Planing to buy a FreeNAS MINI XL or build new for same price.

[Snurt]

Hi

First of, happy to see such a great place in my search for a proper home server.

I'm planing to invest in a server that can host as a NAS, transcoder, mobile backup and occasionally a game server. But first and foremost a NAS.
I'm a total noob, but i love to tinker and build, i really love my own hardware.

My problem is the import tax that i have in my country(Norway), so importing once own hardware can often be expensive. Also items bought in Norway have a two/five year law-given guarantee which i quite like.

The parts i already have:
1x Samsung 860 Pro 256GB
2x Kingston SSDNow 256GB (older drives)
1x MSI GeForce GTX 970

So for the same price of the FreeNAS MINI XL i can get the following build from a good vendor locally:
1x Intel Xeon E-2186G
1x ASUS WS C246 PRO
2x Kingston DDR4 2666MHz 16GB ECC CL19 UDIMM(no link found)
1x Noctua NH-D9L
1x Seasonic Prime Titanium 750W
1x Silverstone CS380 (have to import)
3x Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM

Im planing to use six or eight WD or HGST 8TB NAS drives.

Am i way of in my build? I would love some feedback!

EDIT: If I end up building i wil donate to FreeNAS before i start using it.

 

[Snurt]

I hate to bump a post, started to look into ordering a NAS/ server box again and i stil feel like i need some confirmation of sorts.

 

[Constantin]

I’m close to selling a mini XL that was purchased in Sep. 2016 and still has some warranty on it. Was used in my home for about a year before I moved cases.

Buyer has a choice of buying the unit with the OEM 32GB of RAM and/or the upgrade to 64GB. Unit also has a 10GB iXSystems branded SFP+ interface card and a upgraded 80mm Noctua industrial fan.

Timing is a bit of an issue though as the Avoton motherboard failed (Intel clock bug suspected) and iXSystems is working to send me a bug-free replacement. They say it will take at least two weeks due to backlog.

So, I can only say good things about iXSystems post sale support. But sending that unit to you might be tricky because I no longer have the OEM box. I’d rather sell local so the buyer can verify the thing works before they hand over cash.

 

[Stevie_1der]

1x ASUS WS C246 PRO

The mainboard you selected is a workstation board with different graphics connectors, many graphics card slots, onboard sound and stuff like that.
But FreeNAS can't use the onboard sound at all, and won't make any senseful use of graphics cards either.

I would recommend a Supermicro X11SCH-F instead.
It features 8 SATA ports also, 2x M.2 PCIe x4, 1x PCIe 3.0 x16 (x8), 1x PCIe 3.0 x8, and most important, an IPMI management interface.
With IPMI, you don't need to attach a keyboard, mouse or monitor to your NAS, you can monitor and control it via browser, you can even make BIOS settings or turn your NAS on and off with that, this is some really useful stuff.

1x Intel Xeon E-2186G

The integrated graphics of the processor will be useful when FreeNAS supports GPU assisted transcoding, this is work in progress as far as I know.

2x Kingston SSDNow 256GB (older drives)

You could use these as a mirrored drive for your jails (game servers, Plex?) for faster access.
That would cost you 2 SATA ports, so you could use a maximum of 6 data drives.
If you really need more drives, you can put an HBA in a PCIe slot and connect drives to that.

What are you planning for a boot device?
You only need about 16GB, so your Samsung 860 Pro 256GB would be a waste.
You could use 2x 16GB USB 2.0 thumb drives as a mirrored boot device.
Or you could even use one of the M.2 ports and put a 16GB Optane or some other small M2. PCIe drive there as a boot device, as long as you don't have any better use for the M.2 slots.
Or if you go with an HBA, another one or two mirrored SSDs.

1x Silverstone CS380 (have to import)

Well, I personally think the huge bumps on the side panels make the chassis look rather weird.
When I was looking for a chassis for my build a few weeks ago, I saw a picture and dismissed it immediately, but that's a matter of taste.
What do you think about a Fractal Design Define R5 (silent) or Fractal Design Node 804 (cube, micro ATX only)?
Both don't feature hot swap bays, but those plastic HDD trays of the CS380 don't look rather sturdy.
I was looking for hat swap bays, too, but there are just no chassis available at reasonable quality and price, and a good airflow (except huge server grade ones), so I dropped my hot swap requirement.
I already own a Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 for my main PC, and I like it because it is well-thought and reasonably priced.

The rest seems ok to me, maybe some other members can give some more feedback.

 

[PhiloEpisteme]

1x ASUS WS C246 PRO

Agreed, for a NAS this has a lot of features you don't need. I agree with @Stevie_1der that something like a supermicro x11 board would be a great start for FreeNAS if you're looking to buy newer hardware. If you want to save money you can find great performance in the x9 and x10 boards purchased used off ebay as well.

I would recommend a Supermicro X11SCH-F instead.
It features 8 SATA ports also, 2x M.2 PCIe x4, 1x PCIe 3.0 x16 (x8), 1x PCIe 3.0 x8, and most important, an IPMI management interface.

M.2 slots are super fast but take up your PCIe lanes. If you get a board with M.2 slots you'll want to be sure you have a good use for them. M.2 SLOG devices benefit from that speed and would be a good use provided you found modules with PLP. Boot devices have no need for the speed that M.2 provides and run well on SATA ports thus I figure they are not worth sacrificing PCIe slots. PCIe slots tend to be a it more versatile as well; they accept a wide variety of HBAs, NICs, SAS expanders etc.

2x Kingston SSDNow 256GB (older drives)

Though a bit large, if you have no other use for them you can use them as boot devices. I'm not sure how much performance gain you'll see using them for plex etc especially if you're using 1Gb networking. In general, small SSDs make great boot devices. Their price has come down a LOT lately and they are way more reliable than USB sticks. Reliability without breaking the bank! :)

You could use these as a mirrored drive for your jails (game servers, Plex?) for faster access.
That would cost you 2 SATA ports, so you could use a maximum of 6 data drives.

