Plausible setup.

[Dirk]

Please understand that I do read a lot before posting, but I would like some input before I install since it has been my experience that re-instals are too common if you don't get it close to right the first time.

Hopefully my sig now shows the config. The box will be used for home media sharing mostly, but I would also like to leave the door open for a mail server, and FTP server. Traffic to those two would be minimal. The usual entree's like sickbeard and couchpotato would likely happen. The motherboard has two gig lan ports so I'm assuming that one for media serving, and one for the mail/ftp?

Any input would be helpful, or just tell me what you dd that worked in a similar config. Again, what I'm trying to avoid is getting into a situation where I have to scratch, format, and redo after investing a lot of time to get there.

Thanks

 

[Ericloewe]

Hopefully my sig now shows the config.

Yes, but be advised that signatures aren't readily visible on most mobile devices and for tapatalk users, so always include the relevant information when needed.

The motherboard has two gig lan ports so I'm assuming that one for media serving, and one for the mail/ftp?

That's getting rather deep in networking and jails, which aren't trivial subjects.

 

[Spearfoot]

Welcome to the forum!

I guess you have a typo in your signature, and '16G eec' should be '16GiB ECC'?

Regarding the cache (L2ARC) SSD: you don't have enough RAM to gain any benefit from an L2ARC. The rule of thumb is to max out the memory on your system and only then consider adding an L2ARC if analysis shows you need one.

I'll let others who are familiar with that ASRock motherboard comment on it. I don't use ASRock, but users who do have been reporting problems with certain models after a year or more of service.

The Fractal 304 case and WD Red drives are good choices.

If cost is a concern, you could eliminate the DOM and boot FreeNAS from the SSD. Or you could eliminate both and boot FreeNAS from a USB flash drive.

 

[Dirk]

Yes, but be advised that signatures aren't readily visible on most mobile devices and for tapatalk users, so always include the relevant information when needed.

That's getting rather deep in networking and jails, which aren't trivial subjects.

Thanks for the tip on the sig.

 

[Dirk]

Welcome to the forum!

I guess you have a typo in your signature, and '16G eec' should be '16GiB ECC'?

Regarding the cache (L2ARC) SSD: you don't have enough RAM to gain any benefit from an L2ARC. The rule of thumb is to max out the memory on your system and only then consider adding an L2ARC if analysis shows you need one.

I'll let others who are familiar with that ASRock motherboard comment on it. I don't use ASRock, but users who do have been reporting problems with certain models after a year or more of service.

The Fractal 304 case and WD Red drives are good choices.

If cost is a concern, you could eliminate the DOM and boot FreeNAS from the SSD. Or you could eliminate both and boot FreeNAS from a USB flash drive.

Ram is already maxed. Are you saying the SSD would not be a good choice for cache drive? Cost is no longer a concern, the box is waiting for me ;-)

 

[HeloJunkie]

You mentioned sickbeard and couchpotato, are you planning on running plex in a jail as well? What processor are you going to use? If you're going to use Plex, how many concurrent transcoded streams do you plan on running?

Depending on what you are going to do, you might save yourself some trouble and use a single gig link as opposed to separate links.

As someone pointed out above, trying to separate one link for jails is not the easiest, or at least was not for me.

After a huge amount of testing of my units I have found that it takes a LOT of plex traffic to even come close to saturation of a gig link. In the end, I did use separate 10G nics to connect my NAS to my separate plex server, but in looking at the traffic after a long time and a lot of usage, I didn't need it. Eight concurrent 1080p streams and nothing is breaking a sweat.

I ended up going with a separate Plex/CP/Sonarr/etc server as I found that I was having a couple of weird issues running all of that stuff in jails, but I did not put a huge amount of time into trying to figure it out...I guess maybe I wanted an excuse to have a dedicated Plex server and a dedicated NAS.

 

[Dirk]

You mentioned sickbeard and couchpotato, are you planning on running plex in a jail as well? What processor are you going to use? If you're going to use Plex, how many concurrent transcoded streams do you plan on running?

Depending on what you are going to do, you might save yourself some trouble and use a single gig link as opposed to separate links.

As someone pointed out above, trying to separate one link for jails is not the easiest, or at least was not for me.

