FreeNAS or Windows ? ( Plex server, VM, Storage, Timemachine )

[Nikkelmann]

Hello all.


After browsing the forums for quite some time, i can't find a good answer to my questions.
I hope someone can help me :)

FreeNAS 11 or just use Windows 10 with shared folders?

At the moment i'm using a WD My cloud Mirror gen 1 NAS system, but its very slow so Plex server app is a no go.

I'm about to buy a new gaming PC, so my old one wich are running a Plex server in windows 10 Pro could be my new NAS / plex server

My needs.
Plex Server Often 3 streams at one time ( on my own network ).
Storage ( NAS ).
Time machine backup. ( Would not be easy to set up on Windows 10, without some workarounds )
Maybe Owncloud.

Windows 10 pro, RDP or Teamviewer. I know that it needs to be in a VM. ( I'm a small business owner, and sometimes i need to login to my own machine to do client stuff, as my day job really love to block stuff :) ) The windows 10 VM would have to run almost 24/7, i would not want to turn it on and off all the time, but it would not be used much and when in use the tasks will be small, like doing a bit of work in Wordpress or do some coding.


My hardware for this will be.

CPU - Intel i5-4690k.
Motherboard - MSI z97M-G43.
Ram - Kingston DDR3 HyperX Beast 16GB.
SSD - Crucial MX300 M.2 ( Would be for VM’s )
2x WD red 4TB.
And a USB 16 or 32GB to run FreeNAS Should this be USB 2 or 3 ?

 

[Chris Moore]

FreeNAS 11 or just use Windows 10 with shared folders?

Windows support for ZFS is still in the experimental stage. Is your desire for ZFS to protect your data or just to have a Plex server.
If you don't care about ZFS, you may as well stick to Windows.

 

[Nikkelmann]

Windows support for ZFS is still in the experimental stage. Is your desire for ZFS to protect your data or just to have a Plex server.
If you don't care about ZFS, you may as well stick to Windows.

Thanks for the fast reply.

Data protection is always good, as i need it to serve as my storage for documents as well.
This is my main reason for looking into FreeNAS in the first place. I like the option to give my family personal storage.


Do you think my hardware will be able to get the job done with windows in a VM at the same time ?

 

[garm]

bhyve can run Windows 10 for you, but it’s still young. It might not give you the performance you expect.

And your hardware is wrong; no ECC, gaming mobo and a single drive ssd pool.

If your serious about data integrity get proper gear.

And as a side note, if you worked of FreeBSD or Linux you would have far less overhead. Windows is massively bloated and will steal unnecessary resources, especially if you are going to run it as a VM on your storage rig.

 

[adrianwi]

As above, reusing that hardware I'd stick with Windows, if that's what you know, or if you want something different a flavour of Linux?

 

[Nikkelmann]

Ok, sounds like i should just stick with windows..

The SDD will only be for the VM for windows.. i would not need any backup of the system at all.
All my important data will go to the 2 x WD Red drives, and will run in Raid 1 / RAIDZ1

Thanks for the inputs :)

 

[garm]

Redundancy is not backup, to ensure data integrity ZFS required redundancy. There are use cases for single disk pools, but in my opinion this is not one.

RAIDZ1 is discouraged and would require atleast three drives, with two you are looking at mirror vdevs as the only viable option.