Pheran's 32TB FreeNAS build with photos

Caladin9

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Pheran

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It seem the link to the LSI driver is not working. Is this the correct link?

http://ftp//ftp.supermicro.com/Driver/SAS/LSI/2308/Firmware/IT/PH20.00.04.00-IT.zip

That's because the FreeNAS forum screws up FTP links, it assumes they are all HTTP. Even the correct link you just posted won't work if you click on it. So yes, it's right. If you copy-paste this non-linked text it should work.

ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/driver/SAS/LSI/2308/Firmware/IT/PH20.00.04.00-IT.zip
 

crimsondr

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Feb 6, 2015
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Great write up! Thanks for taking the time. Especially useful was pointing me in the direction of the more detailed hard drive burn in thread.

Just ordered all the parts today for my build! Can't wait to get started.

I plan on running Plex, Transmission, Couchpotato, VirtualBox, and Blue Iris from my FreeNAS server.
 

tlorek

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Dec 25, 2015
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Great write up! Thanks for taking the time. Especially useful was pointing me in the direction of the more detailed hard drive burn in thread.

Just ordered all the parts today for my build! Can't wait to get started.

I plan on running Plex, Transmission, Couchpotato, VirtualBox, and Blue Iris from my FreeNAS server.

I'm several months ahead of you. I used Pheran's (fabulous!!) writeup as a reference for my box and it's been running flawlessly since early February.

I'm using 6x3 WD Reds (Z2), and I've got 32GB of ECC ram to support the (eventual) various environments I plan on running within VirtualBox. I'm running one camera in Blue Iris in a Win7 VBox and I dedicated 2 processors and 4GB of ram to it. At 15fps, it's consuming ~ 30% CPU, so when I get a second camera I won't have to up the hardware on it. Running Plex on three devices plus the VBox/Blue Iris, I'm consuming less than 20% of the total CPU (e1231 v3), so there's lots of room to play. Haven't configured Transmission and Couchpotato yet, I'm working on getting a preconfigured Oracle DB to work in Vbox.

Good Luck!
 

crimsondr

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I'm several months ahead of you. I used Pheran's (fabulous!!) writeup as a reference for my box and it's been running flawlessly since early February.

I'm using 6x3 WD Reds (Z2), and I've got 32GB of ECC ram to support the (eventual) various environments I plan on running within VirtualBox. I'm running one camera in Blue Iris in a Win7 VBox and I dedicated 2 processors and 4GB of ram to it. At 15fps, it's consuming ~ 30% CPU, so when I get a second camera I won't have to up the hardware on it. Running Plex on three devices plus the VBox/Blue Iris, I'm consuming less than 20% of the total CPU (e1231 v3), so there's lots of room to play. Haven't configured Transmission and Couchpotato yet, I'm working on getting a preconfigured Oracle DB to work in Vbox.

Good Luck!
Thanks, CPU should arrive tomorrow. Then maybe a week of burn in lol...

I currently run Ubuntu Server on my current machine which serves as a file server, Blue Iris in VirtualBox, Transmission, Flexget, and plex media server. I plan on replicating this in FreeNAS. I've already played with FreeNAS within a VM to test the configuration of everything. I have all the configuration figured out so that they can communicate with each other and how to mount datasets to the jails for storage.

The only thing I haven't decided is whether to install Transmission and PMS as a plugin or manually in a jail. I have it working as a jail and I will probably leave it that way since I am quite comfortable with the command line.

My current Blue Iris VM uses about 50% CPU with 7 cameras and 1 client connected. With 2 clients connected it rises to 65-70%. The current machine is about 4 years old and an i5 although I don't remember the exact specs. I want to add a few more cameras so I hope my new build will be able to support it and have lower CPU usage.

