FreeNAS NTFS to Z.... FreeNAS virgin

[danb35]

Or, if you're looking for something with room for 8 disks (which would be a good idea), the Lenovo TS440 is an option. Not as inexpensive as the TS140 I mentioned above, but still fairly inexpensive.

 

[danb35]

A suitable Socket 2011 CPU which supports ECC (i3 or Xeon)

Skylake is Socket 1151, isn't it? And even a lot of the Pentiums (Pentia?) support ECC.

 

[BrutalRage]

Isnt this a bit overkill for a server just for streaming movies?

 

[Stux]

I already asked alot of you guys.... but do you have a suggestions what I should use if i make a new server? I kinda having fun with this freenas stuff and raid etc.
Thanks

Skylake is Socket 1151, isn't it? And even a lot of the Pentiums (Pentia?) support ECC.

Yes. You're right. Don't know what I was thinking

And even a lot of the Pentiums (Pentia?) support ECC.

Yes they do, but I figured someone who's into Kodi et al will eventually want to setup Plex, and torrents and the like, and then the i3 would be the way to go.

But yes, for just serving a pentium is fine.

 

[danb35]

Isnt this a bit overkill for a server just for streaming movies?

We assume that people use FreeNAS because they care about their data and want to protect it. ZFS, the filesystem that FreeNAS uses, is great at doing that--probably the best filesystem on the planet in that regard--but it's pretty demanding of resources, especially RAM. Also, if you're going to protect against data loss when a drive fails (and all drives fail eventually), that's going to take extra drives for redundancy.

If you have 11 TB of data, the bare minimum configuration to give you any redundancy would be 3 x 6 TB drives (or 4 x 4 TB drives) in RAIDZ1. But there are a couple of major problems with this configuration:

1. You'd be starting out almost 100% full, with no room for more data.
2. You'd be at a significant risk of at least some data loss when a drive fails, due to the statistical probability of read errors on the remaining drives.

You could address #1, of course, by adding drives--maybe 4 x 6 TB drives in RAIDZ1, which would be only about 2/3 full at the outset--but that's going to increase your risk in #2. You could address #2 by using RAIDZ2 rather than RAIDZ1, which gains you an extra drive's worth of redundancy, but that takes another drive too. So you're up to a minimum of 5 x 6 TB drives, or 6 x 4 TB drives--and you're still going to be 70-80% full to begin with.

 

[Stux]

Isnt this a bit overkill for a server just for streaming movies?

The memory is the key.

The recommendation is a minimum of 8GB, but 1GB per TB.

A 24TB system is actually fairly big.

There are 4 basic options

1) Haswell board, with a 32GB limit and 6 sata ports.
2) Skylake board, with a 64GB limit and 8 sata ports.
3) Avoton board, available in 4 or 8 core atom, with up to 14 SATA ports... 3 year old technology now, but in the last 2 months they've been failing very badly. Not economical to go above 32GB of RAM, but does support 64GB. Actually more expensive than a Skylake board.
4) Xeon-D. Overkill. But actually the best replacement for Avoton. (128GB of RAM)
4) Xeon-E5. Complete and Utter overkill. (up to 1TB of RAM for UP)

With the Haswell or Skylake boards you can pick your CPU, Pentium, i3 or Xeon. basically depending on how many non severing things you want to do, virtualization, transcoding, plex, torrents, and anything. Once you understand what you can do with FreeNAS you might be interested in more of that.

Haswell is basically obsoleted by Skylake. DDR4 ram is getting cheaper than DDR3. It has more of what you want for FreeNAS.

A month ago, I probably would've recommended an ASRock Avoton for low-end usage. I can not until they fix their BMC bug which is causing flash chips to DIE on the motherboard after 16-18 months of use.

You currently have 12TB of disk. If you double that to 24TB... then you're in 32GB of RAM territory. Be a shame if you were on Haswell, and felt limited by ram in a few years time because the Skylake board was $20 more today.

If you go with the Avoton or Haswell, then you'll be fine. If you go with Skylake, then you'll be fine for the forseeable future since you can get more than 32GB of RAM, and its CPU upgradeable... so go with a Pentium and then upgrade if you want more CPU power.

 

[BrutalRage]

Thansks guys for explaining it for me.
Think I have to make a choice between going for ZFS and having loads of memory but safe data $$$ or something else (not sure what) that is cheap and fast (uhd streaming) with massive tb possibility's.
If just 1 disk fails now I can redownload in a week or so. If I go for the later any suggestions on that?
Guido

 

[Stux]

but that takes another drive too. So you're up to a minimum of 5 x 6 TB drives, or 6 x 4 TB drives--and you're still going to be 70-80% full to begin with.

