use them at remote sites to power Sonos streaming and remote site backups.

 

[Ericloewe]

NTFS is okay for read-only.