Hardware recommendations

[talex]

Hi,
First post - possibly about to embark with freenas. I had been running server 2012 ess with drivepool in a norco 4220 - never used all the bays in that beast and have been refreshing the rack... I looked hard at freenas but due to hardware incompatibility (supermicro MV8's, non ecc ram) and the cost to become compliant (looking at individual components) I decided to stick with current but wanted to upgrade to 2012 R2 Standard... upon my rebuild my mobo was just to finicky for my liking...

So I hopefully made a good decision that will be fully compatible with freenas. I picked up this:
HP Z210 Desktop Motherboard with Intel Xeon 3.30 Ghz CPU and 16GB ECC RAM

Specs: http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c02794662

From all the reading I have been doing it would seem to be a fantastic foundation for a freenas home build and at $99 to my door seems like a fantastic price as well... hoping to get a little thumbs up on all that... but honest opinion of that as the foundation is what I really want.

Lastly - I want to drive 12 drive bays - however my MV8's will not work obviously so what would be the cheapest recommended HBA card(s) for this MB (some say you should not use onboard - MB has 6 ports) can / should I use the MB ports in conjunction with an add on card?

Sorry for the long post - the only info I could find here on the forums about the MB was a networking issue...

Thanks in advance.

Tom

 

[Mirfster]

but honest opinion of that as the foundation is what I really want.

Quick cursory look at the specs shows: "Maximum Memory = 16GB" so that may come back to be a bottleneck.

Lastly - I want to drive 12 drive bays - however my MV8's will not work obviously so what would be the cheapest recommended HBA card(s) for this MB (some say you should not use onboard - MB has 6 ports) can / should I use the MB ports in conjunction with an add on card?

LSI 9211-8I or similar (Cross-Flashed IBM M1015, Perc H200, etc.) are the recommended HBAs.
You will need proper cables and sufficient PSU.
Nothing really wrong with using MB Ports as well, but may want to check their speed to ensure that is not a bottleneck (I didn't check that info).

Overall, I personally would not use a Desktop/Workstation for FreeNAS; but YMMV. Of course, don't just take my opinion as the final verdict see what others think. :)

 

[SweetAndLow]

It might work as a freenas system. The built in audio, limited memory and non server board might cause some problems. Give it a try since you all ready bought it.

 

[Jailer]

For $99 I say go for it. While it's not current gen hardware it's still very capable. Like @SweetAndLow said the 16GB may be a limitation if you plan on a large pool and plugins/jails/VM's but otherwise it should work just fine.

 

[talex]

Thanks guys - hopefully it works otherwise it's back to Windows 2012R2 and Drivepool or unRaid which don't need industrial servers and copious amounts of ram... I always disable everything not needed in bios and I think this build will not need to grow larger than 20TB's.

That said I have 2 Dell R710 servers in the small rack I have as VM servers for labs and those I can power on / off via iDrac when needed but I would in no way want to run something like that full time, by the time I would build something everyone would thumbs up for freenas I could probably just purcahse online storage and or look at something like a Qnap or Drobo pro... My usage is just mainly media, archives and iSCSi for the VM's.... judging by the comments here one would need to run something like the R710's which idle I think around 500 watts if all the bays are full if memory serves me correctly and although fairly quiet for a rackmount - they can at times sound like a 747 taking off... as opposed from the calculator I used - this mobo combo will idle at around 125-145 watts with 10 drives attached and it should be a fairly silent system.... so hopefully it works because I have no intention on dropping $800-$1000 just to run freeNas happily when there are other options...

This leads me to something that occurred to me as I have looked for a solution to archiving other than a drobo, qnap etc... freeNas always pops up in the discussion for home use - from what I have read and even from the answers here I am not so sure it is the best idea for home users as it does not like "older" hardware apparently (the model I just bought was 2014 and can take core I7 cpu's), it does not like consumer ram nor consumer components - so unless you like to "tinker" which I don't mind a degree of, I don't think I could actually recommend it, although that may change as I learn it - right now I would point people to unRaid or Windows with Drivepool or just USB drives shared or similar... this is not meant to knock freenas as though all my reading it has great features but to a home user most will need archives of photo's, tax documents, home videos, video library music etc... they likely don't need much of it... small buisiness, maybe - large business certainly...but home users??? I am not so sure and this should be more strongly pointed out by those who promote it for home use.

