NAS on a dime; Build review

[gpsguy]

Yes, it can be a bit of a shock when using small virtual disks for testing.

Don't worry too much about the 1GB per 1TB rule of thumb. For general storage and the jails, etc. that you're planning, 16GB is a good starting point.

Heh, so thats why it ate through my VM's 1:10 scale mock drives so quickly. ;)

I've read the hardware recommendation manual and it said I should run 1GB of RAM for each 1Tb of NAS storage as a rough rule of thumb, but more is always better, especially if theres a few jails involved.

btw, welcome to the forums! I participated in a thread with you on r/FreeNAS last week.

 

[Sokonomi]

btw, welcome to the forums! I participated in a thread with you on r/FreeNAS last week.

Oh snap, I got recognized! I'm hoping to make a better impression here, I was a bit frustrated with FreeNAS not working when I crawled onto /r/freenas

But yeah, 16GB should give me a nice bit of overhead, even if I bump the drive size up a wee bit later.

Another bit ive been scratching my head over, is whether the CPU is gonna be sufficient for hosting the plex service. Does FreeNAS offer jail prioritization of some sort? It might do fine if plex has full reign, but if something decides to plop into the usenet downloader that CPU is gonna sweat pretty quick maybe? It would never be serving more than one plex user at a time, if that helps. Bumping er up to the G4600 instead of a G4400 to get hyperthreading might alleviate it a bit? Shelling out for an i3 is gonna be too costly since they are triple the price.

Id also like to circle back to my reconsideration of the motherboard;
MSI B250M Gaming Pro : 6x SATA-600, intel NIC. Max RAM speed 2400MHz.
Gigabyte GA-Q170M-D3H : 6x SATA-600 + additional 3x SATA express (can FreeNAS use these?), Intel NIC, Max RAM speed 2133MHz.
AsRock B360M-HDV : 6x SATA-600, Intel NIC, Max RAM speed 2666MHz. Cheap enough to bump CPU up to G4600.
MSI looks gaudy but has what it needs, Gigabyte has some extra ports going on but not sure if those are usable, Asrock is cheap with speedy RAM and has a nice track record according to the hardware recommendation guide. Thoughts?

 

[CraigD]

Another bit I've been scratching my head over, is whether the CPU is gonna be sufficient for hosting the plex service. Does FreeNAS offer jail prioritization of some sort? It might do fine if plex has full reign, but if something decides to plop into the usenet downloader that CPU is gonna sweat pretty quick maybe? It would never be serving more than one plex user at a time, if that helps. Bumping er up to the G4600 instead of a G4400 to get hyperthreading might alleviate it a bit? Shelling out for an i3 is gonna be too costly since they are triple the price.

My G3258 passmarks is 3896 the G4400 passmarks is 3569, I think the G4400 will be fine, more CPU and RAM is better but do you need it?

I run PLEX, Sonarr, Transmission, and Tautulli (PLEXpy) without a problem and have servered more than one transcoded streams at once

Hope this helps

Have Fun

 

[Sokonomi]

I run PLEX, Sonarr, Transmission, and Tautulli (PLEXpy) without a problem and have servered more than one transcoded streams at once

Thats a huge load off my mind, thank you. What would warrant an i3, I now ponder. Heavy compression archiving or something?

 

[Chris Moore]

Heh, so thats why it ate through my VM's 1:10 scale mock drives so quickly. ;)

I've read the hardware recommendation manual and it said I should run 1GB of RAM for each 1Tb of NAS storage as a rough rule of thumb, but more is always better, especially if theres a few jails involved.

Considering this is a budget build and there are cheaper ways of getting a bootpool in, id say this one is not in the stars.

Why do you insist on rebutting all recommendations. If you need to save up a little while to afford the right hardware, it is better than spending less for hardware that is wrong. Please listen to the voices of experience. If you build it wrong, you will regret it for one reason or many and possibly sooner than later. Best to do it correctly to begin with, even if you must wait to afford it.

I appreciate the insight, but please stop recommending 200 dollar motherboards as an 'alternative' to a 50 dollar one.
This is a low budget build so I need low budget solutions.

