Here we go...advise for first NAS build

[NASbeginner]

Hi everyone,
I'm looking forward to building my first NAS ever...with FreeNAS of course! I've really enjoyed reading the many posts throughout this forum and would love to hear any recommendations you have with the following NAS hardware. I'm looking to build a 6 drive NAS (6TB each) for 36 TB total, which in a RaidZ2 setup should provide me with 18.89TB and 17.18 TiB(?)...not sure what TiB is.

Case: Mini-ITX case - either 1) Fractal Design Node 304, or 2) Lian Li PC-Q08B
Which would all of you recommend?

Motherboard (I want 64GB of RAM): ASRock C2750D4I Mini ITX Server Motherboard
I did notice this only has 4 x SATA3 3.0Gb/s + 2 x SATA3 6.0Gb/s instead of 6 x SATA 6.0Gb/s. Does this mean 4 of my HDDs would only run up to 3.0 Gbs and then 2 could run up to 6.0Gbs? Is this a concern? I do see there are 6 more "Marvell"? But 2x are SE9172 and 4x SE9230 all SATA3 6.0 Gbs. Would I use the 6 Marvell for RaidZ2? If I want 6x basic I'd have to go with a Supermicro MBD-X10-SDV... but they have USB 3.0 (and DDR4, so quite expensive), and if I remember reading correctly FreeNAS wants USB 2.0? which the ASRock has (2 x USB 2.0). Although not sure when I'd use a USB slot.

CPU: Intel Atom (Avoton) Processor C2750 (2.4 Gz) ...comes with/on the motherboard correct? Should I be picking out a different "high end" CPU? As I plan to be running Emby Media Server and I would like the option to be able to stream to multiple devices at once for movies, etc.

RAM (not sure if ASRock board supports registered or unregistered RAM): 4x 16 GB DDR3 ECC
What company should I look at? I want to make sure I have nice high quality ECC RAM. I see a bunch of brands: Black Diamond, Axiom, AddOn, Crucial, Mushkin, Edge, Cisco, etc. Any recommendations on this would be appreciated!

Power Supply: I have no idea right now... Need to do further research.

HDD: 6x Western Digital NAS Red 4TB or 6TB drives.

Thanks guys!

 

[danb35]

Although it's possible to get 16 GB DIMMs for the Avoton boards, it's stupid expensive. You'd be much better off with a Socket 2011 board and a Xeon E5. Better performance, lower cost. I'm not sure about the availability of Socket 2011 boards in mini-ITX, though.

Don't worry about SATA2 vs SATA3 ports--spinning rust can barely saturate SATA1 on a good day. The Marvell ports on the Asrock board have been problematic in the past; I'm not sure if that is still the case.

On the board you're looking at, you're correct that the CPU is on the board. There's no way to replace it.

A TB is 10^12 bytes; a TiB is 2^40 bytes. 1 TB ~= 0.9 TiB. 6 x 6 TB in RAIDZ2 would have a net capacity of about 24 TB, or 21.5 TiB, minus reserved space, ZFS overhead, etc. The numbers you're quoting (19 TB or 17 TiB) account for the recommendation that you not fill your pool more than 80% full.

 

[Ericloewe]

Although it's possible to get 16 GB DIMMs for the Avoton boards, it's stupid expensive. You'd be much better off with a Socket 2011 board and a Xeon E5. Better performance, lower cost. I'm not sure about the availability of Socket 2011 boards in mini-ITX, though.

There are miniITX Xeon E5 boards, but they're firmly in "WHYYYYYY?" territory.

Xeon-D is a bit more logical, but also on the expensive side.

 

[NASbeginner]

So, I should be looking for a Xeon-D mini ITX board? So that the RAM will have better performance for the ASRock? I found two at newegg:

Supermicro MBD-X10-SDV-F-O Mini ITX Server Motherboard Xeon processor D-1540 FCBGA 1667
SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SDV-TLN4F-O Mini ITX Server Motherboard Xeon processor D-1540 FCBGA 1667

But they seems a bit more expensive than the ASRock ($829 and $929 a piece).

 

[danb35]

Yes, Xeon-D is expensive. Do you have to have a Mini-ITX system? That really limits your options for suitable boards.

 

[NASbeginner]

I guess I don't, I just wanted something that is cool, quiet and can be kept within a TV stand in the living room, and was hoping for 6 HDD slots with 64 GB RAM. Any recommendations?

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

cool, quiet and can be kept within a TV stand in the living room

A PowerEdge T20 meets these requirements...

6 HDD slots with 64 GB RAM

but not these.