My final parts list:
Intel Xeon E3-1241 V3 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor
Supermicro X10SL7-F Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
32GB Crucial 16GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Supermicro SC836E26-R1200
9x Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive (one for spare)
NORCO C-SFF8087-4S Discrete to SFF-8087 (Reverse breakout) Cable
SUPERMICRO SSD-DM016-PHI SATA DOM (SuperDOM) Solutions
2x SanDisk Ultra Fit™ CZ43 32GB USB 3.0

I have both the satadom and usb drives. I haven't fully decided on which I will use as the boot device but I figured I will have other uses for the usb drives.
 
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Could not resist... heres mine!! Even got that yellow color :D

View attachment 8721

For those interested, i have 4 PCH ports connected to a ICYDock for my SSD's where all my VM's reside.
The extra dual port nic is connected to a pfSense VM :)
Sir.Robin, Pheran,

Amazing builds and I've taken note and will be replicating this with perhaps 6 drives. After running it for some time, anything you would do differently (e.g.: lessons learned)?
For example, number of datasets or brands of hardware?
 

Pheran

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Jul 14, 2015
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Sir.Robin, Pheran,

Amazing builds and I've taken note and will be replicating this with perhaps 6 drives. After running it for some time, anything you would do differently (e.g.: lessons learned)?
For example, number of datasets or brands of hardware?

I've been extremely pleased with the server, the only thing I've wanted is 8TB drives which I can't afford. :) Of course if I were building the system again today I'd go with Skylake hardware instead of Haswell. The Define R5 case is a dream, I can't recommend it enough for up to 8-drive builds.
 
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The Define R5 case is a dream, I can't recommend it enough for up to 8-drive builds.

I always wonder what's so great about this case. Many people recommend it and when I when to look at it I don't see it. Perhaps there is something I missed ? I see this case being great perhaps for someone who will put water cooling with dual radiator ,which the open top is made for, but for nas of business purpose workstations I only see 8 drive bay being helpfully and the rest of the stuff being more as disadvantage ?!
 

Pheran

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I always wonder what's so great about this case. Many people recommend it and when I when to look at it I don't see it. Perhaps there is something I missed ? I see this case being great perhaps for someone who will put water cooling with dual radiator ,which the open top is made for, but for nas of business purpose workstations I only see 8 drive bay being helpfully and the rest of the stuff being more as disadvantage ?!

It's just very well-built, perfect for an 8-drive build, and most importantly extremely quiet. It sits right next to my desk and I rarely hear it. My NAS is most definitely not a "business purpose workstation", it's a home server. If you've got a business with an actual data closet/server room, then sure, use a rackmount case with hotswap drives.
 
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My NAS is actually a rackmount server as you can see in my signature. Honestly I was looking for a super quiet workstation case without compromising cooling if there is a such a thing. I do like the "extremely quiet" part.. I guess you just close all the holes you don't use, like the top and perhaps the side panel ?

P.S. Server chassis(case) is easy to choose cause everything is made with purpose and efficiency in mind, but for workstation case often the market is the consumer market and there there is all kind of craziness you have to deal with. Including but not limited to getting something that was made to look "cool" at the expense of overheating your hardware , just so they can make it appealing to buy.
 

Narfski

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I've been extremely pleased with the server, the only thing I've wanted is 8TB drives which I can't afford. :) Of course if I were building the system again today I'd go with Skylake hardware instead of Haswell. The Define R5 case is a dream, I can't recommend it enough for up to 8-drive builds.

Pheran, hope I'm not going about this incorrectly or derailing this thread. If so I'm sorry as I have been a lurker on here for a while and fooled around with different builds but never really posted much, expect a really old question when I first got started out with FreeNAS.

I was just wondering if you were to select a Skylake version of your setup, what would you use for the motherboard, CPU, and RAM? I'm finally getting around to making a 8 drive setup and this thread is exactly what I was looking for. The setup you have will meet my needs and your thread has such vast information.

If you would like to PM that is ok too regarding this.

Thanks in advance.
 

Pheran

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Pheran, hope I'm not going about this incorrectly or derailing this thread. If so I'm sorry as I have been a lurker on here for a while and fooled around with different builds but never really posted much, expect a really old question when I first got started out with FreeNAS.

