FreeNAS Beginner questions relating build/other stuff

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themagictractor

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Hi all,

I'm in need of a NAS for photo/video storage and was initially planning on buying a pre-built NAS, but after a bit of research found I can repurpose my old PC as a NAS for substantially less money, and it'll be a fair bit more powerful using the magic of FreeNAS.

Before i jump in and go out and buy the bits i'll need I just wanted to double check that this'll all work as anticipated, and if anyone could answer any queries i have thatd be wonderful.

My old PC has an i7 2600/16gb of ram, and the motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD4-B3. I plan to sell my old graphics card since i figure i wont need it for this build, buy a small case (a Corsair 100R because it has 4 3.5" bays, is fairly small, affordable and understated), a 450w Gold 80+ PSU because my old 750w PSU is very sketchy and either a decent air cooler or a cheap liquid cooled solution for the i7 because it was just running off a stock cooler its whole life.

All up this shouldn't cost me more then $300 to get set up, which I've found is a lot cheaper then buying a pre-built NAS from brands like Synology or QNAP.

Now for my questions;

1) I want to be able to enable 10GbE speeds on this NAS. I've read online and on these forums and people are saying i'll need a 10GbE card both in my current PC and in this NAS PC in order to enable these speeds. The card's ive found which are the most affordable and most well mentioned are the Intel X540-T2 and the Chelsio T420-CR. If I buy two of these, stick one into the PCI-e 2.0 port on the old PC and one in the PCI-e 3.0 port on my new PC and then connect em with a CAT7 cable will I get 10GbE speeds? Or is there something more that needs to be done (other then enabling 10GbE speeds in the FreeNAS settings?)

From what I gather in order to be able to access the files at these speeds wirelessly or through the network i'll also need a 10GbE switch and router, but if i just want to connect it from my computer to the NAS directly through a cable, is this doable?

2) I also have a new Macbook Pro 15" (with the tb3 ports) and was wondering if there exists an adapter to be able to plug that into my NAS as well (as I do video editing in FCP) and acheive the full 10GbE speeds. I've found some for TB2, i'm assuming these are also useable with TB3?

3) Is there a plugin which will allow me to sync certain folders directly to Google Drive for cloud backup?

4) If I run RAID1 off two 6TB Seagate IronWolf drives, and then in a years time or so add another 2, is it fairly straightforward to get FreeNAS to recognize the drive change, and subsequently add more storage seamlessly? (stupid question probably but I literally have zero experience with NAS)

5) And lastly, is what I presented above feasible or am I really just better off getting something pre-built which has proprietary software on it thats user friendly? I love the idea of being able to re-use my old computer for this purpose and I'm eager to learn about more the backend side of things instead of just letting software do the job for me, but I don't know if i'm in way over my head here.

Thank you very much for reading, any help would be greatly appreciated
 

danb35

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Well, a few points:
  • Your hardware doesn't support ECC, which is strongly recommended if you care about your data.
  • At least in .us, you could buy a brand-new server (the HPE Proliant ML10 at tigerdirect.com) for under US$200, plus at least another 4 GB of RAM and whatever drives you want to install.
  • There is no solution that will get you 10 Gbit/sec over wireless. Really, there's no solution that will get you 1 Gbit/sec over wireless. Be happy if you get 100 Mbit/sec throughput over wireless. WiFi is not a performance technology; it's a convenience technology.
  • There are no settings in FreeNAS for network speed; it will automatically operate at the highest speed supported by your hardware.
  • There isn't a plugin for Google Drive, but rclone can be easily installed and syncs well with Google Drive--optionally including encryption. Though I vaguely remember seeing that this would be added with 11.1, due for release next month assuming the beta doesn't find too many show-stopping bugs.
  • Yes, you can easily expand your pool, but read all the available documentation first. It isn't hard, and it's well-documented, but it's still possible to put yourself in an undesirable situation that way.
  • If you just want to connect a single computer to your NAS at 10 Gbit speeds, you can just use a direct connection as you describe. If you want to connect two or more, you'll want a suitable 10 Gbit switch.
 

Ericloewe

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i'm assuming these are also useable with TB3?
If you can find an adapter. Realistically, a dedicated Thunderbolt 3 10GbE NIC is probably cheaper than the adapter plus a Thunderbolt 2 10GbE NIC.