Anyways - now waiting on the brown truck to embark on a new journey.

 

[danb35]

FreeNAS works best with adequately-provisioned server-grade hardware. That doesn't need to be expensive--a brand new Dell PowerEdge T20 server starts under US$200. Add some RAM ($50 or so) and your drives, and you're set. I don't think you can get a diskless 4-bay Synology/QNAP box anywhere near $250*, though I'll admit Synology has a much prettier UI. It is not, and never has been, designed to work on whatever castoff old hardware you might have laying around.

How important is your data? Big business's data may have a greater financial value than a home user's, but I place a pretty high value on my personal records.

* OK, I looked. Turns out the DS416j is just under $300. That's closer than I would have thought. You don't get ZFS with a Synology, but that may well be an attractive option for many users.

 

[Nick2253]

This leads me to something that occurred to me as I have looked for a solution to archiving other than a drobo, qnap etc... freeNas always pops up in the discussion for home use - from what I have read and even from the answers here I am not so sure it is the best idea for home users as it does not like "older" hardware apparently (the model I just bought was 2014 and can take core I7 cpu's), it does not like consumer ram nor consumer components - so unless you like to "tinker" which I don't mind a degree of, I don't think I could actually recommend it, although that may change as I learn it - right now I would point people to unRaid or Windows with Drivepool or just USB drives shared or similar... this is not meant to knock freenas as though all my reading it has great features but to a home user most will need archives of photo's, tax documents, home videos, video library music etc... they likely don't need much of it... small buisiness, maybe - large business certainly...but home users??? I am not so sure and this should be more strongly pointed out by those who promote it for home use.

You'll find that the people who casually promote FreeNAS for home use are not the people on these forums.

Part of that is because, way back when, old FreeNAS positioned itself as something for home users. This is why many people still rattle off FreeNAS when the topic of DIY home NAS comes up. However, FreeNAS today is so very different from FreeNAS way back when. Today, FreeNAS is focused on technologies that ensure absolutely rock-solid data security, like ZFS. And, those technologies come at a cost (though not as much as you think).

Some of the "home use" legacy sticks around, what with plugins, which might be part of it. If you've got the money, or at least the need for secure data storage, FreeNAS makes a heck of a lot of sense for home users. But a home users that needs a seed box or a media server may be very well served elsewhere. And I don't think the community's made any secret of that. What I've seen from the forums is that, if you want to go down the FreeNAS road, we're going to try and push you in a certain way, because we've seen the disasters in going down the FreeNAS road the wrong way. But if you don't want to go down the FreeNAS road, we've been happy to recommend other products, both commercial and open source, that may fit a user's needs (and budget) better.

I would disagree with your characterization of FreeNAS as a "tinker"s toy. If anything, FreeNAS is the opposite: compared to many DIY NAS solutions, FreeNAS is fairly plug-n-play, and we've put together a fairly comprehensive cookie-cutter plan for hardware. There's very little need to tinker to tweak things in order to make it work. Compared to products like Drobo or QNAP, sure, FreeNAS requires more DIY skills (it is a DIY project after all), but I'd say it's far easier than setting up a Windows Server Storage Spaces or a *nix Samba Server.

I do want to raise one point: you mentioned photo archives, tax documents, and home videos. How much are those worth to you? What happens when the IRS comes knocking at your door, and your tax documents are sitting on a corrupt hard drive? What about when your daughter graduates from high school, and you realize that all the videos of her growing up are gone? To a single twenty-something, the value of that data might be pretty close to nil. To a sole proprietor, with complex tax records, the business case for FreeNAS might speak for itself. To a family man, that data might be priceless.

My point is that there's a purpose for FreeNAS, and sometimes, to some people, it's worth the cost, even for (or especially for) home use.