I was just wondering if you were to select a Skylake version of your setup, what would you use for the motherboard, CPU, and RAM? I'm finally getting around to making a 8 drive setup and this thread is exactly what I was looking for. The setup you have will meet my needs and your thread has such vast information.

No problem at all! Take everything I'm about to say with a grain of salt since I haven't actually used this hardware. Make sure you check out Ericloewe's excellent hardware guide if you haven't already. I would have pointed you toward Kaby Lake but Intel has dropped ECC support from most Kaby Lake chips on the consumer side (i.e. Pentium, i3). If you are going Xeon then Kaby Lake (v6) is still an option, but those are brand-new.

For motherboard, I would choose either a SuperMicro X11SSM-F or X11SSL-CF. The big difference between these boards is the the SSM-F offers 8 Intel SATA3 ports, whereas the SSL-CF has 6 Intel SATA3 ports plus an LSI3008 controller with 8 SAS/SATA3 ports. The SSM-F should be fine if you are certain you never want more than 8 SATA devices, but if you want to hedge your bets (maybe add a few internal SSDs later or something), then the SSL-CF has more flexibility. Right now the SSL-CF is around $85 more expensive in the US. If I was building a "dream server" I would also consider the SSH-TF and SSH-CTF, which have integrated 10GBASE-T networking, but those boards are pretty darn expensive.

CPU choice largely depends on your workload - do you need intensive tasks like Plex transcoding? If so how much? I would likely either go with Core i3-6300 for moderate loads or a Xeon E3-1220 v5/v6 if you need heavy-duty CPU horsepower. For memory I'd personally want at least 32GB, I'd go with 2x16GB DDR4-2400 ECC DIMMs, such as a Crucial CT8374226 kit. You can add a second kit if you want to go all the way to 64GB, either now or later.

Hope this helps!
 

Pheran

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Since Firefox (and other browsers) have killed Java support, I'm having a little adventure this evening upgrading my X10SL7-F IPMI firmware from 1.92 to 3.45 "Redfish". This gets you the new HTML5 iKVM console support. I made sure to uncheck the "preserve configuration" boxes as the documentation described. The only issue I ran into was having to clear my browser cache afterwards to make the new IPMI interface look right. Now I have a shiny new HTML5 console, no Java required!
 

Ericloewe

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Since Firefox (and other browsers) have killed Java support, I'm having a little adventure this evening upgrading my X10SL7-F IPMI firmware from 1.92 to 3.45 "Redfish". This gets you the new HTML5 iKVM console support. I made sure to uncheck the "preserve configuration" boxes as the documentation described. The only issue I ran into was having to clear my browser cache afterwards to make the new IPMI interface look right. Now I have a shiny new HTML5 console, no Java required!
You don't need java in your browser. The iKVM runs as a dedicated java application.
 

Ericloewe

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Eric, I think you may be confusing this with an older version of iKVM, or the old standalone IPMI View application. The latest "Redfish" firmware does not require Java at all - try it yourself!
Last I checked, the HTML5 version still had some limitations (no virtual CD drive, for instance).

In any case, my earlier point stands: The java applications are standalone, they don't run in the browser.
 

Spearfoot

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Since Firefox (and other browsers) have killed Java support, I'm having a little adventure this evening upgrading my X10SL7-F IPMI firmware from 1.92 to 3.45 "Redfish". This gets you the new HTML5 iKVM console support. I made sure to uncheck the "preserve configuration" boxes as the documentation described. The only issue I ran into was having to clear my browser cache afterwards to make the new IPMI interface look right. Now I have a shiny new HTML5 console, no Java required!
I had my own adventures with IPMI on my X10SL7-F system: "Use stunnel? Then beware of Supermicro's latest IPMIView and IPMITools!". The newer standalone IPMIView still uses java, and installs its own instance of stunnel to encrypt the iKVM connection. Not a problem... Unless, like me, you are using stunnel for other purposes, in which case your stunnel instance gets trashed! :oops:

So I'm stuck at Redfish v3.27 w/ IPMIView 2.11 until Supermicro completely eliminates java from the toolchain.
 
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