My FreeNAS (first) / Win 10 combo, need some critical opinions to streamline it

[ionutm80]

Hi guys,


I'm about to pull the trigger and start building my first FreeNAS system. For the moment I'm using something based on Win 10 Pro for Workstations / Storage Spaces + ReFS in parity mode with 4 HDDs WD Red but with consumer grade hardware. Most of the use is for media / personal data sharing and PLEX server plus some light torrent-ing. Why did I choose Win 10 first? Because I can get very cheap cloud storage with OneDrive for Home: 5TB total / 1TB for 5 people (like 30-50 EUR/year during BlackFriday).

After reading a lot of sites pages / blogs /comments regarding the best file system to be used for a DIY home server / NAS I have narrowed my choices to only 3 alternatives: ZFS, ReFS (what I currently use) or Btrfs. Initially I set myself for Windows ReFS due to ease of use, the fact that is the system that I’m most familiar with and the integration with OneDrive cloud back-up (a must for me!). However I’m also a perfectionist and always target the best in class within reasonable costing margins of course hence I decided to go for ZFS as being the most praised file system so far and drop my current option (ReFS is still in its infancy, very poor write speeds even with 2 SSDs WBC, you can get Raid 6 resiliency only with minimum 7 drives, etc.) while Btrfs was out for not having a stable Raid 5/6 parity yet. Now regarding the operating system for use with ZFS I also had 3 options: a Solaris flavor with napp-it on top (too complex for my taste), ZOL but I’m not quite happy that support at kernel level is somehow a gray area or a FreeBSD flavor which supports ZFS natively … and here the only viable option is FreeNAS!

So I decided to have the best of 2 worlds: a dedicated NAS based on ZFS/FreeNAS and a small WIN 10 PC for OneDrive cloud back-up.

The configuration for the FreeNAS would be the following:

MB: Asus P10S-I m-itx, 6 SATA 3 ports (1 SAS + 2x dedicated SATA 3), 2 x Intel® I210AT + 1 x Mgmt LAN, IPMI with ASMB8-iKVM
https://www.asus.com/uk/Commercial-Servers-Workstations/P10S-I/overview/
CPU: Intel Core I3 6100 (re-purposed from old build)
RAM: 1 module of 16GB Crucial ECC UDIMM DDR4 (CT16G4WFD824A) / I plan to add another one lately if necessary
http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/ct16g4wfd824a
Case: Node 304
HDDs: 6 x 4Tb WD RED (currently have 4 plan to buy 2 more) in RAIDZ2
HBA: LSI 9211-8i (2 SAS ports / 8 lanes)
PSU: Seasonic S12II-520 Bronze 520W

Main purpose: storage of personal pictures / movies, media (own BluRay and DVD rips), PlexServer but here I have some doubts since I3 6100 seems capable of only 2 simultaneous 1080p transcodes and might use the Win 10 PC build for that, see below …
I know that the recommended MBs are Supermicro or Asrock but to be honest these are 50 to 100 EUR more expensive and quite difficult to source in Eastern Europe. Can anybody share its experience with this board?

Now regarding the boot drive, which I want to be mirrored, I have either the option of using 2 x Kingston A400 120GB (currently being used as WBC for SS) or use 2 x USB 3.0 sticks and repurpose the 2 SSDs as a mirrored pool for any jails / dockers that I might used (with PlexServer, Transmission, Owncloud, miniDLNA, Couchpotato, Sickbeard, etc.). Q: What do you think would be the best use for this?

Q: Another question I have is whether a SLOG would be beneficial for my intended use as the MB has an M.2 Type 2242 slot which could accommodate a small NVMe SSD?

As a side note I do not intend to use VMs, deduplication, compression other than default, L2ARC.

The configuration for the Win 10 mini PC would be the following:


MB: Asrock B150M-ITX (re-purposed from old build)
CPU: Intel Pentium G4560 (KabyLake so full HW decode/encode even for HEVC 10bit 4K)
RAM: 2 x 16 GB Crucial DDR4 2133 (re-purposed from old build)
HDD: 1 x 2.5 2TB WD Green (intellipark disabled) for OneDrive cloud sync + 1 x SSDNow V300 120GB for Win 10 (both re-purposed from previous build)
PSU: Pico-PSU 160w (laying around from previous builds)
Case: Chieftec Compact Series IX-01B (laying around from previous builds)

This Win 10 build would be used as main purpose for OneDrive cloud sync (to a have a local copy of OneDrive which would be then synced with a directory on the NAS RAIDZ2 pool using a scheduled SyncToy run) and possibly as a separate Plex Server to take advantage of the HW transcoding that is possible in Windows. But here I’m not sure how well this will run to have Plex on this machine with media to serve on mounted drive from the NAS … any share of experience would be highly appreciate.

