BUILD First NAS build - Much advice wanted please!

[Dwayneson]

Hi All,

Firstly thank you for taking the time to read this and hopefully provide advice. I am a complete novice to the world of building computers. I am basically you're average joe who knows how to use windows and common programs OK and that's about it. I have spent many hours over the last couple months trying to educate myself reading online and talking to local computer shops so that I could hopefully build the NAS I am after. I'm sick of having 3 external HDD's plugged in to my laptop and all running 24/7. I have not learnt much about FreeNAS yet but from what I know it works well and it supports kodi so I have tried to put together 2 NAS builds that suit it. There are probably a lot of features on certain motherboards that would be beneficial but unfortunately I may not be able to make use of them due to my lack of knowledge. Anyway, I would very much appreciate your thoughts/advice whether they are positive or negative.

I'll start by saying what I want to use it for:
- storage of all my media. I currently have approx 1TB of stuff that is extremely important (family videos/photos) and 5TB of stuff that is less important (my ripped blurays/itunes music library). This is just on external HDD's at the moment with no back up. Both of these will continue to expand over time. Its hard to say how much but maybe 3TB/year? I plan to keep a back up of my important stuff on the external HDD's once they have all the other media transferred to the NAS.
- streaming said media using ethernet cable via router to multiple kodi boxes (likely to be WeTek Hubs when they arrive on shelves, 2 in my house, and 1 in my mums house via plexbmc or plex). I don't think there will be a need for transcoding as the hubs should play everything I've got but it wouldn't be the first time I'm wrong.
- I want to look in to running sickbeard/couch potato
- low power if possible as it will be running 24/7

The first build is the less expensive one that I would prefer to get if it is suitable for everything I need.

Case - Fractal Design FD-CA-DEF-R5-BK Define R5 Black $ 179.00
Motherboard - ASRock E3V5-WS $ 188.98
CPU - Intel Core i3 6100 $ 163.00
Memory - Crucial CT16G4WFD8213 16GB DDR4-2133ECC $ 165.00
Boot drive - Samsung MZ-75E120 850 EVO 120GB 2.5" SATA III SSD $ 92.00
Storage - WD WD80EFZX 8TB Red $ 519.00
PSU - Corsair CS450M 450W 80+ Gold $ 110.00
Total $ 1,416.98

The second build is more expensive and therefore I would prefer to avoid it if it's not necessary.

Case - Fractal Design FD-CA-DEF-R5-BK Define R5 Black $ 179.00
Motherboard - Supermicro X11SSM-F $ 397.98
CPU - Intel BX80662E31220V5 Xeon E3 1220 V5 $ 309.00
Memory - Crucial CT16G4WFD8213 16GB DDR4-2133ECC $ 165.00
Boot drive - Samsung MZ-75E120 850 EVO 120GB 2.5" SATA III SSD $ 92.00
Storage - WD WD80EFZX 8TB Red $ 519.00
PSU - Corsair CS450M 450W 80+ Gold $ 110.00
Total $ 1,771.98

I am generally a sucker for paying a bit more for things if I can expect them to perform better or last longer so if there is a case for either of those I may lean towards the expensive one. And of course I am more than happy to spend less if I am going overboard with anything. I have put in a single 8TB drive for now because it will take all of my media and I don't want to limit myself. Although, thinking back, the 8TB might be a bit excessive given that these builds can handle 6-8 drives and if I get all 8TB that is 6x8=48-10% is 43TB. If I have 6TB now and grow at 3TB/year it will take 12 years to fill up. But who knows maybe it will grow faster than that. I've selected most things based on information I've got from these forums and tried my best to research as much as I can so please be nice :)

I have probably missed some useful information as it is just passed midnight here in AUS. Feel free to ask if there is anything else I should say to help you help me.

Thank you!

 

[Bidule0hm]

This is just on external HDD's at the moment with no back up.

You are asking for trouble here... please backup any important data right now.

The first build is the less expensive one that I would prefer to get if it is suitable for everything I need.

Case - Fractal Design FD-CA-DEF-R5-BK Define R5 Black $ 179.00
Motherboard - ASRock E3V5-WS $ 188.98
CPU - Intel Core i3 6100 $ 163.00
Memory - Crucial CT16G4WFD8213 16GB DDR4-2133ECC $ 165.00
Boot drive - Samsung MZ-75E120 850 EVO 120GB 2.5" SATA III SSD $ 92.00
Storage - WD WD80EFZX 8TB Red $ 519.00
PSU - Corsair CS450M 450W 80+ Gold $ 110.00
Total $ 1,416.98

The second build is more expensive and therefore I would prefer to avoid it if it's not necessary.