If you just want to connect a single computer to your NAS at 10 Gbit speeds, you can just use a direct connection as you describe. If you want to connect two or more, you'll want a suitable 10 Gbit switch.
To expand upon this, you can have the server connected to the whole network via 1GbE and separately connect it via 10GbE, on a different subnet, to your client.

5) And lastly, is what I presented above feasible or am I really just better off getting something pre-built which has proprietary software on it thats user friendly? I love the idea of being able to re-use my old computer for this purpose and I'm eager to learn about more the backend side of things instead of just letting software do the job for me, but I don't know if i'm in way over my head here.
I'm biased, but in my opinion, pre-built NASes are generally crap. Expensive crap, too. Sure, they may have fancy UIs and the odd convenience feature, but you're at the mercy of the vendor for updates and patches and your data is never particularly safe. ZFS is an important step up in reliability and you're not locked into FreeNAS. If iX folds tomorrow (highly unlikely), you can pick up your pool and move to vanilla FreeBSD, one of the Illumos distributions, OS X (not that Apple has suitable server hardware anymore...) or Linux.
 

themagictractor

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Well, a few points:
  • Your hardware doesn't support ECC, which is strongly recommended if you care about your data.
  • At least in .us, you could buy a brand-new server (the HPE Proliant ML10 at tigerdirect.com) for under US$200, plus at least another 4 GB of RAM and whatever drives you want to install.
  • There is no solution that will get you 10 Gbit/sec over wireless. Really, there's no solution that will get you 1 Gbit/sec over wireless. Be happy if you get 100 Mbit/sec throughput over wireless. WiFi is not a performance technology; it's a convenience technology.
  • There are no settings in FreeNAS for network speed; it will automatically operate at the highest speed supported by your hardware.
  • There isn't a plugin for Google Drive, but rclone can be easily installed and syncs well with Google Drive--optionally including encryption. Though I vaguely remember seeing that this would be added with 11.1, due for release next month assuming the beta doesn't find too many show-stopping bugs.
  • Yes, you can easily expand your pool, but read all the available documentation first. It isn't hard, and it's well-documented, but it's still possible to put yourself in an undesirable situation that way.
  • If you just want to connect a single computer to your NAS at 10 Gbit speeds, you can just use a direct connection as you describe. If you want to connect two or more, you'll want a suitable 10 Gbit switch.

Thank you so much for the quick reply, I really appreciate it!

Just wanted to clarify, the 10GbE speeds from the cards i suggested, they have two ports in them, could I plug one cable into one PC and another into another PC (say my laptop with an adapter) and access the NAS from either computer at max speed?

With regards to the wireless, its okay, i'm not expecting insane speed, but in order to even connect the NAS to some sorta wifi i'll need to plug it into a switch and then that switch into my current router? Thats the only way to access my files from my phone or from any other computer thats not directly hardwired into the ports on the NAS itself correct?

As for the ECC memory, its something I didn't think of beforehand, I guess I can just sell the components I have and use them to buy cheap server grade hardware, although I am located in Australia and i'm not sure that site ships here, but i think you could easily find something for around that same price here with a bit of digging.

Again, thank you very much, this has made my head a little more clear on all this, i really appreciate it!
 

themagictractor

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If you can find an adapter. Realistically, a dedicated Thunderbolt 3 10GbE NIC is probably cheaper than the adapter plus a Thunderbolt 2 10GbE NIC.


To expand upon this, you can have the server connected to the whole network via 1GbE and separately connect it via 10GbE, on a different subnet, to your client.


I'm biased, but in my opinion, pre-built NASes are generally crap. Expensive crap, too. Sure, they may have fancy UIs and the odd convenience feature, but you're at the mercy of the vendor for updates and patches and your data is never particularly safe. ZFS is an important step up in reliability and you're not locked into FreeNAS. If iX folds tomorrow (highly unlikely), you can pick up your pool and move to vanilla FreeBSD, one of the Illumos distributions, OS X (not that Apple has suitable server hardware anymore...) or Linux.

Another answer before i could even finish my last, this place is brilliant! Thank you so much

This Thunderbolt 3 NIC you speak of, I'm assuming I just plug that into the NAS PC along with the 10GbE Intel card (in different pci-e slots) and then connect a tb3 cable from that to my MBP and a CAT7 to my PC to access the NAS from both devices?

