I've been following FreeNAS for some time, but have been keeping my data on my workstation (Sandy Bridge, which was built back in 2010). I'm ready to make the jump to consolidating my data on a NAS because sadly my SB workstation is on its last legs and I'll be building a new workstation shortly, with the aim to keep the box as small as possible and store data on a NAS.
I'm an IT consultant by trade, so I comfortable around hardware and software, though my knowledge of FreeNAS certainly isn't at the level of you all.
Here's a preliminary build I put together:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/mLDWGG
I have a few questions, but first I'll outline my goals:
I really want to keep the FreeNAS box as small as possible, and have been infatuated with the U-NAS NSC-800 for a long while and would like to use that. I'll also likely be booting from USB flash drives.
Now my questions:
I'm an IT consultant by trade, so I comfortable around hardware and software, though my knowledge of FreeNAS certainly isn't at the level of you all.
Here's a preliminary build I put together:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/mLDWGG
I have a few questions, but first I'll outline my goals:
- Keep costs as low as possible
- Transcoding (e.g. PLEX) needs will be none/minimum
- Little/no need to host jails (I have pfSense, rack with a dedicated virtualization server)
- 8 bays, preferably hot-swap though I can live without it
- NVMe M.2 or U.2 support would be really nice
- 64GB-128GB ECC memory support, though I will be starting with 32GB
- Ability to run Optane later is a big plus
I really want to keep the FreeNAS box as small as possible, and have been infatuated with the U-NAS NSC-800 for a long while and would like to use that. I'll also likely be booting from USB flash drives.
Now my questions:
- Is the only viable option Intel, on the C236/C232 chipset?
- I noticed that even up to Coffee Lake, ARK says that the CPU supports ECC, but I can't find any motherboards that support it. It needs to be supported by a corresponding chipset right?
- QNAP and Synology have i3/i5/i7 NASes, but those seem to be using consumer chipsets, so ECC looks out of the question for those.
- Ryzen support still seems flakey. Is anyone running Ryzen with ECC without major issues?
- If I want to use U.2 or M.2 NVMe drives for tiered storage or caching, and choose a non-ECC chipset, is that a big no-no?