My first FreeNAS build

[Adures]

So it's finally a time. I want to create my home data center for storage and file sharing. I was reading about whole ECC vs non-ECC and I am still non fully convinced how non-ECC might be a problem for low usage home server like mine. Hovewer i want this machine to last for years with easy upgrade-ability so i went for a build with ECC support.
Keep in mind i want this build to be reasonably cheap and because i live in Poland some parts might not be as avaliable as for example in US. Here is my build:

motherboard: ASRock E3V5 WS <- i took this motherboard because it's cheap, has 6x SATA and easy to buy in my local shops

processor: Intel Celeron G3900 <- will it be enough? As i said it's mostly for storage and file sharing. I don't plan on streaming in any foreseeable future. Or should i go with Pentium G4560? I can always upgrade later if' i'd like to start streaming media.

RAM: KINGSTON Dell server memory DDR4 8 gb 2133 Mhz ECC

Hard drives Seagate Surveillance HDD 1 TB 5900 RPM <- I will take 2 of them. 1 TB at the start should be enought for my home usage. I will probably buy additional drives as the year goes. Will this drives be ok?

PSU: be quiet! 450W System Power 7 <- cheap and highly efficient compared to other PSU in my pricetag

Case: I will use case from my old PC i found in the attic :D

Is this build alright? Should i expect any problems?

EDIT: BOOT: 8 gb pendrive. Probably the cheapest i can find

 

[Vito Reiter]

Good choice with the 8GB ECC (It's beneficial to have to prevent losing your data randomly with corruption), your processor and board both support ECC which is a need obviously. For basic file storage, the processor should be enough. I would see if you can't get 2 WD Reds instead, may save you money in the future given their built for this workload. Looks good otherwise, and remember to double check your volume settings/redundancy prior to creating it as this step is UNDOABLE, especially when expanding a volume. Best of luck and thanks for following the minimum requirements and best practices!

 

[Adures]

Thanks for the suggestion. I will take WD REDs instead of seagate

 

[Adures]

And if i wanted to go with something stronger would Intel Pentium G4560 be a good choice?

 

[Vito Reiter]

Pentium is definitely better. Personally, I would stick with the i3/5/7/Xeon Series but preference is preference. Yours will work for what you're doing.

 

[religiouslyconfused]

And if i wanted to go with something stronger would Intel Pentium G4560 be a good choice?

Great choice and that CPU can use AES-NI if you want to use encryption.

 

[Vito Reiter]

Great choice and that CPU can use AES-NI if you want to use encryption.

Since you're a little newer to FreeNAS, I feel obligated to mention that if you choose to use encryption, keep backups of backups of backups of that encryption key. Losing the key will result in a loss of ALL of your data.

 

[Adures]

Thanks i will keep that in mind

 

[danb35]

Great choice and that CPU can use AES-NI if you want to use encryption.

(Channeling @DrKK)
DO.
NOT.
ENCRYPT.
YOUR.
POOL.

Seriously, don't. Unless you have a legal or regulatory mandate that data at rest must be encrypted, don't. The encryption system is designed to fail secure, and "secure" means that nobody gets the data.

 

[Adures]

What could you tell me about WD Blue? Would they also be viable solution? I found a really good offer for 6 drives 320 gb each.(They would cost me less than 2 WD RED). I could set up everything when mounting it and then just swap discs with bigger capacity.

EDIT:Also i didn't see your reply @danb35 I don't think i plan encryption with my first freeNAS build. Maybe in future.

 

[Vito Reiter]

That's a perfectly viable option, those disks are more likely to fail compared to reds but if you have a 6 disk RaidZ2 you should be fine (Redundancy is not a backup!) Yes, you could gradually over time replace each 320GB disk with say a 1TB disk and after all 6 have been replaced the pool will expand to 4TB~ from about 1.2TB~ that you should get from the 320GB drives. This is actually one of the recommended ways to expand your pool, definitely only replace 1 disk at a time though because you don't want to surpass your 2 disk failure tolerance.

 

[Adures]

Thanks but now i saw they are SATA II :/ That's why they are cheap.
Would it be worth it? I don't know how much performace would i lose.

 

[Vito Reiter]

Not a whole lot, I mean a 1GbE connection would be the bottleneck before the SATAII genuinely topped out. They're gonna be slower than other drives (They're cheap and mechanical probably 5400RPM) but the fact that it's SATA II shouldn't cause an issue in your setup. Although, I believe drives are an investment and you'll go through several of those blues before a single red would usually die. More money down > Less spent on replacements.

 

[Adures]

Thanks, i think i will go for it then and see how they work. I could buy 11 of them at the same price as 2 wd red so loosing them won't bother me that much. It will be easier to upgrade and i can buy 8 of them, pay less and still have 2 spare ones ready to switch the bad ones.

EDIT: corrected mistakes

EDIT2: Actually another question came up to my mind. When upgrading my NAS storage in future do i have to keep my drives 5400 RPM or can the NAS work with HD with different RPM Can i mix them? Also let's assume that in the future 2,5'' HD would be worth it to put in my NAS. Would it be possible to mix 2,5'' and 3,5'' drives?

 

[Vito Reiter]

Honestly, if that gives you enough space, there's nothing wrong with sticking to that configuration. I've been using consumer drives in my office for a long time without issue.

 

[danb35]

Can i mix them?

Mixing drives of different speeds and different physical sizes is perfectly safe. Performance, roughly speaking, is going to be limited by the slowest drive in the vdev, though.

 

[Vito Reiter]

If we're being 110% honest, I've mixed 2.5", 3.5", 5400RPM, 7200RPM, and SSD's all together before just because it was near me and available when a drive failed. Never saw any data integrity problems from it but my pool was slow as hell at one point.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

What could you tell me about WD Blue? Would they also be viable solution?

I can tell you that they aren't designed for NAS applications, i.e. they don't support TLER. This can result in the whole system becoming unresponsive when a drive starts to fail, which can make dealing with that failure a lot harder.

 

[Stux]

If you go with the small drives, verify your pool is using an ashift of 12 before putting data on it.

 

[wblock]

the i3/5/7/Xeon Series

ECC is not supported by i5 or i7.