Plex Media Server and Own Cloud FreeNas

[jgreco]

260GB TimeMachine
1Tb Owncloud
1.5TB PMS
740GB for personal storage
(this won't go over 80%)

Does anyone see any potential problems I could run into?

Maybe I'm just stupid but I add this up as around 3.5TB of stuff, and three 2TB drives will only give you around 3.6TB of space, of which you should only use around 2.8TB.

So are you really going to fill your NAS and then never ever ever add any files to it ever again? Or would it maybe not be smarter to buy, oh, maybe four 4TB drives in RAIDZ2 so that you have some free space to work with? I like to look at a NAS as at least a five year investment. Buying just-barely-enough-disk-space-for-today seems kinda shortsighted.

 

[MontyD]

RAIDZ1 is generally discouraged on large drives, as the time to rebuild the pool is very long after you replace a failed drive, and the process of rebuilding the pool works the drives very hard. If you have a second drive failure while the pool is being rebuilt you will lose all your data.

Im going to have a secondary back up of all my important files on a external hdd, just incase of failure. What is considered a large drive 3tb and up?

 

[MontyD]

Maybe I'm just stupid but I add this up as around 3.5TB of stuff, and three 2TB drives will only give you around 3.6TB of space, of which you should only use around 2.8TB.

So are you really going to fill your NAS and then never ever ever add any files to it ever again? Or would it maybe not be smarter to buy, oh, maybe four 4TB drives in RAIDZ2 so that you have some free space to work with? I like to look at a NAS as at least a five year investment. Buying just-barely-enough-disk-space-for-today seems kinda shortsighted.

No, I plan on upgrading storage as i go, so lets say i hit that 80% or come close to it, I plan on adding more drives most likely bigger ones.

 

[Kevin Horton]

Im going to have a secondary back up of all my important files on a external hdd, just incase of failure. What is considered a large drive 3tb and up?

That depends on who you talk to, how many backups of their data they have, and whether they are willing to trade off time and effort to restore from backups vs spend $$ to buy extra disks to avoid the problem in the first place. I've got more money than I do time, so I went with RAIDZ2.

One viewpoint is that RAID5 should not be used for drives larger than 1TB, due to the risk of another read error during rebuilding a RAID5 array. Note that the article discusses RAID5, which is not quite the same thing as RAIDZ1. As I understand it, if you have a disk read failure during a rebuild of a RAID5 array, you lose all your data.

ZSH is somewhat more tolerant,if I understand it correctly, in that you would only lose the files associated with the block that had the read error (assuming you had disks with TLER, that would skip over the error - if you've got cheaper disks without TLER the SATA controller may give up waiting for the disk to skip over the bad block and you'll lose all your data). WD Red disks have TLER. WD Green do not. Is that difference important with the SATA controller on your motherboard? No idea.

Also note that the risk goes up as the number of disks in your vdev increases. You're planning for only three disks, so that is a point in your favour. Once you are no longer a poor student, and are a rich working guy, you could add redo your arrangement to have more disks in RAIDZ2. But, make sure you have good backups of important files, no matter what you do.

 

[MontyD]

That depends on who you talk to, how many backups of their data they have, and whether they are willing to trade off time and effort to restore from backups vs spend $$ to buy extra disks to avoid the problem in the first place. I've got more money than I do time, so I went with RAIDZ2.

One viewpoint is that RAID5 should not be used for drives larger than 1TB, due to the risk of another read error during rebuilding a RAID5 array. Note that the article discusses RAID5, which is not quite the same thing as RAIDZ1. As I understand it, if you have a disk read failure during a rebuild of a RAID5 array, you lose all your data.

ZSH is somewhat more tolerant,if I understand it correctly, in that you would only lose the files associated with the block that had the read error (assuming you had disks with TLER, that would skip over the error - if you've got cheaper disks without TLER the SATA controller may give up waiting for the disk to skip over the bad block and you'll lose all your data). WD Red disks have TLER. WD Green do not. Is that difference important with the SATA controller on your motherboard? No idea.

Also note that the risk goes up as the number of disks in your vdev increases. You're planning for only three disks, so that is a point in your favour. Once you are no longer a poor student, and are a rich working guy, you could add redo your arrangement to have more disks in RAIDZ2. But, make sure you have good backups of important files, no matter what you do.

Im able to trade off more time as a student then $ so I'm willing to take the risk and I do plan to backup all my important files anyways on my external drive.

