BUILD First-Time Build - Hardware Components

[`MoLGoLD]

Good morning all;

Finally broke down and decided I needed something a little more robust/flexible in terms of NAS...

Purpose:
Small home NAS for archiving of digital pictures and streaming media beyond small server/desktop attached USB drives that will support plans to convert 400+ DVD/BD library to online copies

Priorities/Principles:
1. Flexible - need to have capacity to expand size/services without needing to reinvest in hardware (aside from additional drives)
2. Small footprint - don't have a ton of room available so mATX/ITX is likely the right neighborhood
3. Not a standard tower case - need something that is SOMEWHAT visually appealing as this may end up sitting on a desk/table/wall-unit
4. Require some level of redundancy but do not require to the nth degree (hence planning on using Raid-Z)
5. OS will (hopefully) boot from an internally mounted flash drive

Uses:
1. Audio (MP3/AAC - iTunes Libraries...~80GB) and Video Streaming (AVI/MP4/M4V/MKV - mostly SD but some HD 720/1080p content - ~600GB)
2. Time Machine Backups (2 Macs...~500GB combined)
3. Photo storage (~250GB for iPhoto)

Generally there are only 2-3 clients connected at any given time, predominantly via devices connected via 802.11n wireless.

Hardware Specs:
Motherboard - ASRock FM2A85X-ITX FM2 AMD A85X (Hudson D4) HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Mini ITX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS - http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157357
CPU: AMD A4-5300 APU Dual Core Processor Socket FM2 3.4GHZ 1MB 65W Retail Box - http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=76273&vpn=AD5300OKHJBOX&manufacture=AMD
Case: Fractal Design Node 304 mITX Compact Case Black 6X3.5INT - http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=75056&vpn=FD-CA-NODE-304-BL&manufacture=Fractal Design
Power Supply: Seasonic SS-350ET 350W ATX12V 20/24PIN ATX Power Supply - http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=7...manufacture=Seasonic Electronics&promoid=1277
RAM: Kingston KHX1600C9D3P1K2/8G 8GB Kit 2X4GB 1600MHz 240PIN DIMM DDR3 Nonecc CL9 HyperX 1.5V - http://ncix.com/products/?sku=68090&vpn=KHX1600C9D3P1K2/8G&manufacture=Kingston
HDDs: 3x Western Digital Red 1TB SATA3 64MB Cache 3.5in Internal Hard Disk Drive HDD - http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=74267&vpn=WD10EFRX&manufacture=Western Digital WD

The HDDs ended up being the biggest compromise as I had originally planned on doing RAID-Z w/ 3TB WD Reds but couldn't afford it based on the current budget. This was looking like it was going to end up an mATX project (which was disappointing because I fell in love with that case) until I found the ASRock board last night.

Concerns:
- Is the P/S going to be adequate to support expansion to fill all 6 3.5" internal slots with a drive? A few people I've spoke to (that I trust on the matter) have indicated as much but would greatly appreciate more opinions
- Budget won't allow me to include an SSD for additional cache at this point in time - this would be added down the road (cost permitting of course)

Curious as to the thoughts/concerns/sentiments of others - I feel like I've done what I can in terms of searching to see if the onboard LAN is supported etc. but I've only been lurking for about a week, so would love to hear some input from the more experienced builders out there.

Cheers

 

[cyberjock]

So are you or aren't you going with RAIDZ1? If you aren't, I think you should wait until you can. 3 drives in a stripe is just asking for fail. Even a RAIDZ1 isn't that great, but it's FAR better than a stripe. If you stripe and you have a disk that can't stay online and functional you'll lose the entire thing. Not a good place to be considering the time you're going to spend ripping 400+ disks.

One thing you should take away from building a FreeNAS server, build it right the first time so you don't lose your data, and learn this lesson the when you build it right the second time.

PSU should be fine. Not sure about the NIC. If it doesn't work just get an Intel NIC. :P

 

[`MoLGoLD]

So are you or aren't you going with RAIDZ1?

Sorry, I can see how that lost clarity

I AM going to set it up with RAIDZ1 - the compromise is that I think I had originally planned to go w/ 3TB HDDs instead of 1TB and had originally planned to go RAIDZ2 but eventually decided that having that many parity disks was beyond what I personally felt I needed in terms of redundancy (although the more I've read, the more I wonder on this one...)

Hope that helps clarify - thank you VERY much for your feedback RE: PSU!

 

[titan_rw]

Keep in mind the argument against single parity vdevs (raidz1 and 2 way mirrors) is not purely the chance of total failure of 2 disks. (although that is a factor too).

The biggest concern over single parity vdevs is during rebuild. When rebuilding the pool, you've used up all your redundancy. You're relying on all the remaining drives to not only 'not fail completely', but to operate completely flawlessly during rebuild. Considering that normal desktop drives (on average) return one bad bit every 11tb's, each 3tb drive you have left in the pool has about a 25% chance of returning bad data, that is now uncorrectable. This is of course assuming the drives are completely full, but it is a worse case scenario. In the case of rebuilding a 3 drive raidz1, you've got a (worst case scenario) 50% chance that one of the two remaining drives is going to flip a bit.

If you're only going with 3 hard drives, then raidz1 is what I would do.

However, if you can afford 4 drives, then raidz2 will give you the same useable storage, but far greater resiliency against drive failure, and bitrot.

 

[`MoLGoLD]

Titan_RW:

Thanks for shedding some light on that...I keep coming back to the expectation that something is going to go wrong during the time where I'm at lowered redundancy...be it double-disk failure or a bad bit during that time period.

And of course, if I want to include that 4th drive, doing it sooner rather than later would be wise (as in, doing it when I bring up the first pool as opposed to adding more disks with their own redundancy later).

Small case is looking less and less my friend.

(Amazing how rigs like IBMs XIV pull this off...but then again, as has been mentioned - in an enterprise, you'll have backups for worst-case scenario :))

 

[ssgoku129]

Hey MoLGoLD,

how's the NAS doing? going to buy this and get a decent PSU, anything you've noticed in FreeNAS that I should look out for?