BUILD New 1st FreeNAS Build

[Bi1a1Y]

Hi people,

So i'm finally jumping on the FreeNAS bandwagon, getting rid of the 3 Synology boxes we have in the house. I've browsed the forums for some time now and come up with the build listed below. Any input would be awesome. The current NAS solutions we have are predominantly used by 4 people 3 in the house and one who lives away. The others who are supposed to use them don't because they are slow and clunky. we use the boxes for backing up our PC's and archiving old data we use in our work. we also store movies, music, photos etc on there. We have a very good internet connection in the house (70 - 90Mbps DL and 10 - 20Mbps UL)

My big hope is to:
1) start using bit torrent sync pro to replace the use of on-line storage for files we need regularly.
2) stream movies etc and end the whole plugging a laptop into the TV. it would be nice if it where possible to stream to locations outside the home. Although i think that is more an internet connection issue than a hardware one based on the parts i've chosen. So at least be able to download what is wanted offsite without causing a bottle neck in house.
3) Increase the number of people (to about 10 total) who would be able to access the system to replace online storage.

I am likely to going to be the heaviest user dealing with several gigabytes of data a day in my research that i simply cannot comfortably continue to keep doing so with my current setup, file transfer speeds and data security are important.
I currently have a dedicated (nearly full) 4TB drive in my PC for for my research data that i backup at weekends or at night because synology is so slow i can't get any work done if i keep the data there.

The house is fully wired up with gigabit LAN ports so we only use WiFi for mobile devices and the occasional Laptop.

Ok the Build (sorry for rambling)

• Fractal Design Define R5 £80
• SanDisk SDCZ50-008G-B35 CZ50 8GB Cruzer £5
• Intel E3-1230-V3 Quad-Core Processor £205
• Supermicro X10SLH-F-O £186
• Crucial 16GB kit (8GBx2) DDR3 PC3-12800 Unbuffered ECC 1.35V CT4486302 RAM £140
• Corsair AX850 Gold Power Supply (from an old PC that we don't use)
• 3 x WD Red 6TB drives and a few of the drives currently in the Synology Boxes. Will upgrade them all to be the same size in the future.

finding compatible RAM for sale seemed to be a bit tricky so i used the crucial advisor tool to find the above RAM

anyway what do you think? i don't mind it being overkill i just want it to be a fantastic system that will keep me and mine happy for a long time.

Thanks in advance.

 

[DrKK]

Alright, I'll critique this. Congratulations on ditching the kiddie-boxes, and making a FreeNAS sir. You should be much happier.

I see a couple of minor issues:

• You want a *PAIR* of boot devices to take advantage of mirroring.
• Why have you selected the X10SLH over the SLL or SLM? The SLH is more expensive, and you're not getting anything usable, really, except for the C226 chipset's provision of 6x6Gbps ports, which, you can't really use anyway. Going to an X10SLL will save probably 30-50 quid.
• If you use sub-6TB drives in the same vdev as the 6TB drives, YOU WILL LOSE MOST OF THE 6TB capacity. If you are going to use other random-ass drives, you'll probably want them in a different vdev.
• 850W is way too much juice. A power supply of that size will probably run at a very, very low efficiency and power factor, gold or not, when you're drawing less than 10% of the rated capacity, which you will be doing most of the time.

 

[diedrichg]

• If you use sub-6TB drives in the same vdev as the 6TB drives, YOU WILL LOSE MOST OF THE 6TB capacity. If you are going to use other random-ass drives, you'll probably want them in a different vdev.

Translation: (3) 2TB drives in the same vdev as (3) 6TB drives will make only 2TB of each 6TB usable, therefore it'll look like you have (6) 2TB drives in your vdev. You can do this, but you won't see (6) 6TB drives worth of space until the 2s are replaced.

 

[Bi1a1Y]

Alright, I'll critique this. Congratulations on ditching the kiddie-boxes, and making a FreeNAS sir. You should be much happier.

cool thanks for the advice DrKK.

• I will use a pair of boot devices.
• I picked the X10SLH because it's the same price as the X10SLM on Amazon UK while the only place I found that sells the X10SLL didn't have it in stock and wouldn't provide an ETA of when it would be in stock. but your right it is £40 cheaper.
• As for the drives its a tough one. they are quite costly to buy a a lot of them in one go. i was planning on upgrading any drives in the vdev that weren't 6TB in a month or two in order to utilize all the space on the drives I can. These boards only have 6 sata ports so I want to be using 6TB drives on each port before looking at buying an expansion card to increase the number of sata ports available.
• The power supply is just lying around and it's very good quality hence why I thought I would just use it. i will look into changing it out for something more efficient. tbh it would make sense to use a less power hungry one.

i was actually wandering about other factors related to things like cooling. are things like RAM cooling fans necessary? We use HP Z600 and Z800 workstations, because they are really solid machines and very affordable on ebay. anyway they use fans to cool the large amounts of RAM so i thought this might be something useful for a FreeNAS box where RAM is a major factor in performance and system stability. i also have a h100i all in one watercooling thingy from the same machine the power supply was in, it's just lying around unused, is there any point using it? or should i find something else to do with it?

 

[Ericloewe]

Regarding the AX850:
It's a great PSU - the computer I'm typing this on is powered by one that has been humming along for the last 4+ years, even keeping Crysis going in the middle of a brownout (one of the many benefits of a 230V power grid is that some brownouts still leave you with 100ishV - enough for universal input power supplies).

With typical idle loads, according to JonnyGuru, we're looking at 80ish% efficiency and PF in the mid 0.90s.

A Seasonic G550, around the same loading, ends up around the 85% mark with a power factor around 0.99. So let's say it uses 5W less. It's not that much, but you'll have to decide.

RAM cooling fans

Not on any sort of modern hardware (unless you want to show off by adding fans). FBDIMMs used crazy amounts of power, which might explain the fans, depending on the age of those workstations.

h100i all in one watercooling thingy

Not particularly useful and one more thing that can fail. I have one of those cooling the Xeon E5-1650 v3 in my desktop and it works well, but it's not justified for an 84W CPU.

 

[Bi1a1Y]

Regarding the AX850:
A Seasonic G550, around the same loading, ends up around the 85% mark with a power factor around 0.99. So let's say it uses 5W less. It's not that much, but you'll have to decide.

aaah cool ok i'll look into the seasonic, sounds very reasonable and it's very affordable. thanks for the advice.

i suspected as much about the cooling. i'm sure i can come up with a good use for the water cooling kit, my sis might like the upgrade.

as a side note the workstations are pretty out-dated now but have really powerful dual zeons in them with 48gb ecc RAM (overkill yes, but for the price they go for on ebay and the power you get i find it hard to justify buying a more up-to-date machine) so i presume the extra cooling is useful when so many RAM sticks are so closely packed and the chassis being so small. defo not a problem with this setup where i only have 2 sticks.