And then connect that to my regular network to just get regular gigabit speeds so i can access the NAS from my phone or other PC on the network?
 

danb35

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the 10GbE speeds from the cards i suggested, they have two ports in them, could I plug one cable into one PC and another into another PC (say my laptop with an adapter) and access the NAS from either computer at max speed?
Yes, you should be able to do this. To do it properly, you'd need to set each port to an address on its own subnet.
With regards to the wireless, its okay, i'm not expecting insane speed, but in order to even connect the NAS to some sorta wifi i'll need to plug it into a switch and then that switch into my current router?
Yes; FreeNAS doesn't directly support WiFi. You could plug a WiFi router directly into the GbE port that's almost certainly on your motherboard, or plug both the GbE port and a WiFi access point into a gigabit switch.

Or spend a few bucks more, and greatly simplify your network, by getting a switch with a few (3-4) 10 GbE ports, and a good number of GbE ports, and run everything on a single network.
 

danb35

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This Thunderbolt 3 NIC you speak of, I'm assuming I just plug that into the NAS PC along with the 10GbE Intel card (in different pci-e slots) and then connect a tb3 cable from that to my MBP and a CAT7 to my PC to access the NAS from both devices?
No, it's a Thunderbolt 3 device that plugs into the Thunderbolt 3 port on your laptop. Like this. Expensive, though, at US$650.
 

Ericloewe

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This Thunderbolt 3 NIC you speak of, I'm assuming I just plug that into the NAS PC along with the 10GbE Intel card (in different pci-e slots) and then connect a tb3 cable from that to my MBP and a CAT7 to my PC to access the NAS from both devices?
No, you plug it into the client and connect it to the 10GbE NIC on the other side with Cat. 6/6a/7 cable.

Edit:
Ninja'd.
 

themagictractor

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Yes, you should be able to do this. To do it properly, you'd need to set each port to an address on its own subnet.

Yes; FreeNAS doesn't directly support WiFi. You could plug a WiFi router directly into the GbE port that's almost certainly on your motherboard, or plug both the GbE port and a WiFi access point into a gigabit switch.

Or spend a few bucks more, and greatly simplify your network, by getting a switch with a few (3-4) 10 GbE ports, and a good number of GbE ports, and run everything on a single network.

So with a switch it'd go

NAS>into switch>switch into router/pc/laptop/etc

instead of NAS>PC>Second PC>Router from first PC

Im assuming I can just buy a switch later on and simplify things in the future? Seems like itd be all plug n play afterwards.
 

themagictractor

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No, it's a Thunderbolt 3 device that plugs into the Thunderbolt 3 port on your laptop. Like this. Expensive, though, at US$650.
Ah yes, I was looking at this site and these products earlier. Just wasnt 100% certain where i'd use them, but after all this helpful info it's like a thick fog has cleared and I finally understand what the hell is meant to actually happen haha
 

themagictractor

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No, it's a Thunderbolt 3 device that plugs into the Thunderbolt 3 port on your laptop. Like this. Expensive, though, at US$650.
Wait, this little thing has 2 TB3 ports, could I buy a TB3 expansion card for my PC, sit that on my desk, plug in a 10GbE connection from my NAS into it and then from there plug in one cable to my macbook and one to my PC and effectivley get the same thing as if I were plugging in two different cables from the NAS directly?

Itd make life a lot easier and would be less clutter
 

Ericloewe

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Wait, this little thing has 2 TB3 ports, could I buy a TB3 expansion card for my PC, sit that on my desk, plug in a 10GbE connection from my NAS into it and then from there plug in one cable to my macbook and one to my PC and effectivley get the same thing as if I were plugging in two different cables from the NAS directly?

Itd make life a lot easier and would be less clutter
You could, but you definitely do not want to. Trust me on that one.
 

themagictractor

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You could, but you definitely do not want to. Trust me on that one.
This site doesnt ship to Australia anyway and i cant find anywhere that sells them so its out of the question i guess, but out of curiosity, why not?

Could I get a thunderbolt 3 card for the NAS PC and run a cable from that to my laptop (seeing as TB3 supports some insane data speeds), and a 10gbe card too and run that to my PC (on different nodes)? This is a far cheaper solution since TB3 cards only cost 100 bucks a piece vs like 650 for the desktop gadget you linked.
 