 

[28061]

To a family man, that data might be priceless.

My point is that there's a purpose for FreeNAS, and sometimes, to some people, it's worth the cost, even for (or especially for) home use.

Couldn't agree more. I'm a home FreeNAS user and the data I store on it is genuinely irreplaceable. Memories of loved ones lost far too early, research and university projects, a media library that's taken me ten years to compile - I'd be devastated if it was lost and data safety is therefore my primary concern.

FreeNAS is everything I could ask for as a home user (albeit I like to think advanced!)

I've tried a variety of other solutions for many years and nothing is as good IMHO.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[talex]

Hopefully I did not offend anyone and I understand your points especially about data protection - I am an almost 50 something who has a lifetime of data and has been in IT since the late 80's. I recently just trash canned all my original MSDN stuff as I don't think I will need Windows 3, 3.1, 95, Me, NT, VB3... MS Encarta lol... could not bring myself to delete Dos 6.22 (To many Doom memories). I gained back a ton of space on my archives - I basically deleted all that stuff pre-2005... however I don't think anyone here would argue that the best plan to have for your data is to have a real backup plan you are comfortable with - in my case my data is always backed up to USB HDD's bi-weekly and stored in a fireproof safe in my non attached garage and I also keep a copy of the real important stuff on a second external drive at my cabin up north which is about 400 miles from me... so it would take a pretty major disaster for me to lose it and I perfectly comfortable with all that - freenas and most other solutions purpose at least IMHO is up time, so slapping in failed disk keep things chugging and I consider myself a very advanced home user albeit mostly Windows with some Linux mainly experimenting with desktops and I like to run Linux firewalls instead of the out of the box best buy router stuff.

Most of my data corruption issue's I have seen over the years are due to something in a raid system going wacky, either a raid card pukes or something along those lines but it is usually raid whatever - I have also seen bad ram sticks cause data corruption, faulty power supplies and CPU's - I have actually seen at least a couple "self builders" corrupt data by somehow getting some pins on their CPU's bent while they put their fancy new fan on it and also somehow managed to get the machine to boot... a good backup handles all those scenarios.

I say all this because many people look to me for things like this, building PC's, trouble shooting PC's, recovering their data, removing their "how did that picture get on my computer" problems.... you all know the drill - people find out you can do it and they think your their personal geek squad - and yet don't ask them to help you in an area they know (Mechanics I am looking you guys right in the eye).

Anyways - I have looked into freeNas - I think for a person like myself it's probably a great solution - but some body who just has some old parts and is looking for a way to store their files - I see no reason why I would not tell them to just setup drivepool on a windows box or unraid on their existing hardware and MAKE SURE TO BACK IT UP... rather then telling them to go buy a more or less full blown server - now for a content creator, super power user who has tens of thousands of music, video, image files - I would say - Go for it, but for the person who has a couple thousand music files, couple hundred movies, couple thousand images... not so much... I would not say they can't just would not endorse it at this point - maybe using it will change my thought process on it after awhile.

Sorry for the long post - I honestly do not mean to offend or knock the product - like I said - it looks great to me for some scenarios, not most when it comes to home use so my comments are not targeted so much at freenas - it's just a great product with hardware needs that are not typical desktop hardware but more to those elsewhere who promote it for home use despite know this fact. Oh and as far as qnaps UI.. I have seen the video's of the upcoming freeNas 10 and it looks fabulous.

 

[Mirfster]

Good points and no offense taken (at least by me... ;)).

IMHO FreeNAS is the best at what it does, but like any NAS it does not exempt one from maintaining regular backups (Rule of 3 for those in the biz..). This is repeated time and time again by contributors. Kudos to you for your backup routine.

There is a vast market for NAS that indeed is geared for "Home Users", however eventually those Users hit some kind of wall (Expansion Capabilities, Redundancy, Bit Rot, Limited Hardware Upgrade-ability, Lack of Support, Licensing, etc). When that time comes they will end up researching and end up here. I know I did coming from multiple issues/failures with Drobos...

