BUILD HW for NAS and VR (dual-boot)

[brichard]

Hi,

I am ditching my current Qnap NAS and building a FreeNAS server. As I only have a macbook, but also would love to play around with VR in the near future, I was thinking about a build to support both.

The main purpose of the build would be server (90% of the time), but occasionally gaming and VR apps etc.

Please help me with HW recommendations.

OS: FreeNAS 10 + Win 10, dual-boot
Motherboard: SUPERMICRO X11SSH-F SOCKET 1151
RAM: 2x SAMSUNG M391A2K43BB1-CPB 16GB DDR 4 FB ECC - ECC FOR SOCKET 1151
Processor: INTEL XEON E3 -1240V5
Cooler: Noctua NH-D15
Case: Fractal Design Define R5
FreeNAS storage drives: 6x Seagate 4TB 24x7 NAS Internal Hard Disk Drive (have these already)
FreeNAS boot: 60 GB SSD (have this already)
Win 10 boot and storage: 256 GB SSD (have this already)
Graphics: Asus NVIDIA GTX 970 STRIX
PSU: be quiet! 700W Straight Power 10
UPS: APC Smart UPS 1500 LCD

Is the processor sufficient for Oculus? They recommend i5-4590 - what would be the server equivalent?
What do you think about this setup?
How suitable are the board, RAM and processor for this kind of application?
How difficult is to set up the dual boot?
Will the 700W PSU be sufficient?

Thank you for any constructive comment.

 

[pirateghost]

We always tell people they shouldn't attempt a dual boot setup with freenas. It's seriously a dangerous idea.

 

[religiouslyconfused]

It is probably advice you don't want to hear but build a Nas and then build a machine for vr.

 

[joeschmuck]

Build a dedicated NAS or you will be kicking yourself when you lose your data.

If you wanted a multipurpose machine, you might try ESXi or some other virtualization but that too has it's risks and I wouldn't promote it unless you really dig in and understand the risks and learn ESXi and how it works. I have learned everything I know on the internet and it's not that easy and I'm contemplating buying a good ESXi book because I like to read things in a book. I am just starting out on my ESXi machine and I'm not a guru these days but just very cautious. Although my FreeNAS has been running for about 2 weeks without issue, I also have a separate NAS to which I also have a copy of all my data, well copy is not really true, all my system backups are made twice, once to FreeNAS and then again to the separate "safe" NAS until I can trust that I'm not going to screw myself over. I will likely retain this configuration for 6 months as the second NAS unit has nothing better to do than just sit there.

So my advice, just keep it simple and build a dedicated FreeNAS server.