NAS and Gaming Rig in parallel

[monden2]

Hi all!

I was wondering if you can help me with an idea that I have, and whether or not it will FreeNAS?

I have a gaming rig with 5820k CPU, 16gb RAM and dedicated GPU. Further, I have an 240GB SSD with Windows on it, as well as 1x 2TB HDD and 1x 4TB HDD.
On the side, I also have a WD MyCloud mirror with 2x 4TB HDD in RAID1.

Now I want to consolidate all this equipment into my gaming rig to maximise the speed I can get from this setup. I also want to set it up with FreeNAS, because in the future I want to be able to take it out of gaming rig and put it in a dedicated server NAS, where I can then also expand the ZFS volume with a secondary, identical 'vdev'.

So the idea I have is followed:

1. I want to have my standard Windows installation on my SSD, which uses most of my CPU cores and the dedicated GPU. I then want to use the 2TB drive for a secondary windows drive for active project work.
2. I want to run FreeNAS from a USB stick, to make a RAID5 style array (don't know what it is called in ZFS speak) from the 3x 4TB drives directly connected to the motherboard's SATA connections, which will be used for archive "server" with 1 drive redundancy. The array folders (datasets) will then be mapped in Windows to have direct access.
3. I want the server to also serve as a Plex Server for my house, as well as a network backup for the gaming rig's SSD and other wireless devices (the rig will be hard wired to the wireless router from my ISP).

So is this at all possible? And if so, how would I go about in setting it up? Do I simply leave the SSD and 2TB HDD as they are, format the 3x 4TB and boot FreeNAS from the USB (setting up the array with the 3 HDD'S)?

 

[Chris Moore]

This is an informative build log that should give you some ideas on how you might accomplish your goal. You can download a free copy of VMware.
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...node-304-x10sdv-tln4f-esxi-freenas-aio.57116/

You might also find that you need more powerful hardware to do all the things you want to do one one system.

 

[tvsjr]

He's not trying to run ESXi... he's trying to run FreeNAS parallel with his gaming rig.

Long answer... yes, you might sorta be able to do this with VMware Workstation. But it's going to be a klugey mess. FreeNAS is an enterprise solution, designed to run on a dedicated system (or, less frequently, on top of a hypervisor like ESXi).

 

[Chris Moore]

I have a gaming rig with 5820k CPU, 16gb RAM and dedicated GPU

This is not enough resources to do both. This is enough to do one or the other, not both.
Take a look at the resources section:
Hardware Recommendations Guide Rev 1e) 2017-05-06
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

 

[Ericloewe]

This is a horrible idea with zero benefits and more drawbacks than I can keep track of. It's not cheaper, it's not lower power, it's not quieter, it's not more reliable, it's not faster... I guess it might be slightly more compact, but there are much better ways of achieving that.