Next-Gen Home FreeNAS Box

[ewhac]

I currently have a FreeNAS box built out of a cute little HP N54L, with 8GiB of RAM and running 3 2TB spindles in a RAID-Z1 vdev, and I'm effectively out of space. One quick, cheap, and dirty approach would be to simply upgrade the spindles in place. The disadvantages are:

• RAID-Z1 is considered insufficient defense for large drives.
• The N54L only has four drive bays (five, if you count the CD-ROM drive bay), so a RAID-Z2 setup would necessarily be an inefficient 2+2 setup.
• The N54L has a documented max RAM of 8GiB. It can be upgraded to 16GiB, but only if you get exactly the right Kingston DRAM sticks.

The less-quick, less-cheap, but also far less-dirty solution is to build a new box. This is my extremely first draft BoM:

CPU: Intel - Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: Zalman - CNPS2X CPU Cooler
Motherboard: Supermicro - MBD-X11SSM-F-O Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
Memory: Crucial - CT4K8G4WFS824A 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory
Storage: ADATA - Premier Pro SP600 64GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Storage: 6x Hitachi - Deskstar 5K4000 4TB 3.5" CoolSpin Internal Hard Drive
Power Supply: SeaSonic - 350W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply
Case: U-NAS NSC-810A Server Chassis

I selected a Core i3 as I intend this system to serve data and media and not transcode it on the fly (i.e. most work will be I/O-bound). I'm partial to the 5K4000 Deskstars, as the same-size Ultrastars are noisier and consume about 25% more power. I wonder if I'm over-spec'ing the RAM, however -- could I get away with 24GiB or even 16GiB? Putting this whole thing together looks like it will be between $1500 and $1800, depending on HDD and RAM prices at any given time.

Thoughts welcome.

 

[tvsjr]

I'd stick with 32GB RAM, since it sounds like you're planning to run Plex on the box.

I assume the 64GB SSD is your boot device?

Otherwise, seems pretty reasonable. Just make sure you aren't going to run into another drive limit with the U-NAS case.

 

[ewhac]

I'd stick with 32GB RAM, since it sounds like you're planning to run Plex on the box.

Dear $(GOD), no! Plex turned to the Dark Side years ago; I wouldn't touch them with a 3.048 meter pole. My current box is running ReadyMedia (nee MiniDLNA) in a jail, and it works very well for me.

I assume the 64GB SSD is your boot device?

Correct, although I'd be perfectly happy to have the OS live on a USB stick, as it does on the N54L.

Just make sure you aren't going to run into another drive limit with the U-NAS case.

The U-NAS NSC-810A has eight bays, plus space for one 2.5" drive so I think I'm covered for the foreseeable future :).

 

[tvsjr]

What's your beef with Plex? Do you just dislike Plex Pass? I'm a big Plex user... my library is about 7TB.

You're making the right decision going to a small SSD. Much faster and much more reliable.

 

[ewhac]

What's your beef with Plex?

I wrote about my experience with Plex at the time. Since then, I'm given to understand the situation has only continued to deteriorate: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/plex-media-server-utter-fail.19895/

 

[tvsjr]

I wrote about my experience with Plex at the time. Since then, I'm given to understand the situation has only continued to deteriorate: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/plex-media-server-utter-fail.19895/

Weird. I don't run jails/plugins on my FreeNAS, but do have a VM dedicated to Plex on my vSphere cluster. Configuration was pretty damned easy... built the box (Centos 7) using standard build management, slapped the Plex RPM on it, fired it up. Did a little config work in the UI, changed a few things in the firewall, and I can stream my content from wherever. It does have some weird limits I trip across occasionally (many of which are addressed by plugins like PlexPy), but it also has a VERY high WAF (wife acceptance factor), which is paramount.

 

[ewhac]

...but it also has a VERY high WAF (wife acceptance factor), which is paramount.

Oh, I agree, WAF is important. But WAF can be achieved without sacrificing privacy or security. There's no technical reason Plex needs to pull resources from outside the LAN. If you're really desperate and don't want to force users to muck around with DynDNS, Plex.com could keep and update an association between (optional) user accounts and IP addresses. But once you have that IP address, all further communication should be exclusively to that address -- you shouldn't be slurping scripts or CSS or Web beacons from anywhere else. Plex breaks this rule.

...And anyway this is starting to stray from the point. I'm planning on running small, well-bounded plugins/jails, so I'm wondering if 32GiB RAM is excessive for 24TB (16TB usable) of spindles.

 

[tvsjr]

Plex runs fine with zero outbound connectivity and local accounts... did it. And it also works fine with Chrome, uBlock Origin, and ScriptSafe, so you don't have to let their analytics run.

Where memory is concerned, whatever you aren't actively using will be consumed by ARC. More RAM, more ARC, better performance. It's all a matter of what you can afford. You should be fine with 16GB, but you won't have a ton of ARC.

 

[ewhac]

Plex runs fine with zero outbound connectivity and local accounts...

Hmmm. Seems I may need to re-evaluate. When I tried it nearly four years ago, it was pulling scripts from plex.com, which is a big no-no.

Where memory is concerned, whatever you aren't actively using will be consumed by ARC. More RAM, more ARC, better performance.

Very helpful; thank you.

 

[tvsjr]

It will... analytics.plex.com is one of the ones I'm aware of, but I block that with browser extensions. And, you can request that analytics be disabled from the control panel. Hell, if you're picky enough, go in the code and comment that section out.

Mine sits in a DMZ with no access to anything, very restricted outbound access, etc., and I do share my content - so having the outbound stuff is useful to me.

 

[Jorsher]

I'm considering this same exact case. Any way you can tell me the max height for a CPU cooler? Shipping here takes 1-2 months and I'd like to get it right the first time.

 

[ewhac]

Any way you can tell me the max height for a CPU cooler?

Not without cracking the case open; sorry. However, the Zalman CNPS2X CPU cooler I used had no trouble fitting at all (room to spare, in fact), is quiet, and keeps the CPU around 40C, even on a warm day like today was.

 

[diskdiddler]

N54L can take 6 disks, it's messy but works. I've been on 6 disks with FreeNAS for nearly 3 years now.

 

[ChriZ]

The Supermicro motherboard supports 64GB of RAM.
Getting 4x8GB will limit your options in the future in case you need to go beyond 32GB.
Just my 2c...

 

[Inxsible]

Since you consider your configuration to be "less-cheap", let me advise you to buy used hardware based on Supermicro X9 based boards. DDR3 RAM will also be considerably cheaper than DDR4 currently. The case you have chosen in itself is about $250 if I am not mistaken. You could probably get an entire system in that price or probably a few bucks more if you look hard enough. Rack mounted hardware will give you a lot more in terms of more drives in the same form factor compared to regular 2U or 4U towers, hot swap etc. Even a 2U will give you 12 drives instead of 8 in the U-NAS case, but WAF might be difficult in that case if you don't have a separate server cabinet/closet.

I use a Pentium with 16GB RAM for my Emby server and have no problems transcoding 1 or max 2 streams. So anything from a Pentium up will probably suffice if you are not transcoding too much simultaneously.

Some boards to consider : X9SCL-F/X9SCM-F, X9SRL-F etc.