BUILD First NAS build recommendations/feedback

[theomolenaar]

I'm in the process of building my own NAS. My current NAS is a Synology Diskstation DS414. At first the DS414 was ok. It's energy efficient, low maintenance and easy to install software packages. The biggest disadvantages for me is that it's unable to transcode when using Plex Media Server and that it's a 4-bay disk station. Hitting the maximum storage limit is just a matter of time. So I did some research and found out that FreeNAS could be my software solution for a dedicated home build NAS. For the hardware part I could use some help. Any tips, suggestions and recommendations on this build are very welcome. Thanks in advance.

I did a fair amount of research on every component. This is my current build:

• CPU Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor
• Motherboard Asus P9D WS ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
• Memory (RAM) Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 (ECC Unbuffered - CT2KIT102472BD160B)
• Boot Drive Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (MZ-75E250B/AM)
• Storage (8x) Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (WD40EFRX)
• Case Fractal Design Define R5 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case
• PSU Corsair RM 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply

More info on this build: PCPartPicker
The above build has a compatibility issue which I'm ignoring at the moment. It needs 3 additional SATA 6 Gb/s compatible ports. The Asus P9D motherboard has 6 SATA 6GB. So I will need an extra SATA PCI card with at least 3 SATA ports. And if I want to install 2 more HDD's in the 5,25" cages I need 2 more SATA ports.
Any recommendations on a 5+ port SATA PCI card?

REQUIREMENTS

Expandability (in storage)
I want to be able to add HDD's when necessary. So I will start with my 4 HDD's from my Diskstation. The Define R5 case supports up to 8 HDD's. If I need more space I could use the 5,25" cages and install 2 more HDD's. 10 HDD's is more than enough for me.

Silent
This server will be used as a home server, therefore, installed in the meter cupboard. This meter cupboard is in the hallway. Because it will run 24/7 and my bedroom and office are at the other end. The less noise the better. The possibility of optimizing fan speeds would be a great benefit.
As for the case I decided to go with the Define R5 because it’s designed to be ‘silent’. Other silent cases I found: Antec P100, Nanoxia Deep Silence 5, Corsair 550D and the NZXT H440.

Energy efficiency
This new server will run 24/7. Transcoding will be done a few hours a day when using Plex. The rest of the day/night some (lightweight) software packages and scripts will be running in the background. No gaming or overclocking.
Are there any components in this buid that could be switched for a more energy efficient one? Is the 550W PSU overkill and should I opt for a lower powered?

Plex transcoding and ECC support (for motherboard & CPU)
I want to be able to transcode up to 4 streams in 1080p. For a single 1080p stream Plex advices to have a PassMark score 0f 2000. The Xeon cpu has a PassMark of 9609. So that will be more than enough.
I decided to build a NAS that supports ECC. After some research I found out that not all Intel CPU's support ECC. See this list for ECC support. Most XEON cpu's have ECC support.
> Any recommendations for a cheaper CPU with a Passmark of at least 8000 and support for ECC?
> I3's, i5's and i7's have some ECC support but a lower PassMark score. Is there any Intel i3, i5 or i7 that supports ECC and has a 8000+ PassMark score that I'm not aware of?

Operating System
FreeNAS is my first choice for the operating system. But I want to be able to run other OS’es too. Ubuntu Server or Desktop also caught my attention. For hardware requirements see here. FreeNAS doesn’t mention any GPU as a requirement, but Ubuntu Server and Desktop do. Which brings me to the next requirement.

Headless server
The server will be installed in the meter cupboard and managed from another computer in the network. This suggest that I don’t need any videocard. However, if I want to run an OS with a GUI then I do need a video card or onboard GPU.
> Am I right that the currently selected hardware doesn’t have any GPU?
> Which GPU do you recommend for my use case? I don’t want another spinning fan inside my ‘silent’ case. Onboard GPU or a separate GPU card? Therefore, do I need another motherboard? Any recommendations?

Thanks again. Looking forward to seeing your recommendations and feedback. :)

 

[jgreco]

There's an excellent sticky or two around here describing more appropriate hardware to the task. That might be a better starting point than trying to cobble together some workstation grade board to make a server out of it. Especially since you want to run headless. No one would put a GPU (really?!?!) in their NAS. You use the built-in video capabilities on the mainboard, which is something you don't get on a workstation, but is standard on a server board.

 

[jgreco]

Also, you might want to ponder that "silent" and "dissipating 100+ watts of power" often combine to create "e-z bake oven".

Plus, why waste such a nice SSD on such a trite task. Get the smallest cheapest SSD you can find.

 

[BigDave]

For the hardware part I could use some help. Any tips, suggestions and recommendations on this build are very welcome. Thanks in advance.

I'll post a link to the threads jgreco is referencing above
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

 

[theomolenaar]

I'm aware that my energy efficiency requirement is a bit silly with this NAS build. but hey....if i can do anything to waste less energy (and money) then I'm up for it.
I want to install Plex on the SSD for fast loading and FreeNas (or maybe Ubuntu). I could do with a 120GB SSD. I will have a look into the stickies that you mentioned.

 

[jgreco]

You cannot install anything other than the FreeNAS firmware on the FreeNAS boot device.