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Simple answer is the more complicated you make things the harder it is to get them to work right and keep working right. Let alone trying to troubleshoot the problems when they arise to get frustrated and throw even more money at it.

Even with 10Gbe the drives will be the limiting factor unless you dump some serious cash into the system's drives or setup a bunch of mirrors. Thunderbolt 3 is super fast but unless you are going to build your FreeNAS out with only SSD's and a ton of vDev's then it's mostly wasted.
 

themagictractor

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Simple answer is the more complicated you make things the harder it is to get them to work right and keep working right. Let alone trying to troubleshoot the problems when they arise to get frustrated and throw even more money at it.

Even with 10Gbe the drives will be the limiting factor unless you dump some serious cash into the system's drives or setup a bunch of mirrors. Thunderbolt 3 is super fast but unless you are going to build your FreeNAS out with only SSD's and a ton of vDev's then it's mostly wasted.

I see, thank you!

Out of curiosity, can I buy a used server for cheap with a bit of grunt and just use that for my NAS computer? Something like this IBM http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/IBM-x365...948856?hash=item210fcc01f8:g:b04AAOSwEzxYR5SR

Plenty of power and its dirt cheap. Im well versed in consumer grade PC hardware but with servers i'm a little confused if this would have 3.5" slots or PCI slots to add 10gbE expansion cards etc

Or is a rack server not really the way to go for something like this? There are also tower servers but i havent found a huge abundance of them like i have these rack servers (which are a dime a dozen and have plenty of power for hardly any money)
 
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I would probably pass on that for a couple reasons, first off it uses 2.5 inch drives and probably doesn't come with caddies so your cost of server just doubled cause the caddies are going to end up outrageous. And the drives are laptop sized and while you can get nas drives in that size they are more expensive.

The other reason is that it will use more energy over it's lifetime. That will probably use around 150 watts at idle. When it throttles up it will hit around 350 to 400 watts.

Look for something that is a little newer xeon and something that uses 3.5inch drives and has ALL the caddies included for those drives. As far as using a rackserver that is used it's no problem. A lot of them can be had for pretty cheap and it's server grade hardware that probably hasn't had a hard life so it will work just fine. Just stay away from anything that is using AMD and make sure you get ECC ram.

A Xeon E5-26XX would be a good find. But if you want to go cheaper a dual Xeon 56XX will just cost more power but make sure it's something that has 3.5 inch drives and caddies.
 

themagictractor

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I would probably pass on that for a couple reasons, first off it uses 2.5 inch drives and probably doesn't come with caddies so your cost of server just doubled cause the caddies are going to end up outrageous. And the drives are laptop sized and while you can get nas drives in that size they are more expensive.

The other reason is that it will use more energy over it's lifetime. That will probably use around 150 watts at idle. When it throttles up it will hit around 350 to 400 watts.

Look for something that is a little newer xeon and something that uses 3.5inch drives and has ALL the caddies included for those drives. As far as using a rackserver that is used it's no problem. A lot of them can be had for pretty cheap and it's server grade hardware that probably hasn't had a hard life so it will work just fine. Just stay away from anything that is using AMD and make sure you get ECC ram.

A Xeon E5-26XX would be a good find. But if you want to go cheaper a dual Xeon 56XX will just cost more power but make sure it's something that has 3.5 inch drives and caddies.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Dell-Pow...183551?hash=item211cfbc7ff:g:5UkAAOSwLF1YBCQM

There's this Dell which has 3.5" caddies, but I was just wondering if its possible to buy a cheap rack case like this https://www.scorptec.com.au/product/Cases/Server-&-Rackmount/69929-TGC-23650, cram it full o' drives, stick it into a rack case with a thin rack mount server and connect them together? Or will that case require extra hardware in which case the cost savings of getting it+a non 3.5" server (which there are so many around, but not that many 3.5" ones with all the caddies) all of a sudden become non-existant?

I do like the idea of a rack mount server since i'll be able to neatly put it with my 10gbE switch too and keep things super organized.

Also, does a standard PCI-e card slot right into it without issue or is there some other extension I need (for the 10gbe speeds)

These are probably silly questions, my apologies, but your help is very greatly appreciated!!
 