Sure there is a learning curve, but well worth it in the end. I'm just old school and prefer to know what going on under the hood instead of being wowed by fancy designs and interfaces.

Agree that FreeNAS is not for everyone and every use-case scenario, but I'm willing to bet that somewhere along the line they will begin poking around. :)

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

brand new Dell PowerEdge T20 server starts under US$200

Sadly, Dell has made liars of both of us recently. The Pentium option has been out of stock on dell.com for a couple of weeks now. Still a few being offered online in the $220-$230 range, but the Xeon version is the only direct-from-Dell option, at $489 (still a pretty good deal).

 

[danb35]

Bother. Might go back to recommending the TS140 at ~$300.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Makes me sad too. I had just deployed one for a client, turned around and it was gone from dell.com. I must have got one of the last few out of the warehouse.

 

[talex]

great points all and I am looking very much forward to bugging you all once the brown truck arrives... been awhile since I had to pre-plan my storage strategy (probably the best thing with solutions like drobo, unraid and drivepool not having to have matching drive sizes lying around if one fails and not having to plan out eventual max size before a new build is required) but I think with your help I am up to the task... ;)

I guess my first question is I have been looking at LSI SAS controllers as suggested, but there are a ton of them and some are recommended while others are not - I don't care if it's 4x, 8x or 16x... 8 would probably do being middle of the road but which models are cheapest? My setup will not have backplanes - just I think it's forward or reverse cables (cannot remember) coming off the controller to Icy Doc 5 in 3 sata bays.

 

[gpsguy]

It's back in stock at $279, as opposed to the $179 it used to sell for.

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/p...224687215841c99833680&ven3=874302084909775847

But, if you watch Slickdeals or Ben's Bargains you might catch it on sale. Last week there was a deal for $159. And, back in July? when Amazon had their big sale, Dell had a one day deal on it for $129. It sold out before I could snag one. Mind you, I don't really need one, but that price would have been too good to pass up.

Sadly, Dell has made liars of both of us recently. The Pentium option has been out of stock on dell.com for a couple of weeks now.

 

[talex]

It's back in stock at $279, as opposed to the $179 it used to sell for.

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/p...224687215841c99833680&ven3=874302084909775847

But, if you watch Slickdeals or Ben's Bargains you might catch it on sale. Last week there was a deal for $159. And, back in July? when Amazon had their big sale, Dell had a one day deal on it for $129. It sold out before I could snag one. Mind you, I don't really need one, but that price would have been too good to pass up.

interesting but I am already heading in a different direction and due to running the 2 Dell R710's - I prefer rackmount so I can keep everything inside my small homemade rack... I used the plans here to build mine... http://tombuildsstuff.blogspot.com/2014/02/diy-rack-server-plans.html

I also have a Compaq 42U which I have on CL along with the Norco 4220 and Mv8's... part of the project this go round was downsizing but I still needed the rack as I love my R710's.

 

[talex]

well hopefully I made the correct choice - I picked up a LSI 9211-8i - it was already flashed to IT mode but v19 so I think from what I read I may have to flash it to v16... I am not even sure after hours of reading if this will work 100% for sure, if it don't I unfortunately think I will be done with freenas, but I am pretty sure it will so hopefully the process can continue.

Having to research all this has simply re-enforced my thoughts that for most home users freenas is simply not something I would recommend as most home users I know for a fact would in no way want to deal with all the research and or costs... this is partially the reason linux has not over taken the desktop and ironically why a form of linux has over taken windows on the phone platform - ease of use - you don't need to learn a ton of hardware compatibility, command lines and fine details for Windows and you don't need to learn command lines or deal with hardware compatibility on Android.

 

[Nick2253]

Having to research all this has simply re-enforced my thoughts that for most home users freenas is simply not something I would recommend as most home users I know for a fact would in no way want to deal with all the research and or costs... this is partially the reason linux has not over taken the desktop and ironically why a form of linux has over taken windows on the phone platform - ease of use - you don't need to learn a ton of hardware compatibility, command lines and fine details for Windows and you don't need to learn command lines or deal with hardware compatibility on Android.

