Is FreeNAS for me?

[Merkurio]

Hi everyone!

I'm new around here, and despite the title, I'm a DIY hardware fan who recently found the need of buy/make a NAS due a storage limitations (I have almost fullfilled both 512 GB SSDs in my MBP and PC).

At the beginning, I was looking for an appropiate model from Synology or QNAP, but researching a little, I realized that there's not enough power in those machines in order to transcoding via Plex server, so I deeply submerged into the DIY NAS world and found FreeNAS (and consecuentely, this forum).

I was reading about ZFS and other security and reliability enhacements of the OS, along with the hardware requirements, and I really liked the idea of make my own system.

However, I also really like the simplicity and mobile app support of the comercial alternatives, and I need to know if FreeNAS will be a good choice for me after all (or it would be good to see other alternatives).

I planing to use the home server for:

-Media server with good transcoding capabilities
-Automatized download server (with sonarr or something like that)
-Remote access to my files
-App alternatives in iOS (to do the same things that I could do with the QNAP/Synology suite, although separately)
-Surveillance station (important).
-ROM storage for RetroArch (in order to access them remotely)
-Backup purposes (Apple Time Capsule, for example)

As for the hardware, I need the smallest form factor posible, so I thinked in this components:

CASE: Silverstone CS01S (small mini-ITX case with 2x3.5" and 2x2.5" bays)
MOBO: ASRock E3C236D2I (Supermicro doesn't have a mini-ITX with C236 socket, AFAIK)
CPU: Intel i3-6320
RAM: 16 GB DDR4 ECC (I would have to check manufacturer and model)
PSU: Silverstone SX700-LPT (SFX-L sized and 80 Plus Platinum rate)
STORAGE: 1xWD Red 4 TB (temporaly) and 1xTrascend M.2 SSD 64 GB for FreeNAS boot

I'll really appreciate your help and suggestings!

Greetings.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Just one HDD might not make freenas a good solution. Ideally you have at least 2 to start. It sounds like you don't really have a storage problem you have the need for an always on server.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[Merkurio]

Just one HDD might not make freenas a good solution. Ideally you have at least 2 to start. It sounds like you don't really have a storage problem you have the need for an always on server.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

Well, I really have a storage problems, but I think a single HDD of 4 TB will be enough for my needs, at least at the start.

Do you recommend me 2x2TB then? Is for the ZFS config, right?

 

[DrKK]

Sir, you should run FreeNAS/ZFS with more drives than capacity. In other words, if you were aiming for approximately 4TB of storage, you would need *THREE* 2TB drives, for a 3-drive RAID-Z configuration. It is foolish to run a NAS without redundant storage.

 

[wblock]

Or two 4G drives in a mirror.

 

[melloa]

Well, I really have a storage problems, but I think a single HDD of 4 TB will be enough for my needs, at least at the start.

Do you recommend me 2x2TB then? Is for the ZFS config, right?

@Merkurio

First of all welcome.

Here's the thing. FreeNAS is based on FreeBSD that uses a great (gurus don't kill me) file system called ZFS. I've been messing around my home server, installing, reinstalling, moving from one computer to another, etc, and never had a problem with my data. Also I had HDDs failing on my son's FreeNAS and was only replace that HD and we were back in business or, better saying, with a health pool, as the server never went down.

With all of that said, yes, FreeNAS is for you and anyone that wants to have a safe place to store data and in the process use plugins for applications. To take full advantage of that you will need to understand what ZFS is about and think about setting up your server in a way that if HDs fail you will have how to recover with only replacing the disk.

With one disk ... well, if it fails is kaput your data.

Read this: https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/ and you will understand what is there (or here) for you with FreeNAS.

I, personally, use servers with Raidz2 with 10 HDDs at home and always say: Start with small HDs if you can't afford big ones, but get redundancy in place. With ZFS you can replace your HD one by one with bigger ones and increase your pool size after getting all replaced.

Good luck!

