BUILD New here, looking for critique before ordering

[Wrayth]

I'm looking to build a FreeNAS server for home network storage, Plex streaming & transcoding (to 2 clients), and running some newsgroup/torrent clients.

I've planned out the following:

Fractal Design Define R4
ASRock C2750D4I
16GB Crucial ECC Unbuffered RAM
SeaSonic SSR-450RM 450W PS
WD Red 3TB Drives (x5) (Will also be using a few Seagate 3TB drives I have for now to cut on costs; I will be replacing them within the next few months with WD Reds)

I'd appreciate any feedback/critique before I pull the trigger on the orders.

Additionally, how much of a pain in the rear is it going to be that the ASRock board doesn't have an internal USB header?

 

[cyberjock]

The internal header thing is a personal thing. Not to mention I'm 100% sure a USB header exists for your motherboard. See the blue 9 pin connector next to the blue jumpers on the board? That's your header. I know because the FreeNAS Mini uses this motherboard and has 2 front ports. So clearly a header must exist.

The rest of the hardware looks fine. If your Seagates work fine and you don't actually "need" to replace them then I wouldn't. Mixing and matching hard drive, while not recommended because it's been a taboo for hardware RAID for decades, isn't as big of a deal for ZFS as it is made out to be. ZFS just wants a place to store data and if your disks can store the data then it doesn't really care.

 

[Wrayth]

First off, thanks for the quick reply cyberjock - I appreciate it.

Re the internal header; I had read that it didn't have a Type-A internal USB header. I think that led to a brain fart and thinking I couldn't do internal USB for my Freenas OS. I can get an adapter and use that pin connector, so that should be fine.

I also just noticed I don't have a USB drive in my list; I'm thinking about this Kingston DataTraveler 100 G3 16GB x3 (per the guide here in the forum).

For the drives; I currently have a BlackArmor 440 NAS and I just had two of the Seagate drives fail nearly simultaneously. It was stable enough that I could let it try to rebuild and backup all of my important data but lost 90% of my media. I rebuilt the array with two new drives, but I don't imagine the remaining 2 original drives have much life left in them. I don't plan to replace them immediately but to pick up some extra WD Reds as soon as I can and have them available to put them in as needed.

 

[sjieke]

I have ordered almost the same hardware. I'm still building it as the RAM just arrived. During the weekend I will perform some tests. I can post my findings here if you want.
Case: Fractal Design Define R4
MB: ASRock C2750DI4
RAM: 2x 8 GB Kingston KVR16E11/8 Unbuffered ECC
PSU: Corsair RM450
Disks: 5 x 3TB WD Red + 3 x 2TB WD Green

I plan to start with an 8 disk RaidZ2. I know I will lose 1TB on the WD red's, but when I replace the 2 TB disks later on with 3TB disks I will gain an extra 6 TB of storage.

 

[Wrayth]

Nice - I look forward to hearing about your experience! Good luck!

 

[jgreco]

Mixing and matching hard drive, while not recommended because it's been a taboo for hardware RAID for decades

That's a bunch of FUD. The primary reason that this line of bull got started was spindle sync and the parallel SCSI bus, and firmware validation issues. Then vendors got lazy and it was EASIER to sell homogeneous disk arrays, but it has always been best practice to mix and match manufacturers by shelf (in the old days, when you wanted a bus to be homogeneous but the array not to be) and now however it happens to work out best. Vendors like Fast-LTA are even making it a selling point - finally.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/30/isc_leipzig_roundup/

Vendors always wanted to sell you all of one thing for reasons that had nothing to do with the safety of your data and everything to do with making things easy on themselves.

 

[sjieke]

The first test result. For this I just moved my pool from my old nas to the new and used the USB stick of the old one. Everything was configured and detected correctly. The pool here is a 4 disk RaidZ1
Crystal Disk Mark:

Intel Nas Performance Toolkit (NASPT):

Windows Copy from NAS to external USB3 disk (fastest I have):

Windows Copy to NAS from external USB3 disk (fastest I have)

Windows Copy between 2 datasets on the NAS:

 

[sjieke]

Ok I configured a 8 disk RaidZ2, here is the output of a dd command

Code:

[joachim@crashbox /]$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/tank/Uncompressed1/test.001 bs=1M count=20000
20000+0 records in
20000+0 records out
20971520000 bytes transferred in 47.492745 secs (441573127 bytes/sec)
[joachim@crashbox /]$ dd of=/dev/null if=/mnt/tank/Uncompressed1/test.001 bs=1M count=20000
20000+0 records in
20000+0 records out
20971520000 bytes transferred in 53.533817 secs (391743409 bytes/sec)
[joachim@crashbox /]$

 

[Wrayth]

Thanks for the updates sjieke! I'll use them as a comparison when I finish building my system.