You keep saying that FreeNAS isn't for all home users like we're disagreeing with you on that point.

Though you've kind of made a straw man out of your own particular case. A FreeNAS user could purchase a TS140 for $300, add four hard drives, and install FreeNAS, all with zero knowledge of *nix or any kind of command line. Easy and cheap. And as far as a DIY solution goes, it's about as easy as it gets. The fact that you chose to go down the rabbit hole, and get more involved with hardware particulars does not mean that all users would have to do that. In fact, in some respects you're farther down the rabbit hole than I am, since I do not have a PCI hdd controller, and I don't need one for my use case.

A FreeNAS system need be neither expensive, nor research intensive. But it is a DIY project, which immediately excludes the vast majority of home users, and I don't think there's any disagreement about that.

What bothers me, I guess, is that you are using your experiences, which are configuring enterprise-level hardware to do enterprise-level things in a home environment, to make blanket statements about the suitability of FreeNAS for in-home use. It's like someone saying, "man, configuring Windows Storage Spaces is really hard, and I can't get my random HBA to work properly. I just can't recommend Windows for file sharing in the home." But a typical home user, if they are using Windows Server, isn't going to dink around with trying to get everything to work, because they don't need to. They can just enable the file sharing role and go. If they want to explore more advanced features of Windows Storage Spaces, then they'll have to research more, and perhaps buy more appropriate hardware. But they don't need to.

FreeNAS is the same way: if fairly plug-n-play if you want it to be. Setting up, for example, a four disk array is a piece of cake, and the system and documentation basically walk you through it. If you want to go advanced, sure, go ahead, but you don't need to. And this is where FreeNAS really comes in to its own: the basic FreeNAS setup uses ZFS, which means you get all the wonderful data protection benefits with almost zero work. To accomplish the same with Windows or Linux is much more difficult.

I'll say again: FreeNAS is not appropriate for all home users. But my bugaboo here is that, if we're going to say it, we should be saying it for the right reason. For example, if you don't like DIY projects, FreeNAS is not for you. If you want to use old, cobbled together hardware, FreeNAS is not for you. If you want a super user-friendly interface, FreeNAS probably isn't for you. But when we reach the point of "if you don't want the hassle of flashing firmware to your add-on hdd controller to support your 12+ drive array", we're so far outside the realm of any reasonably typical home user, and for that matter, fairly outside the realm of most of the people on this forum, that using that experience to recommend for/against FreeNAS in a home situation is absurd.

 

[Spearfoot]

well hopefully I made the correct choice - I picked up a LSI 9211-8i - it was already flashed to IT mode but v19 so I think from what I read I may have to flash it to v16... I am not even sure after hours of reading if this will work 100% for sure, if it don't I unfortunately think I will be done with freenas, but I am pretty sure it will so hopefully the process can continue.

Having to research all this has simply re-enforced my thoughts that for most home users freenas is simply not something I would recommend as most home users I know for a fact would in no way want to deal with all the research and or costs... this is partially the reason linux has not over taken the desktop and ironically why a form of linux has over taken windows on the phone platform - ease of use - you don't need to learn a ton of hardware compatibility, command lines and fine details for Windows and you don't need to learn command lines or deal with hardware compatibility on Android.

The LSI 9211-8i is an excellent choice. But note that current versions of FreeNAS require version P20 firmware, not P16. The forum has several threads on the subject of flashing LSI and LSI-compatible boards.

Good luck!

 

[CraigD]

I picked up a LSI 9211-8i - it was already flashed to IT mode but v19 so I think from what I read I may have to flash it to v16...

Flash it to IT mode ver 20

I am a home user that lost data because of this I was motivated to find a solution

I needed expandable redundant storage that protected against write-hole and bit-rot problems that traditional RAID has

ZFS was the only option, for me this meant new ECC ram supported hardware and freeNAS because it was free and the GUI looked usable (compared to a command line) at it was supported

Have Fun