FreeNAS Build. Need Advice

[Nitrobuggies]

Hey,

I am hoping you guys can answer my questions. Been trying to do a fair bit of research, and narrowed most things down to a few options. Just want some expert opinions on it, as well as if what i wish to do is possible or even the correct way to do it. I live in Australia if that helps, finding some parts is proving tricky, but do able.

So I am looking at building myself a NAS box. Finally gotten sick of not having a proper solution in place. It will be used for local backups of my Macbook Pro (time machine?), and a Surface Pro 3. So if something happened we had a local backup of the device/hdd. We already backup important data to an external drive and cloud storage, But i want something that will also backup the whole computer, so if something happens to one of the devices we can get a replacement and get it going again as if nothing happened. As well as storage for all of our media (movies, Tv Shows, Pictures etc). It will be streaming media to a few different devices, 1 PC, 2 Rokus, iPad, Macbook, Surface. At most maybe 2-3 streams at a time. I have a few more questions relating to what i can get FreeNAS to do, but will save them for later once i work out hardware first.

For the Hardware I'm stuck between two choices for MB/CPU. I already know to make sure i get whatever RAM is suggested by the MB manufacture. Looking at using either HGST or WD Red drives, depending what i can get at a good price at the time.

System Config:
MB: X10SLH-F or X10sl7-F - Not sure between the two. Price difference isn't to high
CPU: Intel G3258

System Config 2:
MB: AsRock C2750D4i

Both systems would have the following

RAM: 16gb ECC ram from the verified list for the MB
HDD: 6 3TB WD Red/HGST
OS: Been reading a few people suggest not to use a USB stick and instead use a SSD. I have an old SSD in my HTPC which i could use, or can always get one. Any suggestions on what to get, for example certain size?
Case: Fractal Design R5
PSU: 400w Bronze certified, depending on whats offered from where ever i get the parts from. Always had good success from Silverstone, Corsair, Antec
Also looking at a UPS. But haven't done much research so far.

Thank you for any help. I know most of this has most likely been asked before, i tried a quick search and have been lurking on these forums for the past few weeks, trying to read and understand as much as possible.

 

[nightshade00013]

The X10sl7-F will give you SAS ports which means a lot more connectivity to the board for drives now and in the future compared to the X10SLH-F All things being equal get the X10sl7-F As the cost of a SAS controller later on will cost a lot more than the difference between the boards. You will want to flash the SAS controller to IT mode for FreeNAS use but it's not that complicated as long as you take it slow and read things a couple times.

As far as using SSD's for the OS, it's not needed especially if you are looking at the X10SLH-F as it only has 6 sata ports for use and you want to use 6 HDD's. Most people here use two USB drives that are mirrored or two sata DOM's and they are rarely written to or read from so the probability of wearing the drives out is quite small before you outgrow the system anyway. Speaking of HDD's your should be fine just remember RaidZ1 IS NOT RECOMMENDED, so use raidZ2 or RaidZ3.

When you purchase the ram make sure that you get two 8GB sticks not four 4GB sticks, the board maxes out at 32GB and if you start running jails for things you will want more memory.

For streaming you may want to look at PLEX installed in a jail a lot of people use it, me included.

For the case think of the drives and airflow needed to keep everything cool and remember that at some point you may need to replace a drive or want to add 6 more. To expand the size of the storage available you have two options, replace all drives or add more drives. That case will work for what you have planned now but will frustrate you if you need more storage later on and don't want to replace your current drives.

Eventually all PSU's will fail, that said make sure you find something that is trusted. I know a lot of people here use Seasonic one's. I would personally go up to at least a 500 watt PSU though, each drive will take a decent amount of power to start up and unless you are going to stagger them 400 watts may be a bit anemic.

When you have everything together make sure you Memtest the ram and Burn in the HDD's, better to find flaws when you start than a year in.

 

[Nitrobuggies]

Thank you so much for the advice. Given me a proper hardware list to shop for

Only issue in having is finding the right ECC ram that's on the MB approved list. Haven't had much luck finding any in Australia yet. If I were to purchase from over seas where's a good place to go??

 

[Bidule0hm]

I got my RAM directly from Crucial (hard to find another supplier at decent price in France...) if it can help ;)