 

[toadman]

With the requirements list yes, one could use FreeNAS. But I suspect it would be easier to maintain if he loaded a linux desktop (or other free OS of choice) on the box and managed it that way. Although I don't know what "Surveillance station (important)" means exactly.

It's just not clear he needs/wants the overhead of ZFS. He can configure redundant storage in linux if desired.

The server will be used for backups, presumably for the PC and the MBP. Question: What is the plan to backup the server?

 

[Merkurio]

@Merkurio

First of all welcome.

Here's the thing. FreeNAS is based on FreeBSD that uses a great (gurus don't kill me) file system called ZFS. I've been messing around my home server, installing, reinstalling, moving from one computer to another, etc, and never had a problem with my data. Also I had HDDs failing on my son's FreeNAS and was only replace that HD and we were back in business or, better saying, with a health pool, as the server never went down.

With all of that said, yes, FreeNAS is for you and anyone that wants to have a safe place to store data and in the process use plugins for applications. To take full advantage of that you will need to understand what ZFS is about and think about setting up your server in a way that if HDs fail you will have how to recover with only replacing the disk.

With one disk ... well, if it fails is kaput your data.

Read this: https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/ and you will understand what is there (or here) for you with FreeNAS.

I, personally, use servers with Raidz2 with 10 HDDs at home and always say: Start with small HDs if you can't afford big ones, but get redundancy in place. With ZFS you can replace your HD one by one with bigger ones and increase your pool size after getting all replaced.

Good luck!

Many thanks!

Now I'm a lot more conscious about redundancy ant the importance of having plenty of HDD's.

With the requirements list yes, one could use FreeNAS. But I suspect it would be easier to maintain if he loaded a linux desktop (or other free OS of choice) on the box and managed it that way. Although I don't know what "Surveillance station (important)" means exactly.

It's just not clear he needs/wants the overhead of ZFS. He can configure redundant storage in linux if desired.

The server will be used for backups, presumably for the PC and the MBP. Question: What is the plan to backup the server?

With surveillance station I mean the posibility of connect some IP cameras to my FreeNAS server, such as Synology and QNAP do with their respective software. Nothing much sofisticated, but at least functionable.

As for the last cuestion, do you refer to backup the NAS itself? If it is the case, I don't know, maybe with the proper cares and common sense... or you try to say if I plan to backup in a cloud service?

 

[toadman]

With surveillance station I mean the posibility of connect some IP cameras to my FreeNAS server, such as Synology and QNAP do with their respective software. Nothing much sofisticated, but at least functionable.

As for the last cuestion, do you refer to backup the NAS itself? If it is the case, I don't know, maybe with the proper cares and common sense... or you try to say if I plan to backup in a cloud service?

What surveillance software do you plan to run? Does that software run on freebsd? If not, what os? I suppose you could run another OS under virtualbox or something. Or in a VM once FreeNAS 10 is released.

Yes, I was talking about backing up the NAS. If there is an event that causes the data on the NAS to go "poof", is that a problem? If yes, I assume you would want to back up the data on FreeNAS to another machine. Could be local, could be remote, could be cloud, etc.

 

[Merkurio]

What surveillance software do you plan to run? Does that software run on freebsd? If not, what os? I suppose you could run another OS under virtualbox or something. Or in a VM once FreeNAS 10 is released.

Yes, I was talking about backing up the NAS. If there is an event that causes the data on the NAS to go "poof", is that a problem? If yes, I assume you would want to back up the data on FreeNAS to another machine. Could be local, could be remote, could be cloud, etc.

Sadly, I don't know what surveillance software options are on FreeBSD, that's why I put the criteria of use in my first post (and I really want to know if there's something, otherwise FreeNAS wouldn't be for me probably).

As for the NAS backup, it isn't something that I thinked in, but I guess I'll still keeping the most important things in the other machines (after all, I saved the most critical data and images con OneDrive already), but again, I don't know yet.

 

[melloa]

Sadly, I don't know what surveillance software options are on FreeBSD

zoneminder.