After a huge amount of testing of my units I have found that it takes a LOT of plex traffic to even come close to saturation of a gig link. In the end, I did use separate 10G nics to connect my NAS to my separate plex server, but in looking at the traffic after a long time and a lot of usage, I didn't need it. Eight concurrent 1080p streams and nothing is breaking a sweat.

I ended up going with a separate Plex/CP/Sonarr/etc server as I found that I was having a couple of weird issues running all of that stuff in jails, but I did not put a huge amount of time into trying to figure it out...I guess maybe I wanted an excuse to have a dedicated Plex server and a dedicated NAS.

Yes on the Plex, CPU is a Xeon 3.1GHZ. I doubt that the streams would exceed 2 (I'm singe ;-). Whole house is hard wired for GIG and switches are GIG.

Forgive my noobnes everyone, but my experience with jails is limited. If it does not tax the memory and CPU, can a mail server and or FTP server be run in a jail? Or should I leave space on the array open for virtualization and installation that way?
Thanks

 

[HeloJunkie]

Yes on the Plex, CPU is a Xeon 3.1GHZ. I doubt that the streams would exceed 2 (I'm singe ;-). Whole house is hard wired for GIG and switches are GIG.

Which specific Xeon (although I doubt it matters much, you only need 2000 passmarks per 1080p transcoded stream)?

Forgive my noobnes everyone, but my experience with jails is limited. If it does not tax the memory and CPU, can a mail server and or FTP server be run in a jail? Or should I leave space on the array open for virtualization and installation that way?
Thanks

I think you would be just fine running a low utilization FTP server and mail server in jails based on what you have said. I might throw more ram at the box if you are going to run Freenas, Plex, FTP, Sendmail/Postfix, CP, etc.

The nice thing is that if you ever ran into a cpu bottleneck, it would be very easy to roll the Plex stuff to another box.

 

[Dirk]

Which specific Xeon (although I doubt it matters much, you only need 2000 passmarks per 1080p transcoded stream)?



I think you would be just fine running a low utilization FTP server and mail server in jails based on what you have said. I might throw more ram at the box if you are going to run Freenas, Plex, FTP, Sendmail/Postfix, CP, etc.

The nice thing is that if you ever ran into a cpu bottleneck, it would be very easy to roll the Plex stuff to another box.

CPU is an E3 1220V3 Xeon with 8meg cache and 3.1GHZ

Ram is maxed at 16 on the particular motherboard so I can't go further.

Is there any compelling reason that I would need to reserve any array space? Or just let the install have it all?
Thanks

 

[HeloJunkie]

CPU is an E3 1220V3 Xeon with 8meg cache and 3.1GHZ

Well, you actually might run into an issue. This cpu is only 6551 Passmarks and in my experience, Plex really likes 2000 passmarks per transcoded stream. I would say try it out and see what happens. If you start to get a lot of buffering, you might need to drop to a single stream. If you are on a local network, and depending on the type of device you are streaming to, you might not need to transcode at all and that will help immensely.

Ram is maxed at 16 on the particular motherboard so I can't go further.

Plex is not too memory hungry, so 16GB might work fine for you, Freenas (or ZFS) really like memory, so depending on how much raw space you end up wanting to have, this may be a limitation. 8GB is the minimum with 1GB per 1TB as the rule of thumb. Remember this is just for ZFS, not all the jails you are running. Again if you start running into issues, start dumping the stuff in jails to another box.

Is there any compelling reason that I would need to reserve any array space? Or just let the install have it all?

Are you talking about your install media or the drive space for your pool(s)? The install is going to take whatever you give it as install media. If you are talking about your pools, you should not go above 80% utilization (50% if you are running iscsi) but that is a normal management issue, not something you need to deal with right away. Just keep an eye on your pool and when it gets close to 80% start thinking about what you want to delete or where you are going to get additional drives!

 

[Spearfoot]

Ram is already maxed. Are you saying the SSD would not be a good choice for cache drive? Cost is no longer a concern, the box is waiting for me ;-)

The problem is that an L2ARC device requires memory, and when installed in a memory-constrained system like yours, can actually end up doing more harm than good. I suggest you not install an L2ARC at all, as these are typically only appropriate in much larger, more powerful systems than yours.

Good luck!

 

[SweetAndLow]

Only use one of the networking ports. No reason to use 2, it will just make your network really complicated because you'll need multiple subnets.

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