My FreeNAS History & Current Build

[Saxito Pau]

So I've decided to share my history of using FreeNAS.

Started about 4 years go and was being cheap at the time, so this was the build:

• Cooler Master Elite 120 with a HDD by where the CD drive would go.
• Intel DQ45EK ITX motherboard (US$45 on amazon)
  
• Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 (dual core 2.2 GHz)
  
• 4GB DDR2 RAM I had lying around
• 4 2TB desktop drives, each drive as its own pool
• PC Power & Cooling Silencer Series 400 Watt
• Kingston 8GB flash drive to boot up

I used a 4TB external hard drive for occasional manual backup (straight copy and paste over network from a windows PC)

It worked well for my growing Plex anime and media library not to mention all the software, ISOs, personal data, image files, etc. and my IP camera footage.
Three years later, I wanted something more powerful, so I went with this at the start of this year, keeping the case and drives:

• Cooler Master Elite 120 with a HDD by where the CD drive would go.
• Jetway NF9E-Q77 Mini-ITX Motherboard
• Intel Core i5-3450
  
• 8GB Laptop DDR3 RAM I had lying around
• 4 2TB desktop drives, each drive as its own pool (2 drives began to fail and were replaced with NAS drives during this time)
• PC Power & Cooling Silencer Series 400 Watt
• Kingston 8GB flash drive to boot up

And now my JUST completed build (almost according to forum specs!) is as follows:

• SuperMicro X9SCM-F (US$100 new off ebay, steal of a deal I got!)
• Intel Xeon E3-1225 v2 (quad core 3.2 GHz, US$90 used on ebay)
• Crucial 16GB Kit (2 x 8GB) DDR3L-1600 ECC (US$122 direct from Crucial)
• 2 x 3TB Seagate NAS drives, mirrored
• 1 x 4TB Seagate NAS drive, single drive pool
  
• 1 x 3TB Seagate Desktop drive, single drive pool
  
• 1 x Sandisk U100 16GB SSD as the boot drive
• Fractal Design Define Mini (US$74 + US$50 shipping to Trinidad and Tobago! cheapest option online)
• PC Power & Cooling Silencer Series 400 Watt (still going strong!)

• Ended up switching to SSD as boot due to an odd issue recently where after setting my SSD to store jails, if I rebooted, FreeNAS would get confused and think the SSD is the boot drive instead of the flash drive and corrupt the SSD after a reboot. After some research, I just went SSD as the boot drive, no issues since.
• My only error was not burning in the NAS drives before installation, my 4TB External USB has a backup of the most essential stuff though.
• I have a drive to replace again, still deciding if I even need that 5th drive.

Do critique...

(PS: If there are any DOTA players here, my user name is the same )

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Welcome to the forums!

 

[Saxito Pau]

Welcome to the forums!

Much Thanks.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Do critique...

I'm not a hardware expert, but it looks like the PSU may be the weakest link in your build. Seasonic is a much-recommended brand in these forums, not sure about availability in your locale.

 

[wblock]

Very nice cable routing!

 

[Saxito Pau]

I'm not a hardware expert, but it looks like the PSU may be the weakest link in your build. Seasonic is a much-recommended brand in these forums, not sure about availability in your locale.

If it is sold on Amazon/Ebay, I can get it. In fact a 550W Gold on is in my cart (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00918MEZG/?tag=ozlp-20). Thanks to air freight forwarding companies, I can order almost anything on Amazon (Prime) and get it to Trinidad in a week. Local companies either sell uber cheap crap PSUs or charge exorbitantly on the good ones - with no warranty!.

Very nice cable routing!

Thanks!



I think early next year I will change the stock cooler to a GeminII S524 Ver.2 (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00UOIK3FU/?tag=ozlp-20). My CPU core are temps hovering around 50C idle
(Consider I live in a tropical climate with a concrete roof house that traps and retains heat well).

My current temps:

Code:

[root@freenas ~]# sysctl -a |egrep -E "cpu\.[0-9]+\.temp"					   
dev.cpu.3.temperature: 52.0C													
dev.cpu.2.temperature: 47.0C													
dev.cpu.1.temperature: 49.0C													
dev.cpu.0.temperature: 49.0C  
												 
[root@freenas ~]# for i in $(sysctl -n kern.disks); do		 DevTemp=`smartctl
-a /dev/$i | awk '/Temperature_Celsius/{print $0}' | awk '{print $10 "C"}'`;   
	  DevSerNum=`smartctl -a /dev/$i | awk '/Serial Number:/{print $0}' | awk '{
print $3}'`;		 DevName=`smartctl -a /dev/$i | awk '/Device Model:/{print $
0}' | awk '{print $3}'`;		 echo $i $DevTemp $DevSerNum $DevName; done	 
ada4 39C W6A0TQF4 ST3000VN000-1HJ166											
ada3 40C W6A0TJ3A ST3000VN000-1HJ166											
ada2 40C Z500BD4C ST3000DM001-1ER166											
ada1 37C ZDH02Y3F ST4000VN000-2AH166											
ada0 45C 152203401218 SanDisk 

 

[JJT211]

Nice

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Keep a close eye on ada2, it's a model with a sad history.

 

[Saxito Pau]

Keep a close eye on ada2, it's a model with a sad history.

Oh? That drive stores my IP camera footage. I guess it should not bother me much if/when it fails (unless crucial security footage is lost before downloading).
It'll likely be phased out sometime in 2017 anyway. Thanks for the heads up.