Hello. FreeNAS newbie here. I’ve read a bunch of stuff already, but newbie questions remain! (Sometimes I’ve found conflicting answers, which is one of the great joys of the Internet.) I’d like to invite comments about my proposed NAS build.
The NAS will be for home use: Storage for PCs; Streaming audio and video; database for a low-traffic blog, backing up home PCs and some other servers (only as part of a backup strategy, not the only component). It will have relatively light use. I want about of 4TB of usable capacity by the end of the first year. It could start smaller, as it will take some time to ingest my CD/DVD/photo collection, but I’d also like an easy-ish upgrade path to approx 8TB as it’s hard to predict future use (or… I could start with 8TB from the beginning and not have to worry about upgrading capacity in the near future, but that might cost more).
I already have a Lenovo ThinkServer TS200 type 6522 with a Quad Core Xeon X3430 @2.4Ghz and 8GB RAM to donate to this project. This is ~6 years old, but it’s slightly more enterprise-grade than consumer-grade hardware. The motherboard in this server looks like it has 6 SATA connections, and there are 2 PCIe x8 connectors with an IBM ServeRAID M1015 card in one of those. The case easily has room for 4 drives, or 6 if I use the space for the floppy and second optical drive (or 7 if I remove the optical drive). There is one internal USB connector on the motherboard which looks like it will be useful!
Things I think I need to buy:
Disks: I’m thinking of either 4 disks (WD Red 2TB, or 3TB, 4TB) or 6 disks (WD Red 2TB), perhaps using RAIDZ2 although I’ve read some interesting arguments in favour of just using pairs of mirrored disks instead of RAIDZ2, which might mean a lower initial spend of just 2 disks.
RAM: I haven’t checked if the RAM I already have is ECC… if not I’ll replace it (the CPU can support it). I might also increase the RAM to 16GB.
PSU: I don’t know the power rating of the PSU (I haven’t found the sticker yet… it’s hiding out of sight) but it might not have much headroom for spinning up 6 disks at once.
USB drive: I’m sure I’ve got some cheap no-brand thumbdrives, but I’ll probably buy a quality branded one for this.
Here come the questions!
Am I heading in a sensible direction?
Is my 6 year old TS200 with Xeon XX3430 going to be powerful enough to run a home NAS?
Is there any advantage to using the M1015 RAID card? Let’s assume that I’ll re-flash this so that it’s just an HBA rather than a RAID controller. I know some of you like these cards, but there are 6 SATA ports on the motherboard already.
That question leads to: would I ever need an optical drive in the box after the initial installation (because there wouldn’t be a spare SATA port for it if I use all 6 SATA ports on the motherboard and remove the M1015) ?
Thanks in for your help!
The NAS will be for home use: Storage for PCs; Streaming audio and video; database for a low-traffic blog, backing up home PCs and some other servers (only as part of a backup strategy, not the only component). It will have relatively light use. I want about of 4TB of usable capacity by the end of the first year. It could start smaller, as it will take some time to ingest my CD/DVD/photo collection, but I’d also like an easy-ish upgrade path to approx 8TB as it’s hard to predict future use (or… I could start with 8TB from the beginning and not have to worry about upgrading capacity in the near future, but that might cost more).
I already have a Lenovo ThinkServer TS200 type 6522 with a Quad Core Xeon X3430 @2.4Ghz and 8GB RAM to donate to this project. This is ~6 years old, but it’s slightly more enterprise-grade than consumer-grade hardware. The motherboard in this server looks like it has 6 SATA connections, and there are 2 PCIe x8 connectors with an IBM ServeRAID M1015 card in one of those. The case easily has room for 4 drives, or 6 if I use the space for the floppy and second optical drive (or 7 if I remove the optical drive). There is one internal USB connector on the motherboard which looks like it will be useful!
Things I think I need to buy:
Disks: I’m thinking of either 4 disks (WD Red 2TB, or 3TB, 4TB) or 6 disks (WD Red 2TB), perhaps using RAIDZ2 although I’ve read some interesting arguments in favour of just using pairs of mirrored disks instead of RAIDZ2, which might mean a lower initial spend of just 2 disks.
RAM: I haven’t checked if the RAM I already have is ECC… if not I’ll replace it (the CPU can support it). I might also increase the RAM to 16GB.
PSU: I don’t know the power rating of the PSU (I haven’t found the sticker yet… it’s hiding out of sight) but it might not have much headroom for spinning up 6 disks at once.
USB drive: I’m sure I’ve got some cheap no-brand thumbdrives, but I’ll probably buy a quality branded one for this.
Here come the questions!
Am I heading in a sensible direction?
Is my 6 year old TS200 with Xeon XX3430 going to be powerful enough to run a home NAS?
Is there any advantage to using the M1015 RAID card? Let’s assume that I’ll re-flash this so that it’s just an HBA rather than a RAID controller. I know some of you like these cards, but there are 6 SATA ports on the motherboard already.
That question leads to: would I ever need an optical drive in the box after the initial installation (because there wouldn’t be a spare SATA port for it if I use all 6 SATA ports on the motherboard and remove the M1015) ?
Thanks in for your help!