Two more questions:

1. Is there any specific SATA cables I should be looking to get? Or are they kind of all the same?
2. SATA2 vs SATA3 ports - any concerns with mixing the two? I'd ideally like to use up the 2 SATA2 and finish with a few SATA3 ports open for expansion later. Is this a bad idea?

 

[sjieke]

I don't think mixing the ports is a problem. I have the "blue" ports on the intel controller currently unused. The reason is because of the location and making the cabling in my case as clean as possible :)
I got 6 sata3 cables with the C2750D4I, and used those. Make sure your cables are long enough because the Define R4 is pretty big for an ITX board and you need to bridge the gap between the drive cage and board.
If you are going to use 8 drives you will need some extra fan(s) to them cool. I have currently 3 (140mm) fans in my case and ordered a 4th to be able to lower the rpm's and reduce noise.

Some more observations:
* CPU isn't working hard, around 80% idle
* When I monitor the drives with 'gstat' during transfers I notice that my 3 old drives turn red while the 5 new ones stay green, sometimes the new fall to 0% busy while the old ones are still working hard. So I think when those are replaced I will get a little bit more out of my pool.
* I think my network or client pc is the bottleneck at the moment (+/- 80 MB/s in both directions), just need to figure out how to use iperf between a Windows 8 and freenas.

 

[Wrayth]

How long would you say I need? Should I go for 10', or get a couple 18' to be safe?

What fans are you using? Are the ones you currently have the stock ones that came with the case, or aftermarket? I never thought about needing extra fans, so I'll have to add that to the list of things to look into now!

 

[Wrayth]

I'm looking at getting 4 of these: http://www.ncix.com/detail/be-quiet-silent-wings-2-1a-80364-1248.htm and putting them in; 2 intake at the front, 1 exhaust (back), 1 exhaust (top). I feel like after doing my research this should be sufficient...

 

[sjieke]

I have currently 3 "Fractal design Silent R2" fans. Started with 2 as intake at the front and 1 as exhaust (rear). But the 3 bottom drives were reaching 40°c and the MB and CPU reached 56°C.
So I changed the rear exhaust to a bottom intake. If I put my fans at 12V (running full speed, my CPU and MB are around 46°C and all my drives at 30°C). Setting the fans to 7V (using the fan controller of the case) keeps my drives cool, but the CPU reaches 55°C again.

This morning I also ordered the Be Quiet! Silent Wings 2 140mm to use as a rear exhaust. Hoping this will increase the airflow and lower the temp of my CPU and MB.
I went for the 4 pin PWM version, because then the MB can control the fan speed based on temp and workload.

So basically my end goal is:
* 2 x 140mm front intake, 1 x 140mm bottom intake and 1 x 140mm rear exhaust.
* the intakes are mainly for the drives and attached to the fan controller (hoping to be able to set it at 7V and reduce noise)
* the exhaust will be a 4 pin supporting PWM so the MB can control the fan-speed as needed

 

[Wrayth]

Interesting - I'll have to play around with the settings/positions once I get it setup and running.

So you're going to have 3 fans running on the controller and one from the Mobo? Sounds reasonable; I was wondering myself if I'd need to consider buying a different fan controller but I'll hold off and see if I can get it to work nicely without.

Last 2 questions for now, re - SATA cables:

1. Length; will 10" be enough? Or should I go for 18"?
2. Angle; I can't find anything concrete but it seems like some people had trouble with 90-degree connectors? Did you use straight or 90?

 

[sjieke]

For the length of the sata cables, I would go for 18'' to be sure.
I used a mix of both straight and 90°, because that's what I had lying around. If you need to by new ones, I would use straight, those are easier with this case.

 

[Wrayth]

Awesome, thanks again. I really appreciate it!

 

[Wrayth]

Just an update; I've got everything now except my SATA cables. Once I get them I'm good to go, and will begin setting up and breakin.

 

[sjieke]

I'm looking forward to your experience :)

Some extra info on my build:
* My tests are probably limited by the client hardware. I copied 2TB of data for an offside backup with a friends pc and got an average of +100MB/s, so I was very happy :)
* Plex and transcoding isn't a requirement for me, but for the fun I tried it and transcoding 2 HD streams to low-end devices wasn't a problem
* The 8 cores is really nice when you run multiple jails :)