Case - Fractal Design FD-CA-DEF-R5-BK Define R5 Black $ 179.00
Motherboard - Supermicro X11SSM-F $ 397.98
CPU - Intel BX80662E31220V5 Xeon E3 1220 V5 $ 309.00
Memory - Crucial CT16G4WFD8213 16GB DDR4-2133ECC $ 165.00
Boot drive - Samsung MZ-75E120 850 EVO 120GB 2.5" SATA III SSD $ 92.00
Storage - WD WD80EFZX 8TB Red $ 519.00
PSU - Corsair CS450M 450W 80+ Gold $ 110.00
Total $ 1,771.98

I am generally a sucker for paying a bit more for things if I can expect them to perform better or last longer so if there is a case for either of those I may lean towards the expensive one. And of course I am more than happy to spend less if I am going overboard with anything. I have put in a single 8TB drive for now because it will take all of my media and I don't want to limit myself. Although, thinking back, the 8TB might be a bit excessive given that these builds can handle 6-8 drives and if I get all 8TB that is 6x8=48-10% is 43TB. If I have 6TB now and grow at 3TB/year it will take 12 years to fill up. But who knows maybe it will grow faster than that. I've selected most things based on information I've got from these forums and tried my best to research as much as I can so please be nice :)

My advices:

- please use a good PSU, like a Seasonic G-450 for example, Corsair CS/CX series are not good enough for a server IMHO.
- the 1231 is recommended over the 1230 and 1220 ones IIRC.
- with 500 $ you can have 4x 4 TB drives instead of one 8 TB one and you can use RAID-Z2 ;)
- do not use striped drives like you want to do because when (not if) you'll lose one drive you'll lose the whole pool. Use RAID-Zx or striped mirrors.
- RAID doesn't replace backups (even RAID-Z3), do backups of any important data.
- your boot device is expensive, go for a smaller SSD, you can even get an used one on ebay for really cheap.
- please read all the links after "Members' threads:" in my signature.

 

[Jailer]

You're going to have to re think your hard drive setup. If you're starting with ~5TB of data with a planned 3TB/year expansion you're going to need to start with a LOT more available hard drive space. You also haven't mentioned what type of vdev/pool layout you plan on going with either.

 

[Spearfoot]

Storage - WD WD80EFZX 8TB Red $ 519.00

@Dwayneson, I think you may have missed the whole point of using FreeNAS, which is to achieve redundant, safe data storage on multiple drives. Using a single drive, as you indicated in your original post, defeats this purpose.

At the very least, you need a pair of 8 TB drives configured as a mirrored vdev to form your pool. Then you can expand your pool size by adding additional mirrored pairs as your storage requirements grow. A mirrored pair of drives gives you redundancy, i..e., you can lose one of the two drives and yet not lose your data. Note that this doesn't mean you don't need backups; you'll need backups, too.

Beyond mirrors, there are parity-based configurations: RAIDZ1, RAIDZ2, RAIDZ3. These provide even more redundancy, at the expense of space. For example, my main pool is comprised of 7 x 2TB disks in a RAIDZ2 vdev. Two of those disks are used to store parity, so I only get the capacity of 5 disks, but I can lose 2 disks without losing my data.

There is a tremendous amount of reference material on this site that you can use to increase your understanding and as an aid in determining the best pool layout for your needs. After further study, you may decide, just as an example, that a RAIDZ2 pool of 4 x 6TGB disks better suits your needs than a pair of 8TB disks in a mirror. Here are a couple of good links to get started:

Cyberjock's Hardware recommendations
Cyberjock's Slideshow explaining VDev, zpool, ZIL, L2ARC and other newbie mistakes!

 

[Dwayneson]

Hi All,

Thank you very much for your advice. I have read through all the threads and watched the power point. I learnt a lot from them, thank you!

Now that I have a (slightly) better understanding of how FreeNAS works and what hardware and knowledge is required to get it (and keep it) running properly I think that it all might be a bit too much (cost and knowledge) for me. Basically, I've thrown in the towel haha. I have backed up my irreplaceables on an external hard drive and will run the risk of losing my "replaceable" data, even though I know its more of a case of when a hard drive fails rather than if a hard drive fails.

So again I thank you for your advice., You have saved me from spending the extra money on the hardware (server grade board, ECC RAM, all HDDs upfront) to properly run FreeNAS when I probably would not have had the time or knowledge to learn how to run it.