 

[MontyD]

Lets go into some back story on how this whole thing started:

I decided I wanted to build a NAS due to the low memory on my macbook pro. I know i could of saved all my stuff on amy external, but i want to be able to watch movies, store, and access files when i need them. You see my macbook has a 250gb ssd (i purchased a retina display) and already i have about 100gb of movies on it which i need to get off and stored somewhere. But I dont want to go through the hassle of plugging in my external each time i want to watch a movie (this is why i plan on using pms) and my dropbox promotions (from a htc and a samsung phone) ran out so as of right now I'm using more storage then I'm supposed to me on there and cant upload anything else. So i decided i dont want to deal with these kind of issues anymore for w.e service i use (google, dropbox, iCloud,etc.) therefore I decided it is better that i make my own cloud and after some research i learnt about Owncloud (the name is ironic isn't it xD). That pretty much sums it up i believe.

 

[russnas]

i have a similar situation, retina and freenas to dump everything onto it. and manage it on the server.
i preferred not to use synology or similar servers due to the price and i wanted control.

the power supply is very large, the efficiency wont be so great as its best at 50%, also the fan does not kick in till 40% load so you would want the PSU facing upwards so it wont trap heat, you wont reach 400watts with your server let alone 120watts.

http://www.corsair.com/en/rm-series-rm850-80-plus-gold-certified-power-supply

 

[jgreco]

i have a similar situation, retina and freenas to dump everything onto it. and manage it on the server.
i preferred not to use synology or similar servers due to the price and i wanted control.

the power supply is very large, the efficiency wont be so great as its best at 50%, also the fan does not kick in till 40% load so you would want the PSU facing upwards so it wont trap heat, you wont reach 400watts with your server let alone 120watts.

http://www.corsair.com/en/rm-series-rm850-80-plus-gold-certified-power-supply

PSU efficiency is typically fairly flat over most of the range a PSU is likely to be providing, especially for an 80Plus certified CPU, and there's a lot of bad associated with undersizing a PSU. The loss of some efficiency at the low end isn't a big deal.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/proper-power-supply-sizing-guidance.38811/

 

[russnas]

yea i just noticed that its like 3 or so % since many graphs display at 20% use, i got a 550watt since manufacturers have no point making efficient PSU at lower wattage.

the higher watts psu are made with better capacitors as well.

 

[jgreco]

i got a 550watt since manufacturers have no point making efficient PSU at lower wattage.

the higher watts psu are made with better capacitors as well.

What makes you think any of that is true?

 

[russnas]

most of that is an assumption but with this model of psu seems to be true, i was reading a review from johnny guru, my 550rm is made by CWT while the 850 is Chicony Power Technology,
you'd expect it be of higher quality since the fan doesnt kick in till 40% power draw.

http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page447.htm
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=369

 

[jgreco]

most of that is an assumption but with this model of psu seems to be true, i was reading a review from johnny guru, my 550rm is made by CWT while the 850 is Chicony Power Technology,
you'd expect it be of higher quality since the fan doesnt kick in till 40% power draw.

http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page447.htm
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=369

About 3/4ths of the things on enthusiast web sites are at best somewhere between 0 and 50% true. The most entertaining ones are the ones that are built on poor underlying assumptions.

The reason a fan doesn't kick in till 40% power draw is to make a PC quieter. It has very little to do with quality, except insofar as both quality and quieter both start with "q" and have seven letters.

Not to be too rough, but the things you'd expect/assume are probably overly optimistic, while the things I'd expect/assume are cynical extrapolations of decades of real world experiences in this business.

 

[danb35]

you'd expect it be of higher quality since the fan doesnt kick in till 40% power draw.

Why does the point where the fan kicks in have anything to do with your assessment or expectation of quality?

 

[danb35]

About 3/4ths of the things on enthusiast web sites are at best somewhere between 0 and 50% true.

Except LinusTechTips--that's rock solid.

 

[russnas]

Well many review sites just review one unit for a short period of time and possibly the unit given is by the manufacturers,

The reason i discussed about the psu fan, since heat rises you want adequate airflow and have 105c high temp capacitors inside since heat stress is the number one issue,

 

[MontyD]

Ok so 3x 2tb hdd will give me 2.8tb of space correct?

 

[jgreco]

Except LinusTechTips--that's rock solid.

Do everything LinusTechTips tells you. Especially if it involves SSD's, RAID controllers, and a fileserver.

 

[MontyD]

Linus is the best been watching him for years too bad he hasnt gone in debth of freenas


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[MontyD]

Also finnaly done my exams and packing to move out of residence lool much more free time to research freenas stuff


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[INCSlayer]

Linus is the best been watching him for years too bad he hasnt gone in debth of freenas


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your new around here i can tell :p

if Linus is someone your actually listening too then you should rethink this endevour.
if you look around the forums somewhat regarding the feelings on Linus you would find that they are cold at best.