Ericloewe

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If you are going to cram something full of drives you are better off looking at a 4U like this http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4u/847/SC847A-R1400LPB

Anyway I know you are wanting to do things cheap which is understandable but you never really said what you actually want to use it for. That weighs a lot on how you build things out and you may not need a ton of horsepower under the hood if all you will have is a couple clients doing storage. For something like that you may be able to get by with an avoton based board.

Using a second case to store drives can be done but generally you end up using SAS and some sort of expander to do it correctly. And generally speaking the same as with networking the simplest thing is generally the better way to go and using a secondary case with an expander makes things much more complex than having a single case with everything inside.

On to some other information.... The case you are looking at using as an expansion is pretty much junk as far as that would go. It's setup to hold maybe 5 drives and you can't just throw drives in something and then be done with it. If you want something cheap that can hold up to 15 drives then https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147164 is a much better deal. I actually have it for my system, the downfall is the drives are a pain to access and if you load up all the drive bays you will need to swap the fans out for something with a little more airflow/pressure. That case will fit up to an eATX board like an x8dt6 Supermicro which has an onboard SAS controller so the board can support up to 14 drives without any extra's. That is exactly what I am using but I also run Plex along with a lot of other stuff and wanted to have the power to transcode on the fly.

The stuff I have seen on ebay that you are looking at to me is subpar (the dell uses ddr2 which means the cpu has a FSB which is said to slow things down, not to mention that half the caddies are missing, and who knows what the max sized drive the system will support) I think you may need to start looking at stuff in a higher price range and really nail down exactly what you need in the system/what it will be used to do. You also need to figure out if you want to pay a little more now and a less over the lifetime of the server or pay less now and more in electricity costs. Instead of jumping in and saying hey can I get this it's a server take the time to narrow down what you need to do now and in the future then plan accordingly. I built my system out over a year of getting parts and waiting for a good deal to happen. There is nothing wrong with it especially if you want to save money. But to just start buying without a plan will end up costing even more in the long run when you figure out that things either won't do what you wanted or just don't have everything you need.
 

themagictractor

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If you are going to cram something full of drives you are better off looking at a 4U like this http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4u/847/SC847A-R1400LPB

Anyway I know you are wanting to do things cheap which is understandable but you never really said what you actually want to use it for. That weighs a lot on how you build things out and you may not need a ton of horsepower under the hood if all you will have is a couple clients doing storage. For something like that you may be able to get by with an avoton based board.

Using a second case to store drives can be done but generally you end up using SAS and some sort of expander to do it correctly. And generally speaking the same as with networking the simplest thing is generally the better way to go and using a secondary case with an expander makes things much more complex than having a single case with everything inside.

On to some other information.... The case you are looking at using as an expansion is pretty much junk as far as that would go. It's setup to hold maybe 5 drives and you can't just throw drives in something and then be done with it. If you want something cheap that can hold up to 15 drives then https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147164 is a much better deal. I actually have it for my system, the downfall is the drives are a pain to access and if you load up all the drive bays you will need to swap the fans out for something with a little more airflow/pressure. That case will fit up to an eATX board like an x8dt6 Supermicro which has an onboard SAS controller so the board can support up to 14 drives without any extra's. That is exactly what I am using but I also run Plex along with a lot of other stuff and wanted to have the power to transcode on the fly.

The stuff I have seen on ebay that you are looking at to me is subpar (the dell uses ddr2 which means the cpu has a FSB which is said to slow things down, not to mention that half the caddies are missing, and who knows what the max sized drive the system will support) I think you may need to start looking at stuff in a higher price range and really nail down exactly what you need in the system/what it will be used to do. You also need to figure out if you want to pay a little more now and a less over the lifetime of the server or pay less now and more in electricity costs. Instead of jumping in and saying hey can I get this it's a server take the time to narrow down what you need to do now and in the future then plan accordingly. I built my system out over a year of getting parts and waiting for a good deal to happen. There is nothing wrong with it especially if you want to save money. But to just start buying without a plan will end up costing even more in the long run when you figure out that things either won't do what you wanted or just don't have everything you need.

You are correct, jumping in and doing this without much research isnt wise, and I figured the old servers likely had some sorta caveat that made their cheap price somewhat understandable.

