BUILD FreeNAS Server Build (Plex, Crashplan, FileServer)

[holyNas]

Hello everyone,

after reading a couple of days on this forum, I came up with an initial build (mostly inspired by the NAS gurus on this board) for a private home NAS. I kindly would like to ask the experts here to take a quick look on my build and judge if my selection will fullfil my requirements.

Build:
Case: 1x Fractal Design Node 804 (FD-CA-NODE-804-BL-W)
Motherboard: 1x Supermicro Mainboard X10SLM+-F (MBD-X10SLM-F-B)
CPU: 1x Intel Core i3-4330, 2x 3.50GHz, boxed (BX80646I34330)
RAM: 2x Crucial DIMM 8GB, DDR3L-1600, CL11, ECC (CT102472BD160B)
PSU: 1x Sea Sonic S12G 550W ATX 2.3 (S12G-550)
HDD: 4x Western Digital WD Red 3TB, 3.5", SATA 6Gb/s (WD30EFRX)

Requirements:
- stable and secure system - data security is very important (therefore I plan to use Raid-Z2 with 4 HDDs and ECC RAM)
- run a Plex server with max. 1-2 transcoding streams
- run a Crashplan server to backup up to 3-4 systems
- run a Samba fileshare server to serve share media

Question:
1) Are there components in my build which do not fit in general? (I tried to be careful and to not fit things together in a wrong way :))
2) Is the system strong enough for my requirements, or maybe oversized (especially CPU and PSU)? If I can save money by taking little bit less powerful components, that is fine with me.
3) Powersaving: if understood things right, I can run this system 24/7, especially with the WD Red HDDs. I'm still wondering if I can put the HDDs to sleep during certain hours (e.g. when I sleep or when I'm at work). Does the network interfaces support WOL? I could not find evidence for it.
4) Backup: if I use a cronjob to backup my data to an external harddrive, is it possible that my backups get corrupted although I'm using ECC RAM? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I understood, ZFS will take care of the data integrity as long as the files are not corrupted by bad RAM. And ECC RAM will either correct 1bit errors or detect 2bit errors and halt the system, right? Therefore my data on the external harddrive should not get corrupted unless there are transmission errors or the external harddrive itself has errors. The reason I'm asking is, that I want to make sure that I have at least one working backup if for whatever reason my pool dies on the NAS. Any best practises here?

Thanks a lot for your time and effort!

Regards,
hN

 

[SweetAndLow]

Power supply is probably a little overkill you can get the Seasonic 450 if you want to save a couple bucks. Other than that it looks like a good build to me. Make sure you check your spin down timer on the drives so you don't get a high Load Cycle Count.

 

[Fraoch]

4) Backup: if I use a cronjob to backup my data to an external harddrive, is it possible that my backups get corrupted although I'm using ECC RAM? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I understood, ZFS will take care of the data integrity as long as the files are not corrupted by bad RAM. And ECC RAM will either correct 1bit errors or detect 2bit errors and halt the system, right? Therefore my data on the external harddrive should not get corrupted unless there are transmission errors or the external harddrive itself has errors. The reason I'm asking is, that I want to make sure that I have at least one working backup if for whatever reason my pool dies on the NAS. Any best practises here?

Backing up to an external hard drive is really not supported, you'll be on your own. That's something I'd like to try though.

ECC RAM and ZFS will nicely protect your data inside your FreeNAS, the problem lies when it leaves your FreeNAS and goes out to the unknown USB device. The capabilities and safety of these are all over the map, and most manufacturers hide this from you. Some can corrupt data without warning. Some can continue trying to operate despite damaged sectors and won't tell you. Some may just skip writing blocks of data, silently unmounting and mounting while the host device keeps trying to stream data.

I just took delivery of a very nice device that is on paper at least as secure as my FreeNAS hardware - an Angelbird SSD2go pocket. It's got a supercap UPS, ESD and surge protection, ECC and SMART. I'd like to test these myself though - some manufacturers don't properly implement shutdown protection, for example. But anyway this device is far outside the norm, plus it's quite expensive and the capacity is too small. I'd have to look at 4 TB external hard drives from WD or Seagate, and these just don't have those features. With these, "ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances."

 

[holyNas]

Hello everyone,

thank you for the replies so far. 3 questions are answered already:

Question:
1) Are there components in my build which do not fit in general? (I tried to be careful and to not fit things together in a wrong way :))
Build looks good.

2) Is the system strong enough for my requirements, or maybe oversized (especially CPU and PSU)? If I can save money by taking little bit less powerful components, that is fine with me.
PSU is a bit oversized, can step down to Seasonic 450.

3) Powersaving: if understood things right, I can run this system 24/7, especially with the WD Red HDDs. I'm still wondering if I can put the HDDs to sleep during certain hours (e.g. when I sleep or when I'm at work). Does the network interfaces support WOL? I could not find evidence for it.

4) Backup: if I use a cronjob to backup my data to an external harddrive, is it possible that my backups get corrupted although I'm using ECC RAM? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I understood, ZFS will take care of the data integrity as long as the files are not corrupted by bad RAM. And ECC RAM will either correct 1bit errors or detect 2bit errors and halt the system, right? Therefore my data on the external harddrive should not get corrupted unless there are transmission errors or the external harddrive itself has errors. The reason I'm asking is, that I want to make sure that I have at least one working backup if for whatever reason my pool dies on the NAS. Any best practises here?
My assumptions about ZFS and ECC RAM are correct, data is safe inside the NAS. External backups are not officially supported. That means I will try to figure something out on my own :).

New 5) Could I add in encryption with this build, or not enough power? I'm not really planning to do so, but I'm wondering if it is possible if I change my mind.

New 6) Any other things I should keep in mind which I missed out? (e.g. SweetAndLow mentioned "Make sure you check your spin down timer on the drives so you don't get a high Load Cycle Count").

Can someone help with question 3), 5) and 6)?

Thanks a lot for the help guys, I appreciate :)
hN

 

[Fraoch]

New 5) Could I add in encryption with this build, or not enough power? I'm not really planning to do so, but I'm wondering if it is possible if I change my mind.

All you need for encryption is a CPU which supports AES-NI. And yes, the Core i3s support AES-NI. You're good to go here. Just don't step down to a Pentium.