 

[theomolenaar]

You cannot install anything other than the FreeNAS firmware on the FreeNAS boot device.

ah ok. Good to know! thanks. Information about the hardware to use with Freenas is very fragmented on this forum IMHO. Despite all the efforts of the forum members. Have to do some more digging to get this kind of useful hardware tips. I have been reading the pages BigDave posted. Very informative. Have to do some more research on ECC registered vs ECC unbuffered. What do you guys use?

 

[jgreco]

You don't have a choice of registered vs unbuffered with the E3's. It's unbuffered, period.

There's a lot of information about hardware selection and requirements in the manual, as well.

 

[Dice]

If you are interested in getting a Supermicro build, check these guys.
Give them a call and you'll be sorted quickly in terms of compatibility.

 

[rungekutta]

There's an excellent sticky or two around here describing more appropriate hardware to the task. That might be a better starting point than trying to cobble together some workstation grade board to make a server out of it. Especially since you want to run headless. No one would put a GPU (really?!?!) in their NAS. You use the built-in video capabilities on the mainboard, which is something you don't get on a workstation, but is standard on a server board.

GPU isn't such an outlandish idea - one of the stated requirements was streaming media transcoding, and GPU-assisted transcoding, when it works, is much more efficient than through the CPU. Alas I think support for this in Plex is pretty limited, and presumably even more so on FreeBSD than under Windows...? So in practise probably not useful, today anyway.

Re those sticky links, I found the hardware recommendations one very useful when I recently built my own system, however they could do with updating to include the X11 range.

 

[rungekutta]

If you are interested in getting a Supermicro build, check these guys.
Give them a call and you'll be sorted quickly in terms of compatibility.

Agreed, I recently bought from them and being one of the few suppliers of SuperMicro in the region, it's fortunate that they are both helpful and quite good on price too.

 

[jgreco]

GPU isn't such an outlandish idea

It's fundamentally a headless NAS appliance. The fact that someone could make an argument to add audio drivers for an audio card so they can have their NAS play their music collection hasn't panned out to date, and adding drivers for multiplexed video cameras to allow the NAS to be used as a DVR also hasn't happened. In general, iXsystems does not seem to want to add hardware support for unusual purposes, probably because there's a good argument to be made that it introduces new avenues for problems. Since we're talking real systems and not hypothetical possibilities if you wrote your own NAS and your own media center, I feel reasonably safe saying that no one would put a GPU in their NAS. Total waste.

Re those sticky links, I myself found the hardware recommendations one very useful when I recently built my own system, however they could do with updating to include the more recent X11 range from SuperMicro.

Potentially. However, don't get too uptight about it. The one thing that Skylake brings to the table is the 64GB support. Aside from that, there's only very modest advantages over even a five year old Sandy Bridge. See

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...kylake-freenas-build.40711/page-2#post-259082

 

[rungekutta]

The one thing that Skylake brings to the table is the 64GB support. Aside from that, there's only very modest advantages over even a five year old Sandy Bridge. See

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...kylake-freenas-build.40711/page-2#post-259082

Yes. Plus broader support for ECC memory within the CPUs available (e.g. i3:s, do they support ECC on Sandy?)?

In any case, where I am the X11 were the same price as previous gen so there was no premium to pay. At least when buying new.

 

[jgreco]

You can look up the ECC support for most CPU's on ARK and be about 90% certain of its correctness.

 

[rungekutta]

You can look up the ECC support for most CPU's on ARK and be about 90% certain of its correctness.

Thanks. That confirms it - significant ECC support for i3 came with 4th Gen (Haswell), very patchy support in Sandy or Ivy. Same with the Pentium class.

 

[SweetAndLow]

GPU isn't such an outlandish idea - one of the stated requirements was streaming media transcoding, and GPU-assisted transcoding, when it works, is much more efficient than through the CPU. Alas I think support for this in Plex is pretty limited, and presumably even more so on FreeBSD than under Windows...? So in practise probably not useful, today anyway.

Re those sticky links, I found the hardware recommendations one very useful when I recently built my own system, however they could do with updating to include the X11 range.

If looking for GPU supported type things a good place to start is ffmpeg support on freebsd. At this time I don't think it supports GPU transcoding. I wouldn't worry about it because you can always add a GPU later or by the time it's supported you will want to build a new server anyways.

 

[Dice]

by the time it's supported you will want to build a new server anyways.

This illustrates well the difference in mindset between the typical 'bleeding edge hardware enthusiast on windows' and ...BSD.

 

[jgreco]

This illustrates well the difference in mindset between the typical 'bleeding edge hardware enthusiast on windows' and ...BSD.

Generally correct. I don't think we ever buy bleeding edge hardware here, because we really want things to work correctly, without lots of messing around and unexpected surprises. I've kinda watched in interest/amusement/etc as things like Haswell came out and all of a sudden everyone "had" to have the new platform for their builds, then promptly ran into the Kingston memory debacle and the USB3 woes, among others. Since there's really no significant improvement in X10 over X9, this was just a lesson in self-inflicted pain for those adopters. Coulda bought the X9, it'd have just worked, and you'd get your stuff done without all the drama.

 

[Dice]

all the drama.

Isn't that the beauty of windows usage? ;)
Suddenly comparing the "Windows experience" to any random reality "lock people in a house - get them drunk - extract drama"-show isn't too far fetched xP

 

[theomolenaar]

If I would like to install Ubuntu Server or Desktop on a build with a Supermicro motherboard. Will I get into any trouble with driver incompatibilities? In other words. What server motherboards are recommended if I want to run Ubuntu instead of FreeNAS.