BUILD Noobie FreeNAS build

[smallrebelarmy]

Hi everyone. New to freeNAS. I’ve been lurking the past 3-4 days (maybe obsessing?) and have set up an old 2009 Mac Pro as a test run. Getting the feel for it. Digging it.

Now I’m ready to take the plunge on a system. The primary purpose of this system is a backup for my main WS. My workstation is OSX with about 20Tb in a hardware RAID3 for film editing. More likely 17-18TB after some pruning. I’d like to have a back up of my WS media on the FreeNAS ZFS so I can get rid of the million external drives I have laying around.

Here is the build I’m considering.

MB: X10SRA-F
CPU: E5-1620 v3
(any real benefit moving to the E5-1650 v3?)
FAN: NH-U12DXi4
(2) SAMSUNG 16GB 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR4 2133 (PC4 17000) Server Memory Model M393A2G40DB0-CPB
(6) WD RED 6TB
Intel 510 SSD for booting. (repurposed)
Living in a Corsair 750d (temporarily)
SeaSonic Platinum 860W (overkill, but will be repurposed later this summer by a new workstation and replaced by an older smaller one.)

Second phase I’ll add another drives, more RAM, and move to a rack mount. Eventually I’d like to look into using it to serve the media itself and find a alternate backup solution. This may not be realistic since I mostly deal with large R3D files. For now I’ll be happy with an intelligent backup system.

One last question. Should I even consider the x11 options? It opens up more 10GbE options, but the 64gb memory limitations seems like it may be problematic. The E3-1270 v5 is a good price point.

If you guys wouldn't mind having a quick look and letting me know if I over looked anything (or if you see other possibilities) I would appreciate it.

Thanks!

 

[Mr_N]

You may want to start with more drives from the start, if your 6x6TB are in RaidZ2 like they should be then your only left with approx 24TB/22.3 Usable and if you fill it up with 17-18TB of data its going to be over 80% full which will have performance impacts on your pool.

 

[DrKK]

Plus in any case, 64GB of RAM would be PLLLLLLENTY for like 15x6TB drives in most cases. Are you sure 64GB is truly a limitation? The whole "1GB per 1TB" thing really relaxes quite a bit once you have something like 64GB in play.

 

[smallrebelarmy]

@Mr_N I was hoping to get away with RaidZ1 since it is primarily my backup, but it's not a wise place to skimp. I'll add two drives and go RaidZ2

@DrKK I honestly don't know. I assumed more ram could lead to better speeds as I scale up. If this setup works out I'd like to use it more as a proper server. That would be mid-summer and I would need to add another 40TB-50TB for a project. The tricky part is that only 3 people would be accessing it at a time, but the files being moved on and off would be monsters. So I'm not really sure. I don't have any real world experience with FreeNAS. Only small test on a 2009 Mac Pro with 40gb of ram.

 

[Mr_N]

Mates don't let mates use RaidZ1 :)

Having said that its upto you, but given the possible increase in storage you may require in the future i'd go straight to a 2x 8x6TB Z2 pool and your laughing... possibly at the cost but hell YOLO!

 

[smallrebelarmy]

Ha Yes. Raid2 is a better choice. I'm all about going 2x 8x6tb but I'd like someone else to pick up the bill. : - ) Hopefuly this next project. I just need to know my way around when the time comes.

 

[joeschmuck]

Well it looks like you are planning to install 32GB of RAM which is fine for what it appears you will be using the box for but if you are planning to run video editing directly on files on your FreeNAS system, I'd opt for the 64GB option and your storage pool should not be a RAIDZ2 alone of 8 or so drives, it would be better served as several vdevs within the pool or just several mirrors. You have a lot to educate yourself on if working on files from the NAS is the end result you desire, but if it's purely for storage then a RAIDZ2 will be fine and so will 32GB of RAM. Also, you just cannot upgrade your pools by adding on additional drives, there is a specific way to upgrade and it's never a fun thing to experience, unless you have lots of money.

 

[ChriZ]

Just wondering.... the x10sra is a "workstation" board (includes audio etc)
On the other hand the x10srl is a true server board, without useless components and is actually cheaper then the x10sra..

 

[smallrebelarmy]

@ChriZ Good call! X10SRL-F it is. I find the Supermicro site very confusing. I wish I could sort by features. It's almost easier to print the options and compare them side by side.

 

[smallrebelarmy]

@joeschmuck All very good points. I've been reading everything I can but I'm lacking real world and practical experience. I only recently started building my own machines after I got frustrated with the Apples form factor. So ALL this is new. But building several dual booting Hackintoshs (perfectly stable) really opened up the possibilities for me. I read a bit about how to expand pools (same number and size) but pixels are different than experience. I was hoping to keep the drive numbers in the vdev reasonable and eventually have several vdevs for a little speed boost. Hopefully by the time I have 2 (but probably 3 vdevs then I may have enough speed (500MB reads) to use it as a server. There is always a little money for post-production hardware, but never enough to build a killer NAS all at once. That's why I was hoping to do it in phases. It also allows me to an out. If it becomes obvious I can't get good speeds (400-500Mb+ reads) without spending major capital, then I still have an amazing back up system. ;)

 

[SweetAndLow]

400-500MB/s reads and writes is very easy to do. A single vdev will accomplish this on simple workflows. Adding more vdevs will mean you can handle those speeds with more random and parallel workflows.