An alternative that I have considered for the combo above would be a Win 10 VM running inside FreeNAS but this would complicate things a lot in my perspective and hence I decided to drop this path.

Please feel free to tell me whether I can streamline even mored my set-up or whether I have not properly chose the components for the FreeNAS build.


Thanks in advance for your comments!

 

[Chris Moore]

You heard what about only running 4 drives on a SAS controller?
That's just crazy talk is what that is.
I have 32 drives running from the same type controller.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[danb35]

HBA: LSI 9211-8i

What's the purpose of this? You're calling for six disks, and your motherboard has six SATA ports (even if four of them are pretending to be a SAS port). So what do you need the extra ports for?

 

[ionutm80]

You heard what about only running 4 drives on a SAS controller?
That's just crazy talk is what that is.
I have 32 drives running from the same type controller.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

Yeh, you're right. It was just a comment on an obscure blog teaching how to make a FreeNAS server out of the many more that I have stumbled upon when googleing. I will edit my post to remove this nonsense. However something that I've seen myself is that the radiator on the chip is very hot even with only 1 cable attached so for the moment I have attached a fan in front of it in a PCIe bracket adapter.

Regarding my build do you have any suggestions?

 

[ionutm80]

What's the purpose of this? You're calling for six disks, and your motherboard has six SATA ports (even if four of them are pretending to be a SAS port). So what do you need the extra ports for?

Indeed I only have 6 x 4TB WD REDs for the storage pool but I also have available 2 x SSD Kingston A400 120GB that I would like to use:
1. Either as mirrored boot drives
2. Or as a separate mirrored Vdev and put any jails I might have on them.
What do you think would be the best use for the 2 SSDs in my scenario?

Thanks.

 

[Chris Moore]

However something that I've seen myself is that the radiator on the chip is very hot even with only 1 cable attached so for the moment I have attached a fan in front of it in a PCIe bracket adapter.

These cards are designed for use in 'high airflow' chassis and putting them in a small form chassis like the one you are discussing is not advisable due to the restricted space for airflow.

I also have available 2 x SSD Kingston A400 120GB that I would like to use:

I would connect all storage drives to the SAS controller (you need to work on the airflow) including the SSDs, and use the SATA ports for boot drives. If you want to have SSD boot drives, you probably want to get some smaller ones. Around 30GB is all you need, but don't pay more to get less. For the jails, you might want more space. I use a jail for Plex media server and the last time I looked at the space it was using, it was more than 120GB for just Plex.
It is often a good idea to ask questions like this before you buy hardware.

 

[ionutm80]

Thanks a lot for the feedback provided!

For the jails, you might want more space. I use a jail for Plex media server and the last time I looked at the space it was using, it was more than 120GB for just Plex.

Wow, indeed 120gb only for Plex is quite some space ...

One noob question: disregarding the need for space where would be better to store the jails? On the main Vdev (the 6x 4Tb RAIDZ2 I'm planning) or on a separate one?

 

[Chris Moore]

One noob question: disregarding the need for space where would be better to store the jails? On the main Vdev (the 6x 4Tb RAIDZ2 I'm planning) or on a separate one?

There are advantages to having the jails be on a separate pool. For example, you can simply move the pool to a new FreeNAS system and import it and all your jails come along.
A user @DrKK discusses that here:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...as-build-experiences.54242/page-2#post-376363
I am not saying that a SSD is bad, you just might want a larger one. You can always start with what you have and upgrade to a larger one later. Migration is easy, you can simply mirror the smaller SSD with the larger SSD then split the mirror, removing the smaller SSD. I did that when I upgraded my jails pool from 256Gb to 1TB when I had it on a separate drive. I later moved the jails into the main pool, but I am considering moving it back out to a separate SSD, or a mirrored pair of SSDs. I have 16 empty drive bays in my server, so I have options.

 

[ionutm80]

Thanks for the link and the valuable input, highly appreciated!