BUILD General purpose server: advice on how to make the most of my hardware with freenas

[neo1983]

Hello,

I'm here to ask you for advice on how to proceed with the software configuration of my machine in order to reach the best compromise between versatility and security.

I have already purchased the following configuration:

S.M.: SuperMicro X11SCa-F (HDMI, USB 3.0 \3.1 type C, IPMI)
CPU: Intel Xeon E2186G with GPU Intel UHD Graphics P630
RAM: 2 modules Kingston 16GB DDR4 2666 Mhz
DISK S.O: Intel SSD 256 GB
DISK DATA: 2 WD RED da 10 TB

This is what I intend to do with this machine (no stop 24/7):

1) Remote hardware control and management via IPMI interface and relative software.
2) Direct use of I/O ports of motherboard (HDMI,USB, HD audio 5.1 channels, ecc. for several types of links: TV, projector, Home Theatre, external hard disks ecc.)
3) Creation and managemant of vms (with RDP access and internet access)
4) Plex Server (with encoding\decoding H265 taking advantage of GPU graphics)
5) NAS for documents, films, and media files (with WebDav, FTP, SMB access from clients on the LAN or from internet)
6) Source code repository (SVN)

I Know that are several and very different use cases, let’s say a mixed between desktop and server, then is a general purpose server.

I want both to achieve the purposes listed above and to have the protection that freenas offers with zfs file system.

So I thought to use as s.o freenas in order to ensure the integrity of data and vm (eg. with Windows \ Windows server) to make the most of the hardware.

Is all this possible with freenas?

Thanks.

 

[dknm]

You will not be able to achieve points 2 (hdmi/5.1 audio) and 4 (gpu decoding) under freenas. AFAIK you'll need a plex pass for hardware decoding - keep that in mind.

All of the above can be done with a hypervisor build, with freenas running alongside another OS (Ubuntu, Windows, etc) that would do 2 and 4. You'll need 3 PCIe cards for this - a HBA card for the HDDs (passed through to freenas), a gpu and a USB card for your mouse/keyboard (passed through to ubuntu/windows).

A side benefit is that vm management with a hypervisor is more robust than what byhyve (freenas' implementation) offers currently.

I'm unsure if you can passthrough the embedded Xeon gpu to a VM, someone with more experience might be able to help you out on this point.

 

[KrisBee]

@neo1983 Any use you plan to make of zfs is undermined if you're not using ECC RAM. Virtualised, or not, FreeNAS needs at least 8gb of RAM, leaving just 8gb for other possible VMs ...

 

[neo1983]

Yes, I've purchased ECC Ram.
I'll buy other 32 gb of RAM coming soon.