Thanks
Dwayneson

 

[silverbull]

You've gone huge leaps between that high spec NAS design and back to a backup on an external drive. Really you should ask yourself what's your use case? It seems like you are just looking for a backup solution, if so use crashplan cloud, it's solid and a lot cheaper than that NAS box you designed. Or you could buy a raspberry pi with an external USB drive and just push your backups across the network to that automatically for about the same price as 2 years of crashplan.

Now if you want data be available on your network so multiple devices can all access the same data at the same time then a central server of some sort comes in to play.

 

[danb35]

Also keep in mind that you can get a perfectly serviceable FreeNAS box for quite a bit less than you're talking about. Prices are probably higher in .au, but in the States you can get the Dell PowerEdge T20 starting under $200 (new from Dell), and the Lenovo ThinkServer TS140 for around $300. Add a little RAM and whatever drives you want, and you have a suitable server.

 

[Dwayneson]

Ok thanks for those options, I'll have a look in to them.

A bit of a novel about my situation and thought processes to date to try and explain how/why I've ended up where I am. Currently I have 2 external HDD's plugged in to my laptop which is networked with my other devices. So my laptop and external HDDs are running 24/7. Now my external HDD's are full and I dont have any more USB slots on my laptop so I thought it would be a good idea to build a NAS. So I designed a NAS that could store all of my data and run kodi and plex.

Case - Fractal Design FD-CA-DEF-R5-BK Define R5 Black $ 179.00
Motherboard - ASUS B150M-K $ 112.00
CPU - Intel Core i3 6100 $ 163.00
Memory - Crucial CT8G4DFS8213 8GB DDR4-2133 $ 51.98
Boot drive - Samsung MZ-75E120 850 EVO 120GB 2.5" SATA III SSD $ 92.00
Storage - 1 x WD WD80EFZX 8TB Red $ 519.00
PSU - Corsair CS450M 450W 80+ Gold $ 110.00
Total $ 1,228.98

Then I started reading about FreeNAS and convinced myself that I should run with it so that I have a safer solution for all of my data. That's when all the FreeNAS research began which led to my post above. After reading the replies and all the info that came with them I put together the build below to see what it would cost me to run FreeNAS "properly?".

Case - Fractal Design FD-CA-DEF-R5-BK Define R5 Black $ 179.00
Motherboard - Supermicro X11SSM-F $ 397.98
CPU - Intel BX80662E31220V5 Xeon E3 1220 V5 $ 309.00
Memory - 1 x Crucial CT16G4WFD8213 16GB DDR4-2133ECC $ 165.00
Boot drive - 1 x Samsung MZ-75E120 850 EVO 120GB 2.5" SATA III SSD $ 92.00
Storage - 6 x WD WD30EFRX 3TB Red (RAIDZ2 - 12TB storage) $ 1,002.00
PSU - Seasonic G-450 450W 80Plus Gold $ 119.00
Total - $ 2,263.98

I realised this was a $1,000 more than what I previously had designed (taking in to consideration the extra 4TB storage) and decided to try and design a cheaper alternative. So I came up with the following motherboard/CPU combo which would bring the total to $1,908.98 and save me $355.00.

Motherboard - ASRock E3V5-WS $ 188.98
CPU - Intel Core i3 6100 $ 163.00

This was still $688.00 over my original design. After reading the info provided I thought I could at least lower the risk of losing all of my data at once by running with 2 x 4TB HDD's instead of 1 x 8TB. Not to mention the small cost saving. So I made the swap and came to the final? design of

Case - Fractal Design FD-CA-DEF-R5-BK Define R5 Black $ 179.00
Motherboard - ASUS B150M-K B150M-K $ 112.00
CPU - Intel Core i3 6100 $ 165.00
Memory - 1 x Crucial CT8G4DFS8213 8GB DDR4-2133 $ 51.98
Boot drive - 1 x Samsung MZ-75E120 850 EVO 120GB 2.5" SATA III SSD $ 92.00
Storage - 2 x WD WD30EFRX 4TB Red (No RAID - 8TB storage) $ 464.00
PSU - Seasonic G-450 450W 80Plus Gold $ 119.00
Total $ 1,182.98 ($722 cheaper than the lower spec FreeNAS design)

I know this is not a safe solution for my data however I think that I am willing to take the risk of losing it given that it is all replaceable (although a pain in the bottom). I am definitely going to back up my irreplaceable data to the external HDD's that will be otherwise unused. Although I guess I am writing all this because I am still not fully convinced that this is the right answer for me but I don't think I ever will be haha.

