First FreeNAS Build. Compatibility check and general advice

[Inrix]

I'm doing my first FreeNAS build for a new 20TB Array that im planning on setting up and want some advice on if my current plan for it will work and if the parts I am planning on using are compatible...

Sorry for the length of this post <3

The PC/Main Parts:
Im planning on buying this: https://www.trademe.co.nz/computers...00.htm?rsqid=2b500849e2e84349b3f1c699fdea6512 Second hand, it has 6 SATA ports on it which is enough for all the drives I'm planning on using plus enough PCIE slots for network cards, an extra SATA card (https://www.trademe.co.nz/computers...40.htm?rsqid=2313b0555a7c41b099d226387c56a45f) for a boot drive and a TV Tuner Card (https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/TVNHGR1629/Hauppauge-tunersWinTV-quadHD-New-Model---WinTV-qua)

The Drives/Array Plan:
I currently have 3 4TB WD Blues one of which has a bad sector on it so I won't be using it.
Their current use is for storing a variety stuff:
- My Media Archive so TVShows/Movies/Photos&Videos etc
- My GoogleDrive which is what I use for backing up anything super important.
- A copy of old Server Archives for the community I run.
- A Steam Cache for games that I'm not currently playing that aren't on my SSD's in my main rig.
- Backups of old work I have done (Just more archives).

I currently only have about 700GB free out of the 12TB total between the three drives so I'm planning on getting another 4 of them from here (https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/HDDWD1940/WD-4TB-Blue-Edition-35-SATA3-Internal-HDD-5400RPM)
and putting them plus my current two that are fine (6 Drives) into a RaidZ setup.

The idea being that it should give me some redundancy (With important stuff being stored on GoogleDrive) and from what I have read around it should let me Read off the disks at about 5-6x the speed of one of the drives and write at 1x the speed of one of the drives. Though I read somewhere that with RaidZ the write speeds are apparently increased as well? So if anyone could clarify that, it would be great, if the write speeds are only the speed of one drive I would likely just get a SSD for a write cache. This should give me roughly a 20TB array.

Generally the only thing I would be using the Array for on a daily basis is watching my Media Collection, Downloading & Watching the daily Floatplane Videos from LTT, Downloading from steam (I plan to setup a steamcache on it so that I can cache all my downloads for quick installs to my SSD on my main rig) and probably some google drive backups too if possible...

Networking:
What I would really love is to be able to have 10Gigabit between the NAS and my Main Rig however they are probably going to be about 15-20m apart from each other and everywhere I looked the cost for two 10Gig cards plus that much cable was nearly 1k NZD... So, I decided that I might try a different approach.

I have fiddled around with SMBMultichannel before and it has worked great allowing me to move files between my server and main rig at up to 3gb/s with 3 nics in each machine, and according to this post: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/smb-multichannel.54926/ FreeNAS now aparently supports it. With the SATA card and the TV Tuner card I would have about 4 PCIE&PCI slots left which would be enough for me to throw a bunch of https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/NETTPL3468/TP-Link-TG-3468-32-bit-Gigabit-PCIe-Network-Adapte these into it. Or I might be able to put a single 4Port card in it but it depends on if I can get one I currently have working (Which I'm fairly sure is dead) or if I can take one out of my PfSense Router and use multiple of the above adaptors in that instead.

With either way It will give me another 4 ports on the NAS meaning I should be able to transfer at 5gb/s over the network using SMBMultichannel and just a bunch of Network Cables which I'm happy to have over paying stupid amounts for 10gig. (Though if you know of some cheap 10gig cards/cables that work in FreeNAS and would do a distance of around 15-20m please do tell me)

Software:
This ones kinda complicated... I want to run a bunch of things on the FreeNAS box alongside the main file storage:

Plex (Mainly for organising media but also for TV LiveStreaming & Recording to the NAS with the Receiver Card I mentioned above) < Accessing the 20TB Array
SteamCache (Specifically This: https://github.com/steamcache/generic for caching the installs of games over the network. Mainly so I can keep the SSD's in my main rig clean and whenever I want to play a game I can just install off steam at whatever max speed I can pull from the NAS) < Accessing the 20TB Array
Prometheus (https://prometheus.io/) & Graphana (https://grafana.com/) < Accessing a SSD
Node.js (For several website's/API's and also for the script that downloads daily FloatPlane videos previously mentioned) < Accessing the 20TB Array & a SSD
GoogleDrive

Now I know that I can run VM's and Docker through FreeNAS but I don't know how well this would actually work with everything above in regards to file system access, network access ETC. Im hoping that I will just be able to setup perhaps a single linux VM for all of them and allocate that a nice portion of resources and access to the drives so that stuff like SteamCache can serve stuff to me via all the adapters.

