Cause who doesn't love a good double entendre?
So i'm having a lot of trouble coming up with a build. I am finding a lot of gaps (ha!) in how to approach a server build and i'm hoping a different perspective might help.
First and foremost, this is going to be a plex server/media storage. I need to be able to stream to any device in my house (mostly Nvidia Shield devices) and some remote access streaming as well. At most, maybe 5 streams at a time. Probably more like 3. With the potential to do a lot of 4k media in the future. I have no need for VMs right now since I do most of that stuff via AWS and Azure. I've worked with plenty of on prem VMWare and HyperV in the past, I have no interest at this time in bringing it into my home.
Secondly, i would like to build it with the most current tech possible so I can not think about the next iteration for at least 5 years. All of the freenas guides i've seen are based on older hardware. While i have no desire to do a sky is the limit budget, I do feel like its more important to make sure i build it to last with high end components than just get something that is good for "right now". I'm also finding there is nearly no cost difference between the older hardware and the newest due to the demand for those older components.
Thirdly, form factor. I would prefer something with hot swap bays. At least 8 drives, but would prefer 10 to 12. I will be looking at NAS drives like western digital reds, at least 10TB each, running in RAID Z2. My current setup is running windows server 2008 R2 and is several years old and definitely end of life. It is also in an old norco 24 bay server chassis that is just plain done. It is too loud, and I want to avoid using a server chassis if possible. The delta cooling noise from them is just too obnoxious. I don't have a space concern, but the server sits in a utility closet in my basement, beside a bedroom, and everyone that stays here comments on the noise. The new device doesn't need to be silent, but i would prefer if it was much quieter than it is now. I was looking at a silverstone CS381 case and building around that, but the Mini ITX form factor felt really limiting, and i haven't really been able to find a hardware solution that felt satisfactory. I also found the IN-WIN IW-PLV Tower, and thought that would work great, but i don't know if thats an old product cause it doesn't seem to exist anywhere except on the inwin website.
I am not tied to any one motherboard manufacturer, but i was mainly looking at supermicro and asrock as per all the guides. I would also prefer if the mainboard had enough on board ports for all the harddrives without having to get a HBA card, but honestly, that isn't a hard requirement. The amount of RAM needed by ZFS to run this many drives is also a concern, so i'm not sure if 4 RAM slots is going to be enough since that usually maxes out at 64GB.
Most of the newer supermicro boards have dual processors. I thought this might be overkill, and i didn't know if there would be a lot of performance gain out of it, but at this point, those seem to be the only ones i found that have the other features I would like, with M.2 storage for OS, and plenty of SATA and SAS ports, as well as lots of RAM slots, upgradable to 1TB.
Generally my approach is to start with the components and build around that. But i'm also not sure what kind of processor(s) i should be looking at, so i don't really feel like i can even narrow down what platform to build on. So let your imaginations run wild! Let me know what you think would be the absolute best new FreeNAS build!
So i'm having a lot of trouble coming up with a build. I am finding a lot of gaps (ha!) in how to approach a server build and i'm hoping a different perspective might help.
First and foremost, this is going to be a plex server/media storage. I need to be able to stream to any device in my house (mostly Nvidia Shield devices) and some remote access streaming as well. At most, maybe 5 streams at a time. Probably more like 3. With the potential to do a lot of 4k media in the future. I have no need for VMs right now since I do most of that stuff via AWS and Azure. I've worked with plenty of on prem VMWare and HyperV in the past, I have no interest at this time in bringing it into my home.
Secondly, i would like to build it with the most current tech possible so I can not think about the next iteration for at least 5 years. All of the freenas guides i've seen are based on older hardware. While i have no desire to do a sky is the limit budget, I do feel like its more important to make sure i build it to last with high end components than just get something that is good for "right now". I'm also finding there is nearly no cost difference between the older hardware and the newest due to the demand for those older components.
Thirdly, form factor. I would prefer something with hot swap bays. At least 8 drives, but would prefer 10 to 12. I will be looking at NAS drives like western digital reds, at least 10TB each, running in RAID Z2. My current setup is running windows server 2008 R2 and is several years old and definitely end of life. It is also in an old norco 24 bay server chassis that is just plain done. It is too loud, and I want to avoid using a server chassis if possible. The delta cooling noise from them is just too obnoxious. I don't have a space concern, but the server sits in a utility closet in my basement, beside a bedroom, and everyone that stays here comments on the noise. The new device doesn't need to be silent, but i would prefer if it was much quieter than it is now. I was looking at a silverstone CS381 case and building around that, but the Mini ITX form factor felt really limiting, and i haven't really been able to find a hardware solution that felt satisfactory. I also found the IN-WIN IW-PLV Tower, and thought that would work great, but i don't know if thats an old product cause it doesn't seem to exist anywhere except on the inwin website.
I am not tied to any one motherboard manufacturer, but i was mainly looking at supermicro and asrock as per all the guides. I would also prefer if the mainboard had enough on board ports for all the harddrives without having to get a HBA card, but honestly, that isn't a hard requirement. The amount of RAM needed by ZFS to run this many drives is also a concern, so i'm not sure if 4 RAM slots is going to be enough since that usually maxes out at 64GB.
Most of the newer supermicro boards have dual processors. I thought this might be overkill, and i didn't know if there would be a lot of performance gain out of it, but at this point, those seem to be the only ones i found that have the other features I would like, with M.2 storage for OS, and plenty of SATA and SAS ports, as well as lots of RAM slots, upgradable to 1TB.
Generally my approach is to start with the components and build around that. But i'm also not sure what kind of processor(s) i should be looking at, so i don't really feel like i can even narrow down what platform to build on. So let your imaginations run wild! Let me know what you think would be the absolute best new FreeNAS build!
