FreeNAS for small business. Will this FreeNAS? Intel or Supermicro MB?

[Desynt]

Building a FreeNAS for my small business(video production). Yes I am new to this but I still want to build my own and learn.

CPU: Intel - Xeon E3-1275 V6 3.8GHz Quad-Core Processor
Memory: Kingston ValueRAM DDR4 PC19200/2400MHz Intel ECC CL17 2x16GB
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Plex Media Server data)
Storage: 4x Seagate - IronWolf 10TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (40TB)
Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA G2 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply
Case Fan: Noctua - NF-F12 industrialPPC-2000 IP67 PWM 71.7 CFM 120mm Fan
Case Fan: 2x Noctua - NF-A8 PWM 32.7 CFM 80mm Fan
Motherboard: Intel S1200SPLR (Or should I go with a Supermicro motherboard instead?)
Bootdisk(Mirrored): 2x Force Series™ 3 60GB SATA 3 6Gb/s Solid-State Hard Drive (I have these collecting dust already)
Case: Inter-Tech IPC 4U-4088-S
Wired Network Adapter(10GbE): dual-port Chelsio S320E
Total price: ~$3000

What it will be used for:

• Storage for up to 5 people.
• PLEX for up to four multiple streams at the same time(1080p) but would be nice if we also could stream at least one 4k video without issues.
• Be able to send a download link to customers so they can download a specific file. Using a torrent client or even winrar is usually too advanced for the customer
• 10gb connection between the NAS and only two PCs(Directly connected to each other with expansion cards SFP+)
• Host for a homepage in the future

ZFS raid mirrored.

Questions:
What is your opinions and recommendations on my build? Will it work? Is it overkill?

Striped mirrored or just mirrored?

Intel S1200SPLR or Supermicro X11SSM-F? I have to get another CPU to update BIOS on the supermicro to make v6 cpu work? It also does not have support for igpu?

Do I need dual-port NIC for the PC's too if I want them to be able to send files between each other at 10GbE speed?(another cable going between the two PC's) or can the NAS be a "switch" and I use single ports on the two PC's?

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

Are you going to store the files you are editing on FreeNAS or are you just storing finished works there?

Cheers,
Matt

 

[Chris Moore]

Price for performance, you would do well to start with something like this, even paying freight to ship it from the US:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro...-2-6ghz-8-Core-128gb-24-Bay-JBOD/292399861990

You can add the same 10GB network interface and drives. Although, the best price per GB on drives right now is the 8TB models. I would go with 6 x 8TB drives instead.

 

[Desynt]

Are you going to store the files you are editing on FreeNAS or are you just storing finished works there?

Cheers,
Matt

Storing finished work.

If I wanted to edit from the files on FreeNAS would it be problematic with my setup?

 

[Desynt]

Price for performance, you would do well to start with something like this, even paying freight to ship it from the US:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro...-2-6ghz-8-Core-128gb-24-Bay-JBOD/292399861990

You can add the same 10GB network interface and drives. Although, the best price per GB on drives right now is the 8TB models. I would go with 6 x 8TB drives instead.

I will look into this! Thank you

 

[tvsjr]

Yeah, if you're going rack-mount, strongly look at a used/off-lease Supermicro box. Strongly recommended. And if you're doing video, you know video eats all the bits. You'll end up adding more drives soon. Chris' suggestion lets you drop a second processor in if you need it, plus add a lot more memory.

Your Plex data doesn't need to live on an SSD. That's a waste, IMO.

I would suggest that striped mirrors (there is no straight mirroring, unless you just run one vdev) may be overkill. I would consider adding two additional drives and building a 6-drive RAID-Z2 vdev. Play with that for awhile and see if the performance is satisfactory.

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

Storing finished work.

If you're just storing finished work and don't plan on using FreeNAS to host projects in editing, pretty much any configuration will work just fine. File services don't have much overhead.

If I wanted to edit from the files on FreeNas would it be problematic with my setup?

As you know, video is heavy. Especially 4K video. I'm not even sure you could edit HD video on this setup. You've got plenty of CPU power but the storage pool configuration is going to be too slow.

A stripe of mirrors is faster than RAIDZ2 but, even then, you've only got four devices in your pool. More devices, more faster. I like where Chris is going above: more drive bays may serve you better long-term. Not because you need massive amounts of storage but because you can use more devices to create your storage pools. A striped mirror of ten 2TB drives will be faster than a pair or mirrored 10TB drives even though both configurations have the same amount of storage space.

Put enough devices in your pool in the right device configuration and you may be able to edit video directly from the NAS.

PLEX for up to four multiple streams at the same time(1080p) but would be nice if we also could stream at least one 4k video without issues.

Each Plex transcoded HD stream requires a Passmark score of 2,000. Give or take. Your Xeon CPU has a Passmark score of 10,964 so you're good for five transcoded HD streams - give or take -assuming the server isn't doing anything else. There is much discussion about how much CPU power is required to transcode a 4K stream. I've not seen Plex itself provide any guidance and I don't imagine many people are using Plex to stream 4K video. My gut says one 4K stream will transcode and play just fine with that hardware. (Of course, if the video is in a format that the device can play natively, there won't be any transcoding and you'll have no problems.)

Other thoughts...

* I like Supermicro better than Intel but that's completely personal preference.
* Neither motherboard allows for more than 64G RAM. If this is a long-term purchase, you might want something that supports more.
* SSD for Plex metadata seems wasted.
* 10G networking is probably not needed. I'd keep it simple and use 1G unless you know 10G is required.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[Desynt]

Yeah, if you're going rack-mount, strongly look at a used/off-lease Supermicro box. Strongly recommended. And if you're doing video, you know video eats all the bits. You'll end up adding more drives soon. Chris' suggestion lets you drop a second processor in if you need it, plus add a lot more memory.

Your Plex data doesn't need to live on an SSD. That's a waste, IMO.

I would suggest that striped mirrors (there is no straight mirroring, unless you just run one vdev) may be overkill. I would consider adding two additional drives and building a 6-drive RAID-Z2 vdev. Play with that for awhile and see if the performance is satisfactory.

I am looking into what it would cost to ship to Sweden and how safe it would be as it seems like I can only find used Supermicro cases in the US for a decent price. It seems like many of them come with CPU's as a package? I tried to contact the seller of what Chris linked to ask about this but it said that the seller was unable to answer any questions.

I will remove the SSD for Plex data and changing to RAID-Z2 with 6x 6TB or 6x 8TB!

Put enough devices in your pool in the right device configuration and you may be able to edit video directly from the NAS.

I will keep to the original plan and just store finished work

I like Supermicro better than Intel but that's completely personal preference.

Seems like most people prefer the Supermicro and I was originally going with Supermicro X11SSM-F. But it seems like I would have to get another CPU to patch the bios to be able to run a v6 CPU and that it does not support iGPU and that made me pick Intel S1200SPLR. But I have not seen any feedback about Intel S1200SPLR so I might as well go with the safe bet and choose a Supermicro board.

* 10G networking is probably not needed. I'd keep it simple and use 1G unless you know 10G is required.

I was thinking of having 10G network only between two PCs and the NAS using a dual-slot NIC in the NAS and two single-slot in the two PCs so they can have the 10G speed between them and the NAS. The rest would have 1G. It also seems like it can be done quite cheap buying Chelsio S320E for the NAS and 2x MNPA19-XTR for the two PCs. I got the idea from this blog post: Building a Cost-Conscious, Faster-Than-Gigabit Network.

I just have to figure out if I need to use dual-port on the two PCs if I want them to be able to have 10G speed between them without the NAS, or if it will work with single-port going through the NAS.

Thank you both!