My needs for the system are pretty straight forward, at the moment my entire photo/video editing is done off external hard drives (3 2TB WD Element drives). It works well for a single computer setup but I have no backup (except google drive uploads of final photos/videos) and the limitations of not being able to access my storage from other computers or my phone mean I really need to upgrade to something which I can access from other computers to do my editing there (I prefer to use Final Cut Pro for video edits which is only on OSx so if I want to edit 4K video I need to unplug one of the drives from my desktop PC and plug it into my laptop.

It's worked alright for the past 2-3 years but its starting to get very irritating and I worry because if one of my drives goes bust i'll lose a lot of work. My photography data is probably the most critical and important data I have, hundreds of thousands of raw images from the past few years and I'd really like something that is rock solid, reliable and works well, plus is fast and easily accesible enough that its convenient for me. In comes the NAS idea.

Also, i'd love a bittorrent client that means I don't have to leave my desktop PC on all night (its got fairly bright lights and the fans arent the most silent thing in the world), I dont enjoy doing it but its not the greatest annoyance to me. Having all the files on a easy to access server would allow me to browse them from my phone, laptop, pc anything (you get the gist)

Another thing i'd love to do although i'm not certain on how easy this is to do (and how safe it is) but i'd enjoy to get port forwarding working so I can access the drive from anywhere in the world and not have to worry about bringing heaps of drives with me when I travel, or if i'm at a cafe and need to get some work done or something. This is not crucial but would be a sweet thing if i could get it working with good enough encrpytion that means no one other then me has access to my files haha.

Being able to upload my data (selected folders) automatically to Google Drive once they get finished (like final photos/video clips) is important too, saves me having to do it manually.

And lastly, this might be possible with 10gbe but i'd love to be able to install games on the server and play them off my PC. At the moment I use my external drives to install games because I only have a 512gb ssd in my PC (and dont see the need for more since everything I do storage wise is external) I'm sure this is probably acheivable but thats something that'd be a great feature to get set up if possible.

I'm not against spending a bit more now rather then down the track but my needs arent crazy enterprise with hundreds of users accessing it so I doubt I need top shelf specs (and top shelf prices)

I just want reliability and rock solid performance to do the (Fairly light) tasks that I have for it, and my concerns about power use aren't that great if i'm honest, we have solar panels and get plenty of electricity coming in that we often have left over at the end of each month so something that uses a bit more power is okay to me. That said, this thing will be on 24/7/365 so I want it to be 100% positive that it'll run without issue. These ex servers have dual power supplys which is great for contingency, although I could always get a UPS.

The only issue I have with these old servers (the one I linked before is, like you said probably a bit too old, but this one here I was looking at has a few positive reviews especially on these FreeNAS forums http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Dell-R51...701282?hash=item4b243fb1e2:g:w64AAOSwx6FZtM8B, and is a lot newer with DDR3 memory) is the noise. seeing as this will likely need to be in my room under my desk I worry that even with a solid cabinet this things gonna make my room sound like an airport, however if theres a way to tone down the sound thatd be excellent too. My only other option is putting it on the other side of the house and running a 20m or so long cat7 cable from it underground to my room, but thats a very annoying task and if I can avoid it i'd be very happy.

Caddys are like $10 a piece for these dell servers and i don't have any plans to put more then 4 in at the moment anyway, so its an expensive i'm happy to pay for.

The other reason i was looking at these fairly affordable options is because, like you can clearly tell, i've never done this before, and thus i'd rather practice and experiment on slightly cheaper hardware and then upgrade in the future if i see the need to, rather then drop a huge chunk of change on expensive hardware and then realize Im in waaay over my head.

The whole "external SAS controller" idea is scrapped, like you said it'll be too complicated to get working and I doubt i'll need that many drives to be honest, even in the distant future.

I'm open to spending around $500 before drives on a system, any more then this and we reach pre-built NAS pricing (the Dell R510 with a 10gbe card will be just shy of 500aud), but any more then that right now i'm not sure I really want to do.

Open to other options though, provided they aren't ludicrously expensive.

I hope this helps clear up what exactly I want to do with this build, again thanks so much for the really detailed answers, this is all firstly helping me out a heap and also getting me more excited for the possibilities of FreeNAS!
 
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