BUILD First builder in need

[papanoel87]

Hi, it's me again. I'm building my first FreeNAS box. It'll serve as centralized storage and backup server for a group of 10~15 people. They do not need very much space or performance but the more the merrier (as always). On the other hand, they're utterly concerned about the reliability of their data. It won't hurt if they can have some sort of encryption.

With this landscape in mind and after large readings of the forums, I came up with this:

Motherboard: x10sl7-f
Micro: Xeon 1230v3
RAM: 32GB of Crucial CT102472BD160B (4x8gb)
HDD: 6x2TB WD Red (It's better performance-wise than 4x3TB with raidz2, right?)
Case: Fractal design r4
PSU: ¿¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?
BootDevice: Some corsair, sanDisk usb drive will be nice I think.
​

On top of that, I'll add a suitable UPS.

The psu may be a Silverstone ST65F-G 650W 80plus, but I'm not really sure about this one.

So now, what do you think?

Within reasonable limits, I can give a small bump to the budget but I can't see how.

I'm a bit worried about the scalability of this build (ram and processor at max., space-wise is a bit more relaxed but they won't need more). As far as I know, if I want more room for improvement, the next step would be a multiprocessor mobo but it's an overkill in this scenario imo.

Whatever you think you can add to this FreeNAS n00b, would be appreciated. Ty for reading!

 

[DataKeeper]

I haven't used the Silverstone PSUs before but have heard good things of them. The same 650 is available on Amazon for less and a $15.00 rebate as well to drop it even more. For only 6 drives you could easily go with the 450 as well for less then $100.

How much room do they require right now with current data and how much will be required each year forward? For cost per TB I'd say skip the 2TB drives and go with 3s or even 4s.

 

[papanoel87]

400GB and 200GB extra per year, not that much.

 

[marbus90]

In that case you won't need that mobo, an X10SLL-F, SLM-F, SLL+-F, SLM+-F is good enough. also the case can be downsized to a define mini.

PSU recommendation is seasonic G-360.

CPU-wise I'd either cheap out on the E3-1220 v3 or go all in with the 1241 v3. In any case the 1220 is sufficient.

6x3TB Reds are ~10TiB usable and certainly far lower priced per GB.

UPS I've found the APC BackUPS Pro series sufficient for a SoHo enviroment. The 900VA one powers my whole desk with 2x Dell Poweredge T20 (E3-1225 v3, 40GB RAM between them, 2x1TB 7200rpm, 1x2tb 5400rpm, 1x256GB SSD), speakers and screens and still holds up for 40-50 minutes at ~150W.

 

[papanoel87]

What about the resilvering time of a 3TB drive? Which usb drive would be nice to have as boot device? I'm looking for durable stuff.

 

[DataKeeper]

Many people use the USB Sandisk Cruzer Fit flash drives. Cheap at $8.99 for a 16GB drive. Get 2 and have mirror boot disks for $18 bucks. Pop them in internally if you have 2 on-board or in 2 external ports. They are small enough you'll never bump them. Heck, I had a hard time attempting to simply pull them out lol.

Your other option would be the Supermicro 64GB Sata DOMs which run $95.95 each and can also be mirrored. These are installed internally. X9 boards require an included power cable while X10 boards simply plug into the board without the need for a cable. A photo of them in my install.

 

[papanoel87]

I dont think in my case that 10x factor would be worth. I'll stick with the cruzer fit. TY. Btw, Do these DOMs work fine? I mean, do they pay for themselves in your case?

 

[DataKeeper]

Pay for themselves? LOL... Hell no! :D Those are in my personal home system I'm building. I wish they paid for themselves.. along with the 10GbE switch, 3 10GbE network cards, 18 4TB drives, 1000' of new shielded Cat6a throughout the house, etc. If I'm lucky the wife believes this is costing about 1/3rd what it actually is. ;) Darn near everything I own network wise is about 10 or more years old and I told her I'm redoing everything this year for another 10 years and to not look at my bills.

 

[papanoel87]

Oh! Maybe I couldn't say what I meant. I wanted to ask if they were worth their price.