 

[smallrebelarmy]

@SweetAndLow Ok great. Good to know. Placing my order now. Excited to build this thing. :)

 

[William Bravin]

hello all, I am in a pickle and this is why I am planning to build a NAS based on Freenas.

My pickle I have a buffalo Linkstation which has a dead box now I find my self in a situation that I can no longer read these disk because they are in raid 5 and the files are xfs. Hence I am up the creek if I can not find a identical box.

I have one HTPC running windows 10 connected via Cable
3 Laptops running windows 7 professional
1 laptop running Ubuntu (I am learning Ubuntu because I am getting fed up with Microsoft)
1 WD My book World with 2TB

There fore I am planning to build a NAS using a Supermicro X9xxx board with an I3 CPU and 16GB of ECC ram. Initially I will be using the same 4x1 TB disk,
I will want to remove the MY world Disk and replace it with a external USB 4 TB disk drive that I can use as Backup.

however I will be migrating by September to WD red 2 TB
on these disks I have copied most of my 600 albums and cds . over 400 between DVD and VHS, all my pst and personal files and after many months of configuring and finding album art and fan art for all the unit collapses.

The NAS will run 24X7 and by June I will need to remotely connect to this NAS

I am building this unit because in case of an event or failure I can replace just one part and continue on my merry way and not be in the same predicament as I am now.
I am only missing one piece of information.

I know that if I activate CIF and SMBA in FreeNAS, however what I would like to happen is to "copy" all my files in freenas once a month to the USB drive and I would be able to still listen or watch my media even if the freenas server is dead (or obsolete). So its not just a backup that I need, I need to replicate the files in a window (or may be Ubuntu format)

Please help, am I barking up the wrong tree?

Thank you all William Bravin

 

[ChriZ]

Just for the record, x9 supermicros are socket 1155. Socket 1155 i3 CPUs do not support ECC. You have to use a Pentium, a Celeron or a Xeon...

 

[William Bravin]

Thank you Chriz for your prompt reply, My Mistake, the board I am contemplating does come with a e31222V2 CPU

 

[William Bravin]

hello all

In my current build, as stated in my signature below, my ICYDOCK has failed and i need to rebuild my nas. In order to avoid this from happening again I am faced with 2 possible solutions.

A) buy a tower case with 10 drive bays and migrate all my components from my current case to the tower.
or for slightly more i could bite the bullet and i could buy this solution
B) Supermicro 2U 10 Bay X10SLM+-F - Xeon E3-1220 v3 Quad Core NAS 24GB equipped with a LSI SAS 9211-8I KIT - 8-Port Int, 6Gb/s SATA

many of you suggested that a supermicro solution is a more compatible solution for freenas. Therefore my question to you all is
is the supermicro solution good for what i need to do (as explained) here above?

Is the supermicro solution going to cause me management issues not encountered with regular pc based solutions?

thank you for your time, patience, understanding and response

 

[melloa]

Is the supermicro solution going to cause me management issues not encountered with regular pc based solutions?

Not too different. You will have more tools to manage it.

Supermicro 2U 10 Bay X10SLM+-F - Xeon E3-1220 v3 Quad Core NAS 24GB equipped with a LSI SAS 9211-8I KIT - 8-Port Int, 6Gb/s SATA

That will be an upgrade from your current system, for sure. Just consider the points below:

- This motherboard is limited to 32GB RAM.
- Noise
- Not sure of your budget, but here at home I'm running what you see on my signature and would buy something like this. I kind like that motherboard for a all-in-one server. For a FreeNAS only is overkill, but memory expansion is possible as ZFS uses lots of it.
- For my FreeNAS only server I'm using another motherboard. That's a single processor.

Just couple options to consider. I'm pretty sure the folks here will add to my thoughts and some even disagree

Final thought: Keep in mind the possibility to expand memory. As you grow your ZFS pool, you might want to add more RAM to your system.

 

[William Bravin]

Thank you for your quick response.

I do not think I will grow my storage (from 12tb to a max of 16tb) and i could still grow the ram to 32 and be happy with it . I do not thinks i will ever have media requiring more than this.
my concern was the cpu (since you use in all your systems an E5) will it have enough processing power (for viewing and listening yes) to manage backups?
In addition i ask if the LSI SAS 9211-8I card is it robust enough for what i need to do. since this is an older board would /should i need to upgrade it for better performance

I would probably add a 120gb ssd to act as a boot drive and i have an extra 500gb drive to act as cache connected to the 2 sata2 ports

I would then use my current system as a backup server. This should make my backups faster than with the buffalo nas

Once again thank you for your response