BUILD Please critique my build

[adamjs83]

I have read through the forums and interwebs extensively so please be kind as I am still a total freenas noob. I am intending to use freenas to replace two Synology Diskstations using drives I already own along with some new drives. The current workload is as follows:

DS1: 4 250gb Crucial MX100 SSD's in raid5 serving a single ESXI host with roughly 15 very low workload VM's over block level NFS. The VM's are all single purpose windows or debian servers and I am the only user. The only higher workload VM my PLEX server and I am also thinking of adding Blueiris however that would record to a different storage array.
DS2: 3 4tb reds in raid5 divided between 2 volumes,

V1: file level nfs storing a single 2tb HD for a file server
V2: Plex video repository available made available to my plex vm over file level nfs and my desktop pc and windows VMs using CIFS. I also have 2 macs performing time machine backups to this volume.​

New Freenas Build:

1 x SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SL7
1 x [URL='http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117316']Intel Xeon E3-1231V3[/URL]
[URL='http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117316']1 x [URL='http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148770']Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1600[/URL][/URL]
[URL='http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117316'][URL='http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148770']1 x [URL='http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146083']NZXT Source 220 CA-SO220-01 Black Steel / Aluminum-like finish ATX Mid Tower Computer Case[/URL][/URL][/URL]
4 x Crucial MX100 SSD in Raidz1
6 x White Label WD Red 6TB in Raidz2
1 x SanDisk Cruzer Fit 8GB USB 2.0 Low-Profile Flash Drive- SDCZ33-008G-B35

I plan to use the MX100 Raidz1 pool as my ESXI SAN for VM boot drives only. I know this has been discussed a lot on the forums and elsewhere but I can't find a definitive answer, iscsi or nfs? Also know raidz1 is a no no but there is no critical data on this pool as there will be regular veaam backups to other partitions and at this point I don't want to invest in additional drives.

The WD Red pool will be in raidz2 and will store movies for streaming with plex, my music collection, personal and family photos and videos and personal records. Everything except for the Plex collection will be backed up to the other DS2 and Azure. I will not be backing up the movie collection at this time because it is all replaceable and I don't want to invest in that much additional storage infrastructure. Additionally everything except for the plex movie collections will live in a virtual hard disk connected to my windows file server vm in ESXI although I could be convinced to change that strategy.

I appreciate any thoughts as I dive in to this.

​

 

[DifferentStrokes]

Two things:
1 - Consider getting one more USB drive so that you can mirror the boot device. You will thank yourself for it when one of them craps out.

2 - FreeNAS, at a minimum, needs 8 GB of RAM. So, if you have 15 VMs needing some RAM you may what to think hard about jumping up to 32 GB.

 

[DifferentStrokes]

.....and welcome to the forum! :)

 

[Darren Myers]

I had plex in a VM for a while and the latency between plex getting the data from FreeNAS, transcoding it, then resending it was terrible when 2+ people were connected....i ended up installing the plex plugin and all my issues were resolved

 

[joeschmuck]

If I understand this correctly you will have one pool made of SSDs to serve as a location for many VMs to boot from, not run on the Supermicro MB that FreeNAS is being built on. I'd upgrade your RAM and as previously suggested, just buy the two 8GB modules now and if you think you hit a RAM bottleneck, purchase another pair and pop it in. Why we are saying this is because the RAM will act as a ultra fast cache and once it's in the RAM, it doesn't have a delay grabbing data from the hard drives, at least what is already in the RAM. So if you have enough to cache the majority or all of the VM boot code, it will load very quickly and your limitation will be the Ethernet connection.

As for the boot device, looks like you have a few SATA ports left over, I'd grab the cheapest SSD or a used drive laying around the house and use it as a boot device, just need the one item. This is much more reliable than a pair of USB flash drives. And just backup your config file so if you have to rebuild the boot device, it's an easy fast process.

 

[adamjs83]

2 - FreeNAS, at a minimum, needs 8 GB of RAM. So, if you have 15 VMs needing some RAM you may what to think hard about jumping up to 32 GB.

There will be no VMs hosted on the NAS. They will all be on my esxi host. The SSD array will be the esxi datastore for vm data.

 

[DifferentStrokes]

I see. I misunderstood. Disregard #2. :D

 

[adamjs83]

If I understand this correctly you will have one pool made of SSDs to serve as a location for many VMs to boot from, not run on the Supermicro MB that FreeNAS is being built on.

Exactly right. I will definitely look in to options for a boot device and additional ram.

Do you have any thoughts as to NFS or ISCSI for esxi to acces the array?

 

[Darren Myers]

If you use iSCSI with FreeNAS be aware you should only use a maximum of 50% of the iscsi pool FreeNAS is serving. This is due to fragmentation and is well documented around the forums and manual


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[black_pacer_56]

You should look into the Fractal Design 804 Node Case for your NAS build!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ..._re=Fractal_Design_804-_-11-352-047-_-Product

 

[joeschmuck]

Do you have any thoughts as to NFS or ISCSI for esxi to acces the array?

Sorry, I do not. I do not have personal experience using either.

 

[adamjs83]

You should look into the Fractal Design 804 Node Case for your NAS build!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ..._re=Fractal_Design_804-_-11-352-047-_-Product

Thanks, that case is perfect for this build, and I'm really disappointed with build quality of the Source 220 and it actually has 1 fewer hard drive bay. RMA initiated on the 220 and 804 ordered.