First FreeNAS budget build - looking for advice

[ST0708]

Hi Everyone,

I am trying to build my first budget FreeNAS box for home use. It will be mainly for storing family photos/videos, movies, musics and 4K video streaming.

I am thinking of making a non-ECC build with ASRock J3455-ITX and 8G RAM.
http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/J3455-ITX/index.us.asp

I understand that I won't be able to take advantage of ZFS without ECC, so I will use UFS instead.

Would this CPU&MB combo be OK for my home use? any suggestions?

Thanks in advance

 

[SavageAUS]

Realtek network has a bad rap and that board has it. As for the rest I wouldn't put my data on it, storing "family stuff" needs to be safe.
Perhaps if you provide your location and a budget you will get advice.

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

 

[m0nkey_]

I understand that I won't be able to take advantage of ZFS without ECC, so I will use UFS instead.

UFS hasn't been available in FreeNAS since 9.2.1.9, we're now on 9.10.2-U3 and we're about to go FreeNAS 11.

The board simply isn't up to snuff what you're asking it to do. It certainly won't handle 4K streaming and the Realtek NICs will be somewhat a nuisance.

Suggest you take a look at the hardware recommendation guides:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/freenas®-quick-hardware-guide.7/
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

 

[ST0708]

Perhaps if you provide your location and a budget you will get advice.

I am based in Sydney

 

[Dice]

4K video streaming.

If you are referring to 4k transcoding, or serving 4k to a client that can transcode the material makes a huge difference. The latter is fine for virtually any FreeNAS capable box.

 

[iammykyl]

I am based in Sydney

Please give your budget

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I won't be able to take advantage of ZFS without ECC

You can use ZFS without ECC. What you can't do is protect against random in-memory bit-flips, which are bad news for any filesystem. People who choose ZFS typically do so, at least in part, because they care about their data, so choosing ZFS without ECC is a bit paradoxical.

 

[Stux]

Even without ECC, choosing ZFS is probably better for your data than anything else.

Invariably, the cheapest option is to buy a used server.

If you do decide to build a budget system, avoid Realtek Ethernet.

 

[ST0708]

Please give your budget

About $300 AUD (excluding hard drives), not sure if it is possible. Thanks

 

[KrisBee]

This article will give you another slant on using a J3445-itx as a NAS:

http://www.technikaffe.de/anleitung...assiv_gekuehltem_apollo_lake_4_kern_prozessor

It gives a rough comparison of FreeNAS v. openmediavault on your proposed hardware.

On a home network, I've not found realtek nics with FreeNAS to be so bad as some people say, as long as your CPU has the grunt to cope with the work the NIC offloads compared to say an intel nic. If need be the m/board has a single pcie so you could add an intel nic.

If your not going to use ZFS, then I'd personally go with Linux/ext4 perhaps using openmediavault. Otherwise for around $300 AUD perhaps you can find a deal on a HP Microserver Gen8 - four drive bays and it can boot freenas from a usb stick which can be internally mounted. It's has relatively low energy consumption for 24/7 usage.

 

[ST0708]

If you are referring to 4k transcoding, or serving 4k to a client that can transcode the material makes a huge difference. The latter is fine for virtually any FreeNAS capable box.

Sorry for not making it clear, I am still pretty new to this.

Today, I set up Plex server on my PC to test 'Direct Play' on my Sony 4K TV with Plex App. I found that the TV can play my 4K@30fps home videos as long as the network has enough bandwidth. In this case, I guess I may just need the latter. I noticed that 4K to 1080P transcoding is quite CPU intensive, it put up all cores of my Ryzen 1700 to 70%+ load for about 10 seconds or even longer when doing a 1min video transcoding.

I have no idea how the quad-core Celeron on this J3445-itx would perform in this scenario.

 

[ST0708]

This article will give you another slant on using a J3445-itx as a NAS:

http://www.technikaffe.de/anleitung...assiv_gekuehltem_apollo_lake_4_kern_prozessor

It gives a rough comparison of FreeNAS v. openmediavault on your proposed hardware.

On a home network, I've not found realtek nics with FreeNAS to be so bad as some people say, as long as your CPU has the grunt to cope with the work the NIC offloads compared to say an intel nic. If need be the m/board has a single pcie so you could add an intel nic.

If your not going to use ZFS, then I'd personally go with Linux/ext4 perhaps using openmediavault. Otherwise for around $300 AUD perhaps you can find a deal on a HP Microserver Gen8 - four drive bays and it can boot freenas from a usb stick which can be internally mounted. It's has relatively low energy consumption for 24/7 usage.

Thanks for sharing this article, it is very helpful. It would be good if they could include some performance testing on that build. I was also thinking of using openmediavault.

I will check HP Microserver Gen8.

 

[lopr]

I understand that I won't be able to take advantage of ZFS without ECC, so I will use UFS instead.

that is not correct. ECC is just another factor how to prevent data corruption. However if you don't care about data-corruption or ZFS I would not choose FreeNAS.

and you won't be able to do on the fly 4k transcoding with that budget. Just serving the files is no problem.

 

[SweetAndLow]

The cheapest freenas system you can build is a Dell t20 or t30 and Lenovo ts140. You will have to buy some more memory for them and drives.

A Dell t20 is currently $300 usd which is right in your budget if my conversion was correct.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[m0nkey_]

I have no idea how the quad-core Celeron on this J3445-itx would perform in this scenario.

It would probably do it, but it'll take a while before you get any playback. If you're hitting 70% on all cores on a Ryzen CPU, then the Celeron doesn't have a chance. If I were you, I'd save a little longer in order to buy a decent FreeNAS box that's going to last you 5+ years. The Celeron will run nice, but you'll likely to outgrow it very quickly.

 

[Stux]

When you start plex transcode it's going to race to fill its outgoing buffer, ideally you need to wait for the CPU usage to reach a steady state after the initial surge for meaningful avg usage numbers. I'm not sure if you'd reach steady state on a 1 minute video

 

[ST0708]

When you start plex transcode it's going to race to fill its outgoing buffer, ideally you need to wait for the CPU usage to reach a steady state after the initial surge for meaningful avg usage numbers. I'm not sure if you'd reach steady state on a 1 minute video

Yes, I think 1 minute video is too short for me to see the steady state. I felt like that CPU just completed full transcoding on the video file during the initial surge, as the load dropped to near nothing afterwards.

 

[ST0708]

What about Pentium G4560 for this budge build? It is $73 AUD.

 

[SweetAndLow]

What about Pentium G4560 for this budge build? It is $73 AUD.

You keep talking about budget but you ignore the most budget focused option and the best bang for your buck.

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[danb35]

Really, your best budget option is going to be a used server. @Mirfster loves his Dell C2100s; the R510 is another option; either can be had in the US$300-400 range in the US. Hardware availability overseas just doesn't seem to be as good, unfortunately. Failing that, something like a T20 won't get you the horsepower or drive bays, but it'll be new and it will use a lot less power.