 

[Fuganater]

If you have to stay with Mini-ITX, what about a U-NAS chassis? Looks nice and would fit in/on your TV stand. There is a 2/4/6/8 bay versions.

 

[Raiz]

You could always go next gen as well. That's what I'm doing. You'll get a ton more processing power and up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM. If you don't mind my asking, why do you want so much RAM and such little processing power?

If you go with an X11 board, you'll have to boot off of an SSD, SATADOM, or M.2 device rather than a USB stick since the boot issues haven't been ironed out with FreeBSD.
X11SSH-F mobo + Xeon E3-1230v5 = $474

 

[NASbeginner]

You could always go next gen as well. That's what I'm doing. You'll get a ton more processing power and up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM. If you don't mind my asking, why do you want so much RAM and such little processing power?

If you go with an X11 board, you'll have to boot off of an SSD, SATADOM, or M.2 device rather than a USB stick since the boot issues haven't been ironed out with FreeBSD.
X11SSH-F mobo + Xeon E3-1230v5 = $474

Hi Raiz,

I was planning on 64GB RAM since I would have 8 for FreeNAS and if I decide to go with 6x 6TB drives, that 36 TB (so 1RAM for each TB?) would put me at 44, so I figured why not just do 64GB RAM and be done with it :) Wasn't planning on going with such little processing power, just thought I needed to go with Mini-ITX for the size but maybe not. I will definitely check out the X11 that you mentioned. If it's more powerful and cheaper, sounds like a great option :)
--
@Fuganater - thank for the U-NAS suggestion, I will definitely take a look at them.

 

[NASbeginner]

Raiz - where did you purchase your board and CPU at?

 

[NASbeginner]

Ok, so I took a look at Supermicro motherboards and came up with:

Supermicro X11-SSL-F
Supermicro X11-SSH-F

1) Is one preferred over the other?
2) I see the only tested ECC RAM is:

Supermicro Certified MEM-DR416L-SL01-EU21 Samsung 16GB DDR4-2133 ECC Un-Buffer LP Server Memory ($199.99 at Amazon).

But that is quite a bit more expensive than DDR3 RAM, so not sure which way I should go.

 

[Ericloewe]

1) Is one preferred over the other?

Wouldn't it be nice if someone had bothered to explain the differences between those boards?

2) I see the only tested ECC RAM is:

All X11 models I've checked also have Hynix 16GB UDIMMs: http://www.supermicro.com/support/r...8&prid=84896&type=DDR4 1.2V&ecc=1&reg=0&fbd=0

 

[NASbeginner]

Thanks Ericloewe. I'll check Hynix again...as I thought the EU21 was showing as non-ECC when I was on Amazon. Must have been mislabeled. And thanks for the link, I did review that earlier. :) I guess the real difference for me is if I want 8x SATA slots v. 6 with the SSL. Thanks!

 

[Raiz]

Raiz - where did you purchase your board and CPU at?

Superbiiz.com

 

[NASbeginner]

Superbiiz.com

Thanks!

 

[NASbeginner]

I'm looking at:

Supermicro X11SSL-F-O

It says it takes ECC "unbuffered" RAM. I take it that means it is "unregistered"? And is there a preference to have registered or unregistered?

 

[Ericloewe]

It says it takes ECC "unbuffered" RAM. I take it that means it is "unregistered"?

Yes. Before Registered RAM, there was Buffered RAM.

And is there a preference to have registered or unregistered?

Registered or Load-Reduced allow for greater capacities, generally at the cost of some speed and latency. In the case of Xeon E3, there is no question at all, since UDIMMs are all that's supported.

 

[NASbeginner]

Update. If I go the X11 route it's looking like this so far:

Chassis ($69.99): Fractal Design Node 804 Black Aluminum / Steel Micro ATX Cube Case
Motherboard ($229.98): Supermicro X11SSH-F-O
CPU ($369.55): Intel Xeon E3-1275 v5 Quad-Core Skylake Processor 3.6GHz
RAM (64GB) ($490.95): 4x Samsung DDR4-2133 16GB/2Gx72 ECC CL15
Power Supply:
HDD: 6x Western Digital NAS Red 4TB or 6TB drives

Any thoughts on the chassis? Will it be cool enough?
--
Edit: decided to bump up to the x11SSH-F-O, from the x11SSL-F-O, for the 2 extra SATA3 ports since the Chassis is capable of handling 8 HDDs.

 

[Raiz]

I was looking at that Fractal 804 as well. Newegg is having a good sale on it.
I decided against it because swapping out drives would be more of pain due to its design than if I got the Fractal R5. The 804 is still a nice case and a good deal tho!

Man, you went from a mediocre processor/board, to a super powerful setup.