BUILD First FreeNAS build, advises needed!

[drash]

Hello,
I plan to build my first DIY NAS, and I look then for some advises.

My goals are:

• Home usage to store files and stream pictures, movies and music in the house (XBMC, Sonos, JRiver applications running on other computers will access the shared datas on the NAS).
• +/-10TB usable storage capacity
• 1 additional HDD (2TB) to store non critical backups
• Reasonable budget with good purchase conditions in Europe (I'm from Belgium)

Based on the informations I have captured on this forum (thanks for it by the way), I'm convinced that ECC memory is the way to go to avoid enormous potential disaster!
But ECC means, supported MB, CPU and RAM ... and this is mostly an unknown world to me ...

Can you please help me figure out what kind of HW is the best fit for my above needs:

• MB: SuperMicro seems very expensive, maybe some AsRock or Asus can be good cheaper alternative?
• CPU: Xeon is probably an over kill for my needs, go for i3 or even lower??
• RAM: I would probably go with 16GB (2x8) ECC
• HDDs: RaidZ1 or RaidZ2, with how much disks of what capacity?

As I would like to keep my budget low, 2nd hand material proposal is also welcome.


Can you also clarify if my idea to add a separate HDD to store non critical backups/data (like disk image of my other PCs...) is ok?

Thanks in advance for your comments :)

 

[cyberjock]

You can do this research yourself. We have stickies on recommended hardware and such.

 

[drash]

You can do this research yourself. We have stickies on recommended hardware and such.

Hi Cyberjock, I already looked at the stickies, but the proposed configurations looks over powered for my needs.
It's why I'm looking for advises.

Here is the configuration that seems to be close to my needs:

• MB + CPU: ASRock C2550D4I
• MEM : 2x Crucial 8 Go DDR3 1600 MHz ECC CL11
• HDDs : 6x Western Digital Caviar Green 3 To SATA 6Gb/s
• + 1x 2TB HDD for backups (already owned)
• CASE: Lian-Li PC-V354 (already owned)
• PSU: Pure Power L7 300 W, Be Quiet (already owned)
• USB key for Freenas: Kingston DataTraveler Micro 8 Go Noir

I will go for a RaidZ2 on the 6x 3TB disks to get my 12TB storage.

Is this good?

 

[Dennis K.]

• MB: SuperMicro seems very expensive, maybe some AsRock or Asus can be good cheaper alternative?

You can get a modern X10SLL-F with 6 SATA ports for ~150€

• CPU: Xeon is probably an over kill for my needs, go for i3 or even lower??

You can get what ever you need. Just watch out for ECC support.Most people here either get a:

• Haswell Pentium for low performance needs
• An Haswell i3 for more performance and AES-NI support (hardware encryption).
• Or a Haswell Xeon when they are planning to do video encoding or need VT-d for running FreeNAS in an ESXi environment

• RAM: I would probably go with 16GB (2x8) ECC

Sounds fine. I'd avoid Kingston Memory, search for that topic here on the forums.

• HDDs: RaidZ1 or RaidZ2, with how much disks of what capacity?

This is a bit up to you. I'd recommend a 6 drive raidz2 with 3TB each which results in 12 TB of usable space. Look at WD Reds for instance.

Can you also clarify if my idea to add a separate HDD to store non critical backups/data (like disk image of my other PCs...) is ok?

Of course doable, but I don't really see the point. If you already got a raidz2 you can just add that seperate disk to said raid2 and benefit from the redundancy without losing disk space.

 

[drash]

Thanks you Dennis K. for your comments, appreciate :)

About the last point, in fact I would like to add a disk that I already own of 2TB. So I need to have it separate to avoid my all RaidZ to be alligned on that capacity.

In that scenario I will have 7 disks and only 6 SATA ports with the suggested MB.
Can I add a cheap controler to get 2 additional SATA ports?

 

[cheezehead]

Actually for a low power, low demand (not running a ton of jails) the ASRock board works fine. Need to be running 9.2 or later for the newer intel NIC drivers to be built-in to the FreeNAS release. I would have gone this route if I didn't want to run a virtual box jail, Plex jail, OwnCloud jail, ect on my setup.

For my needs currently I would go the Haswell E3 route to handle the CPU load, though currently my box still runs and at that point I'm waiting until Broadwell for the next upgrade sometime next Spring/Summer.

 

[Dennis K.]

Can I add a cheap controler to get 2 additional SATA ports?

I can't personally recommend a controller, but the IBM ServeRAID M1015 (flashed to IT mode) is being used by a lot of people here in the forum. As an alternative, there's the X10SL7-F with a total of 14 SATA (8 SAS) ports.