 

[DataKeeper]

Well my 3 choices were Flash Drives, SSDs or Sata Doms. I wanted something faster then Flash Drives for updates so that knocks those out. SSDs would have required me to purchase an additional bracket for the 846 chassis I have. I'd have also had to run additional sata and power cables across the chassis. I honestly didn't want to run those extra cables. No other reason, just didn't want to. That left the Sata DOMs. With the X10 board I'm using I simply plugged them into the Yellow Sata ports and done. Simple, quick, clean to install and much faster updates. Note there really isn't any difference in boot speed.

So.. worth their price? That depends on the person. I bought them because they provide faster updates and didn't require additional cables and brackets. Cost was $200 bucks for 2 in order to mirror them. Buying 2 flash drives for $18 bucks does the same job.

 

[marbus90]

What about the resilvering time of a 3TB drive?

ZFS is smart and resilvers only the used bits of the HDD. Therefore a 6TB HDD takes the same time as an 1TB HDD if you only have 100GB on it.

 

[DataKeeper]

@marbus90 .. Would 1TB of large compressed files take any longer than say 1TB of small text files? Also, would 1TB of thousands of image files take any longer than a 1TB of large blue-ray rips? Aside from just minutes that is.

 

[marbus90]

I'd assume the tons of text files would take longer due to ZFS checksumming per block, one block gets created per file at least, block size variable with lz4 compress... so basically reading 3kb textfile from disk, checksumming 3kb, reading next 3kb, checksumming said 3kb... I'd assume it would use more ressources compared to huge media files with 1M block size.

 

[DataKeeper]

Thank you.. that is what I figured.

 

[DataKeeper]

Oh! Maybe I couldn't say what I meant. I wanted to ask if they were worth their price.

btw, to add to my above comment.. By using the DOMs directly on the board I continue to have the option to purchase the extra internal mount bracket if I want to expand or use sata drives for a zil or l2arc if ever needed.

 

[papanoel87]

I'm back with another question. ¿Do you guys know any _good_ cpu cooler? Also I think I'll purchase some chassis fans. Are noctua's good enough? If you have some tips about this, I'll appreciate'em.

 

[DataKeeper]

I use the Noctua NH-U9DX i4 Cooler on the E5-1650V3 CPU and its great. Its beastly large and uses 2x80mm fans and is very quiet. Fans usually run at a constant 900rpm and keep the CPU under 38C. On high they fun at 1600rpm and drop CPU temp by 3-4C. I also replaced the 3 screaming internal fans of a NetGear GS748T switch with 3 40x10mm Noctua fans and it could almost be placed on a desktop. In the case of the 40x10 fans.. the fans themselves are completely quiet however its the shape of the case holes NetGear created that causes the whooshing sound.

One thing I have to mention about Noctua.. while they are expensive they do not cheap out. Extremely nice packaging! I actually have to question if it needs to be SO well packaged! Also, the corner mounting holes all have rubber insulators, rubber pull though mounting plugs, y-splitters, extenders and even noise reduction cables are included with them. You certainly get when you pay for, even if you don't need it all! :D

I've given thought about buying some to replace the 5 internal fans of the 846E16 chassis and 4 1200w PSU fans but thats something to play with at a later date. They are not cheap and I've spent enough on this thing for now lol ;)

 

[calgarychris]

Pay for themselves? LOL... Hell no! :D Those are in my personal home system I'm building. I wish they paid for themselves.. along with the 10GbE switch, 3 10GbE network cards, 18 4TB drives, 1000' of new shielded Cat6a throughout the house, etc. If I'm lucky the wife believes this is costing about 1/3rd what it actually is. ;) Darn near everything I own network wise is about 10 or more years old and I told her I'm redoing everything this year for another 10 years and to not look at my bills.

I'm sorry, can your wife please talk to mine?!?! You lucky guy...

 

[DataKeeper]

I'm sorry, can your wife please talk to mine?!?! You lucky guy...

Now THAT could go south for your bank account very quickly :D and ruin any chance for a NAS build! Beware of what you wish for.. ;)

Really though.. I AM a very lucky guy!

 

[calgarychris]

Build the NAS and spend the shoe budget...

;)