First, that is not the price difference, and second, if money is that tight, you should be looking at used gear instead of brand new, cutting edge gear.

 

[Sokonomi]

Why do you insist on rebutting all recommendations.

Because I'm not looking for the best, I just want 'good enough'. The way you make it sound is "There is the expensive way or the 'wrong' way.", like there is no middle ground at all. Not everyone is comfortable with spending a grand on an enterprise grade storage rack, when all they really need is little data tank.

First, that is not the price difference

Fair enough, 3.5 times the price then?

second, if money is that tight, you should be looking at used gear instead of brand new, cutting edge gear.

Warranty. If something blows up that ive just bought 2nd hand, tough kitty, that money is gone. Apart from that, nobody is selling any motherboards worth looking at. Have a look. Theres only one that checks all the marks (6+ SATA ports, Intel NIC, mini/micro-ITX).

Secondhand RAM, or even CPU, maybe, but im not sure how risky those components are.
I definitely don't feel comfortable buying used HDDs though.

I guess I could skimp on CPU and RAM by buying them used, to clear some of the budget for a brand new supermicro board?
There's a Intel i3-6100 CPU (less than a year old) going for the same price as a new G4400. Which would be wiser?
There's also some Corsair Vengeance LPX CMK16GX4M2A2400C14 2x8Gb going for 100 euros (32 bucks cheaper).
Or a single Kingston ValueRAM KVR21R15D4/16 16GB strip, registered ECC, 80 bucks a piece (52 bucks cheaper, and ECC).
Thoughts?

 

[garm]

have you looked at purpose built?

Dell PowerEdge0008 Desktop PC (Intel Xeon E3-1225, 1000GB Festplatte, 8GB RAM, Win Server 2003) Schwarz https://www.amazon.de/dp/B01N5HKAUQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_HbltBbGPHXPM0

 

[Sokonomi]

have you looked at purpose built?

Dell PowerEdge0008 Desktop PC (Intel Xeon E3-1225, 1000GB Festplatte, 8GB RAM, Win Server 2003) Schwarz https://www.amazon.de/dp/B01N5HKAUQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_HbltBbGPHXPM0

I'm kinda trying to step up from 1Tb disks, and 8Gb is not enough RAM I think, plus the case doesn't seem capable of holding 6 drives without some major construction? And I cant really tell from the picture, but I it seems to have only 4 SATA ports?

 

[KrisBee]

@Chris Moore Just a reminder about high prices for server grade kit in the EU and the tiny s/hand market over here. Perhaps that goes some way to explaining the popularity of the HP micoserver gen8 with upgraded cpu & ram in the EU and also those who look to consumer grade hardware as a solution - eg. builds like these: https://blog.briancmoses.com/2017/12/diy-nas-econonas-2017.html

DDR4 RAM prices have gone throught the roof, so haswell gen kit is a better bet in the s/hand market. Over the years I've had good luck with both s/hand cpus and ram and m/boards.

@Sokonomi You listed a node 304 case, but that will only hold a mini-itx board, perhaps you meant a node 804 which is for micro ATX. Also take care to distinguish between registered ECC RAM and unbuffered ECC RAM. The key element here is really a server grade m/board with the advantage of IPMI. Your choice of course, but a s/hand supermicro x10 board migt be worth hunting for.

 

[Sokonomi]

@KrisBee Sorry, I meant mini-ITX. I like the 304; it holds 6 disks in an easy to access cage, while remaining nice and compact but still having a sensible front to back airflow for the disks.

Ive never actually tangled with ECC RAM before, but I noticed it showing up on the used RAM market and though that's the kind of thing that supermicro boards would probably use. I haven't actually looked at any of the supermicro boards yet, due to their staggering pricetag. Even the full fat Asus Maximus VIII Extreme motherboard on my TitanXp gaming rig isn't that expensive. So I take it ECC RAM is only really used in those rack server type of computers?

As for secondhand motherboards, This is whats on offer in my country, currently. You'll have to pardon the dutch, but tech jargon is the same in any language. But as you can see, not a single supermicro. Seems more of an American favorite. For secondhand RAM, This is whats on offer, for CPU its this. Keep in mind that each part incurs a 8 euro shipping fee.

