BUILD First FreeNAS build review and advice requested

[BackwardsCire]

Hi All,

Finally doing my first FreeNAS build (will use latest stable version) and had some questions on configuration.

Here are the specs of the build:

Lenovo TS140 Server chassis
Xeon E3-1225V3 / 3.2 GHz
16GB ECC RAM (2x8GB to start, can add more 8GB sticks if needed)
16GB SATA DOM for boot device
3x 3TB WD Reds
1x 80GB Intel SSD
Intel NIC onboard (I believe, if not, I’ll add another)
Intel PCIe 1000 GT Gigabit card
CrashPlan backup
3TB External USB drive (or more for rotating secondary, point in time backups)


Purpose
CIFS and AFP file share server for my home, 2-3 users, 4-5 client computers (mix of Mac and Windows), pretty low utilization
iSCSI target for ESXi 6 VMs (3 or 4VMs total, some Windows, some minimal install CentOS)
DLNA host for some movies to stream to my workout area


Proposed config
After reading a bunch of threads I have settled on the following config, but would love some advice on anything that I’m doing that is ill advised. 16GB is what I’m starting out with RAM wise, but will have two free RAM slots for expansion later if needed. I have the 80GB intel SSD laying around so I wanted to use that as the cache drive to augment RAM, and then the 3x3TB WD Reds will be the main storage drives and I was going to use them in raidz. I’ll dedicate one NIC for ESXi iSCSI traffic and the other for normal end user traffic and management. ESXi system is a basic Dell T3500 and will have minimal on board storage.


Q’s
- Is more RAM right off the bat needed or just nice?

- do I need to worry about block alignment with the red drives?

- Should I bother using the SSD as a cache drive or better to shoehorn in another 3TB RED? I just worry about cooling as this case is tight for 3 full size HDDs as it is and my current usage is about 2TB on my current file server. Storage growth has been slow.

- If I should go with 4x 3TB drives, then what raid level?

- Any special configs on the FreeNAS side for ESXi?



Anything else I’m missing?


Thanks in advance for the help!

 

[Ericloewe]

iSCSI target for ESXi 6 VMs (3 or 4VMs total, some Windows, some minimal install CentOS)

This can get rather painful on such a low-performance pool. You'd ideally be looking at a few striped mirrors.

I have the 80GB intel SSD laying around so I wanted to use that as the cache drive to augment RAM,

It's not that simple. L2ARC with only 16GB of RAM is probably counterproductive. For SLOG, you'd need something better, probably.

3x 3TB WD Reds

RAIDZ isn't particularly good at keeping your data safe, compared to RAIDZ2.

- Is more RAM right off the bat needed or just nice?

iSCSI is a difficult workload. More RAM will probably be needed.

- do I need to worry about block alignment with the red drives?

No.

- If I should go with 4x 3TB drives, then what raid level?

RAIDZ2 for data safety, striped mirrors for performance.