With this $57 Dell H310 6Gbps SAS HBA LSI 9211-8i and 2 breakout cables ~$7 each you can add support for 8 additional drives. If you grow beyond that you can pick up a SAS expander such as this IBM ServeRAID 16-Port 6Gbps SAS-2 SATA Expansion Adapter for $40 with a few more cables which will allow you to connect up to 24 drives if used in concert with the aforementioned HBA. Anyway, provided you have the budget and open PCIe slots you'll be able to run plenty of drives.

transcoder, mobile backup and occasionally a game server

In order to give you more specific recommendations can you elaborate on your needs? Specifically what are your transcoding needs and how do you plan to use it as a game server? If you plan on using plex what resolution and how many streams do you want to support? What are your storage needs and what level of redundancy are you aiming for?

 

[Stevie_1der]

M.2 slots are super fast but take up your PCIe lanes. If you get a board with M.2 slots you'll want to be sure you have a good use for them. M.2 SLOG devices benefit from that speed and would be a good use provided you found modules with PLP. Boot devices have no need for the speed that M.2 provides and run well on SATA ports thus I figure they are not worth sacrificing PCIe slots. PCIe slots tend to be a it more versatile as well; they accept a wide variety of HBAs, NICs, SAS expanders etc.

@Snurt has chosen a Coffee Lake CPU, so I was looking for "drop-in replacements".
Coffee Lake boards are not yet available widely, so there are just a few models until now.

• The Supermicro X11SCL-F has 1x PCIe 3.0 x16 (x8), 2x PCIe 3.0 x8 (x4), 1x M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4, but only 6 SATA ports.
  It has only 1x PCIe x8 usable for storage or 10GbE add-on cards, the other 2 slots are just x4.
  So quite little expansion capabilities.
• The Supermicro X11SCM-F has 1x PCIe 3.0 x16, 1x M.2/M-Key (PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA, 22110/2280), 1x M.2/M-Key (PCIe 3.0 x4, 22110/2280), but only 6 SATA ports.
  It only has 1 PCIe slot, so even worse than the X11SCL-F.
• The Supermicro X11SCH-LN4F is the same as the X11SCH-F, but with 2 additional GbE LAN ports.
• The Supermicro X11SCZ-F has 1x PCIe 3.0 x16, 2x PCIe 3.0 x8 (x4), 1x M.2/M-Key (PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA, 2280/2260), but only 6 SATA ports.
  It has only 1x PCIe x16 usable for storage or 10GbE add-on cards, the other 2 slots are just x4, and it features onboard audio (which is useless for FreeNAS use).
• The Supermicro X11SCA-F has 2x PCIe 3.0 x16 (1x x16, 1x x8), 1x PCIe 3.0 x4, 1x PCIe 3.0 x1, 1x PCI, 2x M.2/M-Key (PCIe 3.0 x4, 2280), 1x U.2 MiniSAS HD/SFF-8643 (PCIe 3.0 x4), 8 SATA ports and onboard audio.
  This one even features a PCI slot, but the 2x PCIe x16 slots are shared (x16+x0 or x8+x8), the PCIe x4 is shared with one M.2 and the U.2 is shared with the other M.2.

So the newer boards just happen to have more and more M.2 slots instead of PCIe.
And I chose the one with 2x available PCIe x8 and the most (8) SATA ports available, I would have suggested it even if it didn't have the M.2 slots.
But if you have these slots available, you can use them for whatever fits your need, SLOG, ZIL, jails mirror or boot device(s), although the latter two are kind of waste (but still better than leaving them empty).
So an HBA and a 10GbE card could be installed simultaneously. SAS expanders normally use the slot just for power (and as a foothold), and many have an additional 3.5" molex connector for power and can be mounted anywhere, so they don't need a slot.

 

[Constantin]

Multiple PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots are particularly interesting if you're into mirroring a SLOG. My next board only has one such slot at PCIe 3.0 x4 so I have to hope that the Intel Optane 4801x module will behave itself.

If there isn't on-board HBA or 10GBe/SFP+ support, I'd look for a board with at least two x8 PCIe slots to cover that. x16 support seems like overkill unless you're into SSDs and a much faster network card than 10GBe/SFP+.

Additional 1GBe interfaces might be interesting for VMs running in jails, as I understand it. For faster transfers, directory browsing, etc. you're likely better off with a 10GBe connection (by whatever means, copper, SFP+, etc.) and researching what your protocol benefits from re: hardware and settings.

 

[Snurt]

Thank you so much for the feedback, im gonna change the motherboard and add a NVME ssd of some sorts for SLOG, im also gonna change case to some suitable fractal model.

The reason i wanted the GTX 970 in my build was for plex transcoding, but the Coffe Lake CPU is by far capable of transcoding and i was hoping to use the ssd's as ZIL/SLOG or use them as storage for game installs.

I am limited to 1Gb ethernel so i can justify using the PCI'e lanes for SSD's.

 

[Constantin]

The P4801x is a pretty sweet model - 100GB of space and a very fast write speed. If you can wait until mid-week, I hope to have the tests for the 4801x done by then. It's complicated but it will likely require an evening of work to get there.

 

[Yorick]

The reason i wanted the GTX 970 in my build was for plex transcoding.

Nein. Non. Nyet. Leastwise not in FreeBSD. Windows or Linux, maybe. I’m not fully parsing the Plex docs on that.

Limited to 1Gb ether: that’s going to limit your performance more than any slog or L2ARC will matter for. For most workloads. There are, I know, exceptions. Tons of small files being one.