Migrating to FreeNAS

[TLEH]

Basically I am the only person at my company who knows anything about computing or networking and I get stuck with all the projects related to that.

Marketing department of 7 people, who do a ton of video content, have almost filled up our current 24TB NAS. Its just a WD NAS, its slow and just overall pretty shitty.

Because we are growing greatly as a company and constantly putting out content, I think we need a more scalable solution so that we dont end up with a bunch of random NAS devices. I was thinking about getting a 24 bay disk shelf, connecting it to a PC that ill build and installing FreeNAS. So far from reading this forum and watching videos, this is what I have come up with.

24 Bay NetApp Disk shelf.
Ryzen 3700X
ASRock x570
Ram=64 GB Crucial CT4K16G4DFD8266
Was going to use a 64 GB SSD boot drive for FreeNAS
Was going to snag a preflashed LSI 9207-8e
a SFP+ 10Gbps PCI card to attach to the switch


Thats about it. I attach the two SAS cables to the LSI-9207-8e from the Disk shelf, the PC to the switch using the SFP+ card and boot FreeNas and I should be able to go from there? I realize there may be driver issues and troubleshooting and boot stuff from there, but does my general understand of what to do seem right?

I'm maybe a little over my head when it comes to command line and updating drivers and FreeNas versions may not be fun but nobody else at this place will do it, so here we are. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Yorick]

For the motherboard, you are better off with an ASrock Rack X470D4U . That IPMI will help. https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=X470D4U#Specifications

This sounds like you are going to use it for file serving, which means the 3700x is overkill, a 3600 would do just as well. Do go for the larger CPU if you are planning to run VMs on there.

Make sure to turn off C6 states in BIOS for stability with FreeNAS.

RAM, go for ECC and 32GB per stick, so you have some room for growth and you never have to troubleshoot memory issues. For example two of https://memory.net/product/m391a4g4...6-ecc-udimm-pc4-21300v-e-dual-rank-x8-module/

 

[TLEH]

For the motherboard, you are better off with an ASrock Rack X470D4U . That IPMI will help. https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=X470D4U#Specifications

This sounds like you are going to use it for file serving, which means the 3700x is overkill, a 3600 would do just as well. Do go for the larger CPU if you are planning to run VMs on there.

Make sure to turn off C6 states in BIOS for stability with FreeNAS.

RAM, go for ECC and 32GB per stick, so you have some room for growth and you never have to troubleshoot memory issues. For example two of https://memory.net/product/m391a4g4...6-ecc-udimm-pc4-21300v-e-dual-rank-x8-module/

Thanks for the reply. Does my general understanding of the cabling and setup sound correct? Do you think going with an older Dell or HP enterprise rack mounted server would be better?

Thanks.

 

[Spearfoot]

We use a NetApp system at work and they are quite impressive, but are also very proprietary in nature; even the hard drives are flashed with NetApp-specific firmware and, if I recall correctly, are formatted with 520 byte sectors instead of the more typical 512. Doesn't mean you couldn't get one of their shelves to work with FreeNAS, but it's liable to take more work and involve some headache.

I suggest that you at least consider finding a suitable enterprise system on eBay. SuperMicro systems are known to work very well with FreeNAS. (I own 4 such servers, see 'My systems' below.)

 

[Yorick]

If you search for "Supermicro 24 bay" on eBay you'll find a lot of systems. DDR3 ECC Registered is very affordable now, so you can build with a lot of RAM if so desired.

If your heart is set on that Ryzen for your compute, then you can also find Supermicro disk shelves that will work seamlessly with your HBA.

 

[TLEH]

If you search for "Supermicro 24 bay" on eBay you'll find a lot of systems. DDR3 ECC Registered is very affordable now, so you can build with a lot of RAM if so desired.

If your heart is set on that Ryzen for your compute, then you can also find Supermicro disk shelves that will work seamlessly with your HBA.

Im
Appreciate the help. I’m not necessarily set on anything. Just looking for a NAS solution that I can easily scale in the future that is rack mounted. We shoot tons of 4K and 8k video and do a ton of editing off the NAS we have and it’s slow as hell. The Synology systems out there just seem to lack the power and scalability.

I’m leaning towards just getting a disk shelf and an older enterprise server.

 

[danb35]

The Synology systems out there just seem to lack the power and scalability.

Synology has enterprise gear as well, and I understand it performs much better, but of course the price is correspondingly higher.

I’m leaning towards just getting a disk shelf and an older enterprise server.

With the right disk shelf and enterprise server, this can certainly work. But it does seem simpler to just get a server with a decent number of drive bays. This one looks pretty nice:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro...torage-Server-2x-Xeon-E5-2620-v3/133275531081

You'd want to replace the RAID controller with a LSI SAS HBA (you might even make money on that deal), probably add some RAM, and connect a small SSD as a boot device. And for maybe $1200 you've got a 36-bay server. Oh yeah, add a 10G NIC if you want that.

Edit: And then, if 36 bays aren't enough for you, whack in one of these:

Supermicro CSE-PTJBOD-CB2 Power board for JBOD for sale online | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Supermicro CSE-PTJBOD-CB2 Power board for JBOD at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

 

[TLEH]

@danb35 will that server support 10 or 12 tb drives?

 

[Yorick]

It’s the HBA that supports them, hence: Yes.

 

[TLEH]

It’s the HBA that supports them, hence: Yes.

I had previously read about larger drives needing increased wattage and that all bays may not support certain drives.

How many drives will one HBA support? Such as the LSI SAS9302-8i

 

[sretalla]

How many drives will one HBA support? Such as the LSI SAS9302-8i

With the right cabling/expander/backplane, hundreds.

 

[TLEH]

With the right cabling/expander/backplane, hundreds.

BPN-SAS3-846EL1 24-port 4U SAS3 12Gbps single-expander backplane, support up to 24x 3.5-inch SAS3/SATA3 HDD/SSD
*BPN-SAS3-826EL1 12-port 2U SAS3 12Gbps single-expander backplane, support up to 12x 3.5-inch SAS3/SATA3 HDD/SSD

These are the two backplanes. I believe they support SFF-8643 connections. Im just trying to understand how many cables I will need and if I need an expander card as well as the HBA.


If I am reading correctly, I plug in one mini sas to J49 on the backplane of the 846el, one mini sas into j49 of 826el, plug both these into the HBA, and I can control 36 drives. Is that correct.

 

[danb35]

It’s the HBA that supports them, hence: Yes.

Well, HBA and backplane. But I have the same backplane in my server, and I have 6 12TB disks there that are working just fine.

 

[danb35]

If I am reading correctly, I plug in one mini sas to J49 on the backplane of the 846el, one mini sas into j49 of 826el, plug both these into the HBA, and I can control 36 drives. Is that correct.

Yes.

 

[TLEH]

Well, I got all my parts, ran all the cables, installed all my drives into the bays and it works perfect. I want to thank you all for the help. @danb35 @Yorick @Spearfoot I appreciate all your input and you guys definitely put me in the right direction.

I went with an X520 from Intel, a LSI HBA and a 4U 36 Bay SuperMicro X10DRi-T4+ with 192 GB RAM