 

[Chris Moore]

Your choice of course, but a s/hand supermicro x10 board migt be worth hunting for.

@Sokonomi I realize there are significant difficulties with getting second hand hardware in some regions of the world. If I could, I would send it to you myself but, the best I can suggest is a service like this: https://www.shipito.com/en/
Several of the forum members in other parts of the world have used this (or similar) services to buy in the US and have it shipped. For a super low cost build, it might still break the bank. Sorry.
The thing that I have been suggesting to people for a while now is to go even older than the x10 boards. If you look at my build, I have a Supermicro x9 series board and it works well for me and still gives me the IPMI remote management features I wanted.

Warranty. If something blows up that I've just bought 2nd hand, tough kitty, that money is gone.

I have had very good luck over the years with retired data-center gear and I have only had one component fail, a SAS HBA, and even that was probably my fault for not having enough air flow to keep it cool.
I used a system board like this for more than two years to run my NAS:
Supermicro X9SCM-F LGA 1155/Socket H2 DDR3 Motherboard with Heatsink/Fan & I/O Shield - - US $75.00
https://www.ebay.com/itm/273350608871
You have to get components that are compatible, but you can do everything you need to do with this board.
However, I would attach the data drives to a SAS controller instead of connecting them to the system board.
SATA drives work perfectly on SAS controllers:
Dell-H310-6Gbps-SAS-HBA-w-LSI-9211-8i-P20-IT-Mode-for-ZFS-FreeNAS - - US $56.55
https://www.ebay.com/itm/162834659601
One of those and a set of cables:
2x-Mini-SAS-to-4-SATA-SFF-8087-Multi-Lane-Forward-Breakout-Internal-Cable - - US $12.89
https://www.ebay.com/itm/372255907421
will handle 8 drives no problem.
8GB-Memory-RAM-for-SuperMicro-X9-Series-X9SCM-F-X9SCL-F-O-X9SCD-F-X9SCM-X9SC - - US $82.00
https://www.ebay.com/itm/163130855012
Intel-Xeon-E2-1230-Quad-Core-Server-CPU-3-2GHz-LGA-1155-SR00H - - US $49.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/382520108879

That is $276.43 of parts and it gives you a server grade system board with a quad core Xeon CPU, 8GB of ECC memory and a SAS controller to run the data drives. I don't know what your components add up to, but I used a rig like this for a couple years and I know it will work. Like any hardware, you can't know if it will fail and this doesn't carry a warranty, but my experience would tell me, the likelihood of failure would be low. Drives are the thing that fails most often and I am not suggesting buying those used.

 

[Chris Moore]

Sorry, I meant mini-ITX. I like the 304; it holds 6 disks in an easy to access cage, while remaining nice and compact but still having a sensible front to back airflow for the disks.

Well, that changes everything, but the board you pointed out isn't a mini sized board.

 

[Chris Moore]

So I take it ECC RAM is only really used in those rack server type of computers?

ECC (error checking and correcting) memory is for anything you want to run reliably. We use it in the workstations (near server grade computers) at the desktop for our users here where I work and it is in every server.

As for secondhand motherboards, This is whats on offer in my country, currently.

That looks to only be gaming gear. I think you might be looking in the wrong place.

 

[Sokonomi]

Well, that changes everything, but the board you pointed out isn't a mini sized board.

ACK! I saw mITX and for some reason figured it was mini! Bugger!
Well I guess im back to square one then.. I'll return once ive dug through the list for the RIGHT size.

 

[Sokonomi]

I honestly thought micro was smaller and would fit anything that was fit for a mini, same way a mini fits any fullsize ATX case..

I applied all the filters (Intel NIC, 6 or more SATA ports, Socket 1151, MINI ITX, and ECC for good measure, and theres really only one option that turned up.
The ASRock Rack C236 WSI. A whopping 217 euro pricetag, but its specs are seemingly spectacular; eight SATA6 ports, two intel NICs, ECC support, its a beast for a price. Without ECC theres a slew of other ones, for some reason exclusively asrock and gigabyte.