That's kinda it... Id really like some input as to what I could be doing better or what may or may not work... Or ways that I could improve upon it, and sorry for the length of the post :)

 

[Inrix]

*Update, Im chatting with someone over on the LTT Forms who has recommended these vv for 10gigabit supposidly they would work fine in FreeNAS? Does anyone know if there would be issues?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/MNPA19-XTR...266831?hash=item21371866cf:g:Nw8AAOSwJWFaXi5m
https://www.ebay.com/itm/10GBE-For-...895137?hash=item25ac067861:g:47UAAOSwyQtVxS8n

https://www.ebay.com/itm/15M-10G-OM...569406?hash=item1a38d407be:g:Qi4AAOSwNWxZ9rgm

 

[danb35]

I would likely just get a SSD for a write cache

There is no such thing as a write cache for ZFS.

On the 10G NICs, iXSystems seems to like Chelsio cards, and they've been working well for me as well. See https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/10-gig-networking-primer.42/ for more information on the subject.

 

[NotMyName]

Hello fellow NZer

I'm in the same situation as you are and building my first series NAS.

The model of Z400 you've specified is good except for few things:

• W3550 doesn't support the latest type virtualisation and you will need to upgrade it. (I've got L5640 as it was supported and lower TDP only 60W)
• You only have space for 2 builds in HDDs but could fit another 2-3 in 5.25 with brackets.

Few more notes:

• I generally would not recommend getting WD Blue or Green and especially from the same place/batch ( redundancy, redundancy ... redundancy) . I got 3 different drives (WD Red, Seagate IronWolf and Hitachi DeskStar all of them in 4Tb)
• Why are you worrying about the network? I would recommend building a first one and then take a look at it if you want to expand it.

If you want more pointers or got more questions feel free to ask.
+)

 

[Inrix]

A bit late now since I have most of the stuff.

According to the Intel Arc the W3550 supports Virtualisation? https://ark.intel.com/products/39720/Intel-Xeon-Processor-W3550-8M-Cache-3_06-GHz-4_80-GTs-Intel-QPI
I completely agree with the comment on Blues, but I already have 3 two of which I'm using and I couldn't afford the extra cost for getting 6 Reds. The data I'm storing on it is not mission critical as that's all stored on my GDrive so I think it should be fine.
As for the network the reason I wanted more than 1Gigabit is that one of the biggest reasons I'm building this is to get a faster speed when copying large files off it, ie Read Only. Its kinda annoying when you want to move say 100GB over to a SSD and have to wait over a hour.
And I'm planning on either getting a seperate case for it with more HDD mounts or just making my own Mounting System.

Also networking wise I now have some 10GBit SFP+ Cards that I will be using RE: https://linustechtips.com/main/topi...-build-compatibility-check-and-general-advice

Though I'm currently waiting on some SSD's and a few other things before actually starting the full build.

Thanks for the feedback though :)

 

[CraigD]

Sadly I have a spare HP ProLiant ML350 G5 with 32GB ECC Ram, one PSU, one CPU, and an M1015 connecting 6 3.5" hot swap bays not in use and I'm in Auckland

I'm in the process of adding a JBOD to my server (Working but not in yet in the enclosure)

Have Fun

 

[Inrix]

Damn... That would have been perfect :/
How much would you consider selling it for?

 

[oumpa31]

I am also building my first FreeNAS box i came across this because you said you were going to use a HAUPPAUGE WinTV-quadHD card and i am currently using the same in my win 10 machine but i would like to put it in the FreeNAS server.

I am wondering if it worked for you and if there was anything extra you had to do to get it to work.