Moving from Old QNAP, putting together "Scrap" parts

[Thanassos]

Hi there, long time lurker first time poster.

I have been a QNAP user for many years now but my 6-Bay (1.5TBx6 Raid 5) ATOM Powered device is reaching the end of it's life and it's time for an upgrade.

The QNAP operates only as storage device, as it became to slow to steam my 1080 Plex media. I have Plex/NZB Download/Torrent/Sonarr/Couch Potato etc etc running on a 2011 i5 MacMini that's doing the job OK although it stumbles sometimes on 4k content.

I was going to just upgrade the QNAP to a new i7 one but the cost of the Unit + the 8TB HDDs mounts up quickly so I thought what "scrap" parts do I have lying around my house/office, which would allow me to essentially combine the QNAP and the MacMini and host everything on one machine.

I managed to find a 4 Socket Supermicro with 4x E5-4650 and 256GB of RAM @ My office that wasn't being used and an old X79 Socket 2011 Enthusiast MoBo at home... which got me thinking....

So I migrated one of the E5s over to the X79 Mobo, threw in 32GB of ECC RAM, a 512 GB SSD and hooray it booted.

Link to mobo: http://www.asrock.com/mb/intel/x79 extreme9/

This MOBO has 8x SATA3 Ports although running over 3 sources (2x X79/2x SE9220/4x SE9172) so I plan to buy 2x 8TB drives to get started with FreeNAS and see if I prefer it as I'm very comfortable with QNAP. (And another 4x SATA2 Ports for 12 Storage ports in total)

With the 2x New HDDs as the only new component I'll be well ahead financially and assuming I come around to FreeNAS over QNAP should I make "upgrading" the MoBo to a SuperMicro or the like a priority? Is it a huge problem to be using the above MoBo for short to medium term?

Lastly, are there any other glaringly obvious issues that I'm missing with the above setup that you guys/gals can see as an issue in the future?

Many thanks, looking forward to giving this a whirl.

 

[BigDave]

assuming I come around to FreeNAS over QNAP should I make "upgrading" the MoBo to a SuperMicro or the like a priority?

Yes, a server grade product would be better for your use case.

Is it a huge problem to be using the above MoBo for short to medium term?

If it's not for production use, it's not a huge problem.

Lastly, are there any other glaringly obvious issues that I'm missing with the above setup that you guys/gals can see as an issue in the future?

With the information you have provided, nothing glaringly obvious...

 

[Chris Moore]

Just a single pair of drives might be fine to start, but you will want to reconfigure those and some additional drives into a RAID-z2 configuration before you shift to this with more than a small set of data for testing. You can't change from a mirror to a RAID level in FreeNAS non destructively.
You will want to read up on ZFS if you have not before because that is the filesystem for FreeNAS which is based on FreeBSD.
Since the system board you have supports up to 64GB of ECC memory and the processor you have may be powerful enough to do all the functions you are interested in, the board may be fine but there are some real benefits to a Supermicro server board. The biggest benefit is that there is IPMI for KVM over IP.

 

[Thanassos]

Alright, thanks.

Got it up and running just to play around with it and all seems OK. Just getting my head around the differences.

As you said above Chris, not being able to change a VDEV once it's made apart from replacing all HDDs and expanding the size seems the be the only major drawback I can see people worrying about FreeNAS and ZFS. It is a problem that's overcome with proper planning and correct upfront demonising.

I'm thinking I'll go with 4x 4TB drives to get going as in either Raidz1 or 2 it'll still give me an upgrade on my current system and ease some immediate storage pressure, then down the track max it out with 8-12 drives backup to the cloud and rebuild on the full set.

Off I go to get authorisation from the better half to access the war chest.

Cheers.

 

[Chris Moore]

Off I go to get authorisation from the better half to access the war chest.

Good Luck. :)