I basically just wanted to make a nice compact DIY Synology/Qsnap type box that I could plop on a shelf somewhere, but it seems in order to get things done right, there is no way around building a colossal frame?

Ive looked at ebay, seems supermicro is VERYMUCH an american thing. Whatever blows over to my region gets price hiked and is rare to find. In fact, ebay doesnt list a single supermicro in europe. Everything just says 'located in United States'. So supermicro really only is viable is you're an american im afraid. Over here we have to make due with the chinese stuff.

 

[Chris Moore]

but it seems in order to get things done right, there is no way around building a colossal frame?

No, it doesn't need to be colossal. I think you pay a premium for the smaller board, so you might save some money with the larger system.
Did you look at the node 804? I don't think it is that much larger than the 304.

Everything just says 'located in United States'. So supermicro really only is viable is you're an american im afraid. Over here we have to make due with the chinese stuff.

Supermicro is (if I recall correctly) a US company, but their boards are made in China like everything else. I don't know why you wouldn't see their components.
If you can get ASRock components, they are decent too. The one you pulled up is meant for a desktop computer, not a server, which is why it has sound outputs. You should be looking at this model:
http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=E3C232D2I#Specifications
or this model
http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=E3C236D2I#Specifications

 

[Sokonomi]

The one you pulled up is meant for a desktop computer, not a server, which is why it has sound outputs.

Asrock tags it 'rack' though. Its a racktop? What kind of desktop requires 8 SATA ports?

If you can get ASRock components, they are decent too. The one you pulled up is meant for a desktop computer, not a server, which is why it has sound outputs. You should be looking at this model:
http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=E3C232D2I#Specifications
or this model
http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=E3C236D2I#Specifications

First one isnt available in my country it seems, the second one is 243 euros. Secondhand on ebay that one for some reason is even more insane, going up into the 300. You sure know how to pick em. :p

 

[Chris Moore]

Asrock tags it 'rack' though.

That is a brand thing. Supermicro makes high-end desktop boards also. It would be for a compact workstation build where someone wanted to be able to attach a bunch of drives to a Windows or Linux desktop for what ever it is they want to do.
Some servers even use audio, but FreeNAS doesn't.

What kind of desktop requires 8 SATA ports?

I have a RAID card in my desktop with 8 drives in a RAID-6 array, in addition to the two 6 core Xeon CPUs and 192GB of system memory.
My desktop is more capable than some servers. What people choose to do is very widely variable.

You sure know how to pick em. :p

Yes. Part of the reason for the cost is the IPMI remote management that is built into the system board. It allows you to remotely manage the system over the network without ever needing to connect a monitor, keyboard, mouse or CD/DVD drive. It is a really nice thing to have.

 

[Chris Moore]

Asrock tags it 'rack' though. Its a racktop?

Also, there is this, the one you were looking at only lists Windows 7, 8.1 & 10 for supported OS types.
The one I pointed you at lists Windows Server as well as RedHad, SUSE, and Ubuntu Linux.
It doesn't list BSD Unix, which is what FreeNAS is based on, but it might work since it is an Intel chipset and Intel NIC.

 

[Sokonomi]

@Chris Moore I really don't want to offend you because you've been a great help and I know your intentions are good, but I honestly feel like you are insisting on a lot of features that really are just overkill for a family sized datatank. I really don't care for professional server grade options like IPMI or SAS controllers. Frankly this box is just going to be a glorified mediaserver that happens to do some NAS tricks because it can. Do I really need all that expensive stuff just for that? I know its not 'professional' to run a basicbirch 'gamer' board on a NAS, but will the arrays really care if there's an audiochip present? And is it really necessary to look for exuberantly expensive IPMI boards when ive got a screen/mouse/kb sitting there anyway?

Ive been doing it 'wrong' for decades, with a spareparts scrap computer running under my staircase with windows 10 of all things, and its served me perfectly fine sofar. I just wanted something nicer and more purposely built this time around. Doesn't mean I'm looking to build IBM central down there though. So cant we gear this thread down to 'EcoNAS' speed like the title suggests?