LimeCrusher
Explorer
- Joined
- Nov 25, 2018
- Messages
- 87
Dear FreeNAS users,
I recently moved in a home with Ethernet cabling all around so I decided it was time to get serious and start introducing decent NAS services in my household. The temptation evolved to become about a micro server including NAS functionalities plus a few extra things. I discovered FreeNAS and thought it might totally do the job.
At the same time, I discovered the Intel Atom C line of CPUs. I really liked those low-TDP little guys and thought they might be very adapted to a small, efficient, low-power home server. I am interested in building a FreeNAS powered machine with it and I would like your expert opinion on the build I envision. Let's go.
Required Functionalities:
Based on that, I envision the following build around an Intel Atom C3558 and a 4 disks storage.
Proposed Build: Prices indicated in €, because privacy spoiler, that's where I live.
My idea would be to simply bundle all those drives in a single ZFS vdev/pool in RAIDZ1.
Upgrade could be either a 8-cores C3758 embedded CPU (about 120€ more expensive) or 16GB of RAM.
To be fully honest, the final bill here is about 650€ without disks. That's about 100€ more than a Synology DS918+ and makes me wonder: is it really worth it ?
What are your thoughts ? I'd love to have your feedback.
I recently moved in a home with Ethernet cabling all around so I decided it was time to get serious and start introducing decent NAS services in my household. The temptation evolved to become about a micro server including NAS functionalities plus a few extra things. I discovered FreeNAS and thought it might totally do the job.
At the same time, I discovered the Intel Atom C line of CPUs. I really liked those low-TDP little guys and thought they might be very adapted to a small, efficient, low-power home server. I am interested in building a FreeNAS powered machine with it and I would like your expert opinion on the build I envision. Let's go.
Required Functionalities:
- Basic NAS usage : storage and distribution of photos, movies, music, various documents through Windows-compatible share and NFS. Back-ups for two people laptops (a Windows machine and a Linux machine) and maybe an extra light workstation.
- Plex server for the Ethernet-connected 4k TV. We don't have any 4k files yet though, the TV takes FHD files and upscales them so I'm not sure about the transcoding capabilities required here
- Bittorent client, because why not.
- NextCloud server. I would like to have a few documents (or the entire NAS content) available anywhere around Earth.
- VM capable for running a Linux distribution for light tasks (maybe a MPD server, a Jupyter server ...) or just mess up in general.
I feel like FreeNAS has all those functionalities, correct me if I'm misguided.
Based on that, I envision the following build around an Intel Atom C3558 and a 4 disks storage.
Proposed Build: Prices indicated in €, because privacy spoiler, that's where I live.
- CPU & Motherboard: ASrock C3558D4I-4L or SupermicroA2SDI-4C-HLN4F (about 280€ each), both embedding an Intel Atom C3558.
- RAM: 2 x 4GB DDR4 PC2400 CL17 ECC unbuffered Kingston ValueRAM (about 60€ each) for a total of 8GB of RAM.
- Boot drive: Samsung 970 EVO NVMe M.2 250GB (about 80€).
- PSU: Seasonic G-360 (about 70€).
- Case: Fractal Node 304 (about 85€).
- Disks: 4 x WD Red 2TB or Seagate Ironwolf 2TB for a total of 8TB and as low as I can get them from any vendor. I would grab 4 x 3TB if I can find a good deal (seen some lately) porting the total to 12TB.
My idea would be to simply bundle all those drives in a single ZFS vdev/pool in RAIDZ1.
Upgrade could be either a 8-cores C3758 embedded CPU (about 120€ more expensive) or 16GB of RAM.
To be fully honest, the final bill here is about 650€ without disks. That's about 100€ more than a Synology DS918+ and makes me wonder: is it really worth it ?
What are your thoughts ? I'd love to have your feedback.
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