Hence the recommendation to go to 8 x 4TB, and be at 50%

FWIW, that 8x4TB recommendation and be at 50% would stand no matter what system you're interested in. Either using RaidZ2 or RAID6.

 

[danb35]

Hence the recommendation to go to 8 x 4TB, and be at 50%

Yeah--it's hard to come up with a budget build that also gives decent room to grow. Requiring 8 disks kills the chances of one of the small/cheap servers and pushes you into larger and more expensive machines.

Wait a minute, I've got it--@Mirfster and one of his Dell C2100s! Twelve bays, decent if older hardware, ECC, < US$400 plus disks...

@BrutalRage, check out https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/ode-to-the-dell-c2100-fs12-ty.43665/. It might be just the thing for you, and should give you plenty of room to grow.

 

[BrutalRage]

Yeah--it's hard to come up with a budget build that also gives decent room to grow. Requiring 8 disks kills the chances of one of the small/cheap servers and pushes you into larger and more expensive machines.

Wait a minute, I've got it--@Mirfster and one of his Dell C2100s! Twelve bays, decent if older hardware, ECC, < US$400 plus disks...

@BrutalRage, check out https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/ode-to-the-dell-c2100-fs12-ty.43665/. It might be just the thing for you, and should give you plenty of room to grow.

Looking right into it!!!.
Damn this community is a nice 1.

 

[danb35]

This one is linked from that thread, but just to put it out here:
http://www.dfwpartsdepot.com/?produ...ing_wp_cron=1474639548.6075320243835449218750
It has 32 GB of RAM, the preferred HBA already flashed to the correct firmware, and is 10% off with coupon code "freenas". I don't see if they'll ship to .nl, though. If not, I'm sure there are other sellers on eBay who will, but this unit sounds nicely set up for FreeNAS already.

If you decide on a C2100 or other 12-bay system, I'd do your initial setup with six disks in RAIDZ2. @BrutalRage, you could probably start with 6 x 4 TB disks, move all your data to them, then add your 6 x 2 TB disks as a second RAIDZ2 vdev, giving you a total of 24 TB of capacity on your system.

 

[BrutalRage]

Thanks danb35, I was also looking at ebay for the product. Its seems the only place where I can find it. Thanks!

 

[danb35]

Yeah, it's an older system (which is why they're so cheap), so you aren't going to find them new. There are other vendors who sell outside of eBay, but that's going to be the first place to look.

 

[Stux]

If you decide on a C2100 or other 12-bay system, I'd do your initial setup with six disks in RAIDZ2. @BrutalRage, you could probably start with 6 x 4 TB disks, move all your data to them, then add your 6 x 2 TB disks as a second RAIDZ2 vdev, giving you a total of 24 TB of capacity on your system.

A nice thing with this plan is that you can then replace the 6x2TB disks with say... 6x6 disks if you want even more storage later (when 6TB disks are presumably cheaper).

 

[danb35]

Exactly. And by that time the 2 TB disks will probably be getting tired anyway.

 

[BrutalRage]

Your thougts http://www.ebay.nl/itm/Dell-PowerEd...400247?hash=item1c672286b7:g:oo0AAOSwKadXPdbc

 

[danb35]

Your thougts http://www.ebay.nl/itm/Dell-PowerEd...400247?hash=item1c672286b7:go0AAOSwKadXPdbc

I have a C6100 and like it, but I don't think it's a very good storage solution. What you've got there is four servers in one 2U chassis, each having access to three drive bays. You don't need the multiple servers, and you do need well over three bays. Look for the C2100, not the C6100.

Edit: But I see the problem. Very few hits on ebay.nl for C2100s, and they're expensive (and use the 2.5" drive bays, which you don't really want). Might be worth looking into a package forwarding service. http://tech-vise.com/10-parcel-forwarding-services-for-international-shoppers/ lists some that might help.

 

[BrutalRage]

Oke will do.

 

[BrutalRage]

Seems they are all in the usa. Non sending to Netherlands and the 1 that do 3000 euros +.

 

[danb35]

...which is why I suggested looking into a package forwarding service. The seller would ship the item there, and they'd turn around and ship it to you. For a fee, of course, but you might still come out ahead.