My NAS

[NaX]

I have over a few months (budget limiting) built up my first home office NAS and I thought I would list and show the finished machine.

For me the case was the most awesome part of the entire build. Its a small machine and space is limited so you have to be very careful of parts and size, but in the end the build quality and how it all fits in the case is just brilliant in my opinion. It is my first Lian-Li case, but I am now a big fan. I put in 3 drives as a start but there is lots of space for more as my needs grow.

I have big plans for this little box, as I get time I am doing more and more with it. The first priority was getting it to backup automatically all our client machines in the background using Rsync. For this one the Windows clients QtdSync came in very useful.

Getting started with a few Jails, DNS server, Owncloud, DB server, Web-server. The only part I am getting a little stuck with is my CIFS / Windows shares (will post later in new thread).

The only part of the spec I am not happy with and if I can afford it I would have changed is the fans, I had my eye on a few low power very silent fans from Noctua , but could not afford them.
Noctua NH-L9i, Noctua NF-P14 FLX (Intake 140mm), Noctua NF-S12B FLX (Outflow 120mm)

Later when I can afford it I also plan on looking at a Rikomagic and a Flymouse, running off a Plex Jail.

My biggest limiting factor at the moment is time to do all these cool things.

Basic Spec:

• PSU: 1x THERMALTAKE TOUGHPOWER ST 650W
• MB: 1x GA-Z87N-WIFI
• RAM: 1x 16GB 1600MHz DDR3 Non-ECC CL10 DIMM (Kit of 2) HyperX red Series
• HDD: 3x WD20EZRX - WD GREEN 2TB 3.5" SATA3 64MB CACHE
• CPU: 1x INTEL CORE I3 4130 3.40GHZ 2C SKT1150
• Case: 1x Lian-li pc-Q25 Blk cube

Note: In the end the PSU was changed to face the other way, fan inwards

 

[cyberjock]

Nice pictures.. but no ECC RAM support, that wifi feature is unusable on FreeNAS, and that brand isn't recommended for servers. :/

 

[NaX]

Yes you are correct, one of my requirements was a Intel Haswell chip and motherboard, support for Haswell is not great but I assume it will improve over time. So the WIFI is most probably in the beginning not going to be used. Their seems to be drivers support for it but I have not tested it yet. I may have a need to for it later but not now. Currently its running off a Gigabit Ethernet and if I find a use for the WIFI I will be keeping the Ethernet connection and the WIFI would additional for specific purpose.

I had a look at ECC Ram and it is very costly, and it puts the cost up on the board as well, so I got the best low profile non ECC RAM I could find. As this machine is really for a home office for now less than 10 simultaneous users I thought it would be fine.

Some would say considering my needs the spec is already over kill, but every week I find more things for the NAS to do, so that may be famous last words.

One thing I left out of the spec was a small 850VA UPS, the script on this post proved very useful.
http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/problems-with-eaton-e-series-ups.17192/

 

[cyberjock]

There is no wifi support on FreeNAS.. at all. Wifi is wholely inadequate for a server and should never be used in one. This is in the manual.

So when you say you "So the WIFI is most probably in the beginning not going to be used" you really mean "unless I switch to a different OS". ;)

 

[cyberjock]

And before you tell me price was the factor, you should look at what you bought..

+30 for an X9SCM-F(or even X10 equivalent)
-$60 for a G2020 or G3220 over your i3-4130
about +25/stick of RAM for ECC

So when you sit here and tell me you did it for cost, I fly that "BS" flag very high.

And for a "home office" server you have even more of a reason to use ECC than non-ECC... I bet you like your backups don't you? Yeah.. you can kiss those goodbye if your non-ECC RAM fails.

 

[NaX]

Ok, firstly I live in South Africa were the Rand is 10 to 1 compared to the US Dollar and I got prices on ECC RAM and the price was 100% more cost per a Gig than the RAM I chose. If there is cheaper ECC RAM out there, well sorry I did not know about it as I am not that into Hardware. The mother board prices also changed considerably and changed my options and availability. Non ECC RAM everybody had stock, ECC RAM special order and wait.

When it comes to the mother board and chip. My chosen case is a Mini-ITX case, limiting my hardware choices a lot, so I got the best chip and board I knew of that I could afford that fitted into my case. Your suggestions will not fit into my sexy case.

When it comes to the WIFI, It is my opinion that if FreeBSD supports it, I believe I can make FreeNAS run it. I am not scared of recompiling worlds. I may still be proven wrong and if that is the case a cheap router connected the second Ethernet port will work around the problem.

In the end I am very pleased with my purchases, it more than meets my needs and fits into budget. If I paid more for a few parts than what you could have sourced them for, well thats my loss, I am a developer not a hardware nut and I will just have to concede that there are somethings I am not an expert on and take my chances.