Thanks again all.
Dwayneson

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Case - Fractal Design FD-CA-DEF-R5-BK Define R5 Black $ 179.00
Motherboard - ASUS B150M-K B150M-K $ 112.00
CPU - Intel Core i3 6100 $ 165.00
PSU - Seasonic G-450 450W 80Plus Gold $ 119.00

Or you could replace these with:
1x PowerEdge T20
It's not as sexy, but it's an effective solution.

Storage - 2 x WD WD30EFRX 4TB Red (No RAID - 8TB storage) $ 464.00

At least consider:
Storage - 3 x WD WD30EFRX 4TB Red (RAIDZ1 - 8TB raw storage) $696

 

[Dwayneson]

Thank you for the recommendations. The Dell Australia website says the T20 is not available anymore. The

I could definitely consider RAIDZ1 however I think I would need to upgrade the RAM to ECC and the motherboard to support it. The cheapest of each of those things I could find online available in Australia are
Motherboard - ASRock E3V5-WS $ 188.98
Memory - 1 x Crucial CT16G4WFD8213 16GB DDR4-2133ECC $ 165.00
So that adds another $180 to the build compared to the non-ECC combo.

One question I do have is, can you create a vdev with HDD's that already have data on them or do they need to be formatted? I am assuming its the latter.

Thanks
Dwayneson

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

What about a T130?

I could definitely consider RAIDZ1 however I think I would need to upgrade the RAM to ECC and the motherboard to support it

ECC RAM is recommended regardless of what type of storage layout you choose.

can you create a vdev with HDD's that already have data on them

No, any existing data will be destroyed.

 

[silverbull]

Note that OP is in Australia, prices of dell T20 and HP microserver with sufficient ram added end up very similar if not a bit more expensive than building your own box

Motherboard - ASUS B150M-K B150M-K $ 112.00
CPU - Intel Core i3 6100 $ 165.00
Memory - 1 x Crucial CT8G4DFS8213 8GB DDR4-2133 $ 51.98

Don't build a freeNAS box without ECC RAM. If you really need to save the money on hardware look for a different solution, with FreeNAS and non ECC you won't know you have a problem until it's too late. Also using drives with no redundancy negates the purpose of freeNAS. Just use any old OS and share the files on the network, use the OS you are most familiar with so it's easier to recover the drives for you when they are failing (as that will happen at some point if it hasn't already to you).

Suggest to get your head around it easier you split out the hardware cost without disks and price disks separately as you will need to pay for the storage regardless. Then firstly decide how important the data is to you so you understand how much disk you need to purchase. If it really is throw away data and no impact if you loose it then don't pay for any redundancy, just buy a USB hub and another external drive for your laptop. But if loosing the data would cause you issue then you need a mirror or raid 5 or raidz1 or raidz2. For me, I'm comfortable with raid 5 or raid Z1 and a good backup strategy.

Once you know your storage requirements choose your product after that. A revivied second hand windows desktop with software raid may be enough for you, or maybe it's got some disk raid options via the motherboard. Or you could step up to a second hand raid controller from ebay. Or an old box with Linux and a secondhand raid controller could do it. It's really a personal choice here and price is a deciding factor. There are lots of NAS type products out there that can be done cheaper.

IF you do decide freeNAS take the ECC advise. In Aus you will pay a premium but I found that premium wasn't too much higher. Supermicro motherboard from newegg and RAM from crucial.com were the only two things that made sense to buy from overseas due to local prices then everything else was close enough in price in AU to not warrant the potential return/warranty issue from OS versus buying locally eg CPU was $5 more locally and 3TB HDD's were $17 more locally. I found Mwave online store to be best price on average so that things could be consolidated to one delivery price.

 

[Dwayneson]

OK that is great advice thank you.
By now you can probably tell that I change my mind like I change my underwear lol. I've decided I want to have raid 5/raidz1 level of protection from drive failure and I will continue to back up my irreplaceables.
Thank you very much for those mobo and ram references. I also use mwave but your those references will definitely help me save some money if I go the freeNAS way.
So that's where I'm stuck at the moment. Im not afraid of learning a bit but since I've only ever used windows, have no experience with command line stuff (as you can tell by my bad language) and the PowerPoint presentation I read above has scared me a little with the knowledge required to get freeNAS working the way you want it to, I feel windows 10 storage spaces parity is worth looking in to. So that's what I've been doing and I've read a lot of mixed reviews/forum posts, as usual. To help with my decision making, does anyone here have any experience with windows 10 storage spaces or any advantages/disadvantages of it for my purposes? That is holding large media files and using kodi to make them available to wetek cores/hubs (kodi boxes) around my house and the plexbmc or Emby plugin to make them available to another wetek hub in another household. I also plan use couch potato/sickbeard (no experience to date) and down the track I will be building a new windows pc to run video editing software and possibly store the raw video data on this NAS.
Thanks again for all your help.
Dwayneson.

