RayRay573
Cadet
- Joined
- Jan 4, 2017
- Messages
- 2
Call me Ray-Ray! Everyone does ;)
I say that I'm new-ish to FreeNAS as I've dabbled with it before about a year or so ago but realized that the system that I was running on was significantly under-powered and transcoding in Plex was non-existent. But I'm jumping ahead, lets go back to the beginning:
About 6 years ago, I built my first HTPC running on a Zotac mini-pc with Win 7 Pro, XBMC (now Kodi), SABNZBD, Sickbeard, and Couchpotato, and mounted behind my TV attached via HDMI. The box was configured to load XBMC instead of Explorer in the windows shell. It had 2 X 4TB drives attached to it via USB and this box did all of the work. It served it's purpose. Now that all of the data is moved off and is on the new FreeNAS box, it still runs for IPTV via Kodi and to launch the Plex windows client. When I built it, I used many different resources but not all in the same spot, so I had written a document to share my experiences but never really got around to posting it.
While I was running this, I gave Plex a try (and Emby for that matter) and really liked the interface but realized that my existing system was not suitable for that and started reading and learning more about the requirements for transcoding. I had an old box, something along the lines of a dual core AMD with 4GB of RAM, and some spare hard drives. So, I installed and configured a very basic vanilla FreeNAS system with the Plex plug-in. It would transcode but you would occasionally get a pop-up message saying not suitable or something along those lines. So, I gave up on it with a dream to one day I would build myself a beast.
My new FreeNAS system is an HP DL380 G9 Server, with 2 X Intel Xeon CPU E5-2690 v3 @ 2.60GHz with 12 cores each (yep, that's 24 cores :D). It has 12 X 8GB DDR4 2133MHz Advanced ECC with AMP (96GB total memory). As for storage, it is a 2U unit with 12 X 4TB SAS drives in the front, 1 X 4TB SAS drive in the rear, and 2 X 960GB SSD drives in the rear. The controller is in HBA-mode to allow for pass-through (JBOD) to manage RAID in FreeNAS with ZFS Pools. The Beast!
So you're probably asking, how can someone afford a system like this for FreeNAS and why would I dedicate so much power to this? Well, the system was damaged in shipping causing the chassis to bend at the front bezel and was slated to be trashed. I was able to convince them to let me have it and it only cost me the transportation to my home, well under a $100 bucks. I fixed the bent chassis with a little elbow grease and validated that none of the components were damaged, besides, it still has warranty. As for the power, why not? I could have virtualized FreeNAS and use the other portions for something else, but I just didn't want to. So now, it's running FreeNAS 9.10, with the Plex, SABNZBD, Couchpotato, and Sonarr plug-in. Everyone in the house can stream wherever they are, and all of the my friends without it breaking a sweat. Am I gloating a little, maybe, and I apologize for that but it is very exciting!
The build was not without its growing pains, causing permission issues that took days to resolve but overall it was a great learning experience from researching information in various threads. I will capture that experience and post it somewhere for all to view one day.
Sorry for the long introduction but when I get writing, I sometimes can't stop ;)
Cheers!
Ray
I say that I'm new-ish to FreeNAS as I've dabbled with it before about a year or so ago but realized that the system that I was running on was significantly under-powered and transcoding in Plex was non-existent. But I'm jumping ahead, lets go back to the beginning:
About 6 years ago, I built my first HTPC running on a Zotac mini-pc with Win 7 Pro, XBMC (now Kodi), SABNZBD, Sickbeard, and Couchpotato, and mounted behind my TV attached via HDMI. The box was configured to load XBMC instead of Explorer in the windows shell. It had 2 X 4TB drives attached to it via USB and this box did all of the work. It served it's purpose. Now that all of the data is moved off and is on the new FreeNAS box, it still runs for IPTV via Kodi and to launch the Plex windows client. When I built it, I used many different resources but not all in the same spot, so I had written a document to share my experiences but never really got around to posting it.
While I was running this, I gave Plex a try (and Emby for that matter) and really liked the interface but realized that my existing system was not suitable for that and started reading and learning more about the requirements for transcoding. I had an old box, something along the lines of a dual core AMD with 4GB of RAM, and some spare hard drives. So, I installed and configured a very basic vanilla FreeNAS system with the Plex plug-in. It would transcode but you would occasionally get a pop-up message saying not suitable or something along those lines. So, I gave up on it with a dream to one day I would build myself a beast.
My new FreeNAS system is an HP DL380 G9 Server, with 2 X Intel Xeon CPU E5-2690 v3 @ 2.60GHz with 12 cores each (yep, that's 24 cores :D). It has 12 X 8GB DDR4 2133MHz Advanced ECC with AMP (96GB total memory). As for storage, it is a 2U unit with 12 X 4TB SAS drives in the front, 1 X 4TB SAS drive in the rear, and 2 X 960GB SSD drives in the rear. The controller is in HBA-mode to allow for pass-through (JBOD) to manage RAID in FreeNAS with ZFS Pools. The Beast!
So you're probably asking, how can someone afford a system like this for FreeNAS and why would I dedicate so much power to this? Well, the system was damaged in shipping causing the chassis to bend at the front bezel and was slated to be trashed. I was able to convince them to let me have it and it only cost me the transportation to my home, well under a $100 bucks. I fixed the bent chassis with a little elbow grease and validated that none of the components were damaged, besides, it still has warranty. As for the power, why not? I could have virtualized FreeNAS and use the other portions for something else, but I just didn't want to. So now, it's running FreeNAS 9.10, with the Plex, SABNZBD, Couchpotato, and Sonarr plug-in. Everyone in the house can stream wherever they are, and all of the my friends without it breaking a sweat. Am I gloating a little, maybe, and I apologize for that but it is very exciting!
The build was not without its growing pains, causing permission issues that took days to resolve but overall it was a great learning experience from researching information in various threads. I will capture that experience and post it somewhere for all to view one day.
Sorry for the long introduction but when I get writing, I sometimes can't stop ;)
Cheers!
Ray
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