 

[Dwayneson]

For anyone who is interested... I have just convinced myself that the best option for me to maximise the SATA ports on the Supermicro X11SSM-F (8 SATA ports, 1 with small SSD) and the Fractal Design FD-CA-DEF-R5-BK Define R5 Black (8 drive bays) is to purchase all 3TB drives up front. See below... I know I was just complaining about the cost of my original system but this makes me feel better about spending the money upfront :) FYI prices are in AUD and obtained from MWave online store today. The last option is just to see how much the drives would have to reduce in price by the time I am ready to expand the system for it to be the same cost/TB as the first option. I presume I would get there in about 2 years given that I already have 4-5TB. I don't think the drives will be almost half price by then...

 

[silverbull]

Check what platforms emby, couch potato and sickbeard can run on, your OS decision may come down to application requirements. Other than that windows can do the job trade off is it's fat and slow and costs money to buy but you are familiar with it. That being said windows will be fine for streaming media and transcoding it if you have the cpu horsepower. Any of the unix like OS's will have a significant ramp time for you if new but distro's like freeNAS should take most that work away if you just want to stick with functionality in the web GUI, but you are already talking about other stuff that will have you at the CLI for sure. Maybe best to try an old pc with a Linux distro and see if you can set up your apps in a headless design (with no GUI) first to see if you can mount that learning curve. Reason I say headless is i'm assuming the FreeBSD jails in freeNAS are configured without any GUI desktop environment so setting up your apps in jails will need familiarity doing it via CLI. FYI I'm a windows admin that recently set up a headless seedbox on raspberry pi with open vpn and tinyproxy, it was a hair pulling experience at first but after a bit things start falling in to place. If you don't have an old pc then pick up a raspberry pi. This way you will get a feel for what you are getting yourself in to before you buy any gear.

Also if worst comes to worse I decided for my freeNAS build that it needs to be capable of running windows and other Linux based distros in case I change my mind on freeNAS. When I looked at it I spent about $100 more on the motherboard and $50 more on the RAM than I would have with consumer gear that would run other non freeNAS stuff BUT I also got a MB that can run in the basement without a monitor and keyboard (IBMI redirects these over the network to a remote PC) so that is very helpful for any other build I may do.

 

[silverbull]

If you want that 8th sata port for your storage array you can buy 16GB USB stick and install the OS on that or buy 2 and make them a mirror. That way you boot from USB disk, info I have from the good folks on the forum is use the sandisk USB 2 units and it all works fine just slower when doing OS updates and booting but other than that the OS runs in memory once loaded. I got two of these for the OS https://www.mwave.com.au/product/sandisk-cruzer-fit-cz33-16gb-usb-flash-drive-aa62869

 

[Dwayneson]

They all seem to run freeNAS according to my research. People tend to have issues with setting them all up correctly but most or all of them to be solved on forums from what I can tell.
OK it's good to know that I could fall back to the windows option if I struggle with freeNAS. I think I'd prefer to spend the bit extra on hardware, save on software and give it a go. Thanks for helping me get ton this decision (I think).
Thanks for thexample USB suggestion.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

purchase all 3TB drives up front. See below

Looking at your options where the drive purchases are split makes me want to remind you that expanding a pool requires planning. For example, if you had 3 drives initially and then bought 4 more later, you would have the following options:

1. Add a 2nd 4-drive pool to the system, resulting in two distinct storage pools.
2. Add a 4-drive vdev to the existing pool, resulting in a single pool made of two unmatched vdevs (works, but not recommended).
3. Destroy the pool and rebuild it with 7 drives.

 

[Dwayneson]

OK thanks for that advice.
I will be going with the USB option as mentioned by silverbull so that gets rid of that problem. I will either get 8 straight up or 4 now, 4 later.
One thing I forgot to ask (actually I did but my last post was cut off for some reason), how come the USB 2 flash drive is recommended for the boot drive when the motherboard has USB 3 ports? Perhaps saving the USB 3 ports for something else should you want to use them?
Thanks
Dwayneson

 

[silverbull]

how come the USB 2 flash drive is recommended for the boot drive when the motherboard has USB 3 ports

apparently the USB3 units get hotter and have a higher failure rate. I don't think the speed of the usb 2 versus 3 will make a difference with these USB's as the actual memory chips in them are quite slow so that would be the limiting factor