Recommendations for Freenas (home use)

[JKLs]

Hello all,

I am planning to build a NAS based on Freenas. I took some hours to read about the hardware recommendations for Freenas. However, I decided to kindly ask for some specific advices here because it is hard to get a good overview of all that hardware available.

I first thought about a 4 bay NAS but because of the HDD prices I now think that a two bay with two larger HDDs will be just fine.
I don't think that I need ECC RAM. In case something goes wrong it is okay for me to restore some backups. I think I want to use at least 12 GB of RAM (since 8 GB is the absolute minimum recommendation).
Do you recommend a redundant boot disk? Or can I just do a fresh install of Freenas to a new device in case of a failure? And will I be able to access the data on the drives again with that fresh installation?
I want the NAS to have at least two NICs.

The NAS will only be used by me and at home. I plan to store about 4 TB of data on the device.

I hope you can give me some specific suggestions about mainboards, CPU etc.

 

[danb35]

Do you recommend a redundant boot disk?

It's usually a good idea, especially if you're installing on USB sticks, as they're notoriously unreliable. An SSD is much more reliable.

Or can I just do a fresh install of Freenas to a new device in case of a failure?

Yes, and once you import the config file you should have saved after you set up the system, you'll be back up and running.

I want the NAS to have at least two NICs.

Why?

For a small NAS, generally the best bet is going to be to buy a small pre-built server. The Dell T20/T30, Levovo TS140, HPE Proliant ML10, etc.

 

[garm]

Some quick thoughts

ECC RAM will ensure you don’t write garbage when you run your backup scenario. Backup is not a replacement for ECC.

A 4 bay hotswap chassi will make your life easier if you decide on only two drives. You can use the empty ones for drive replacement with no need for pulling the failing drives before replacement.

If you want only two drives and 4 TB net storage you need atleast 6 TB drives as you should not fill a pool above 80%.

With only two drives you need to set them up as mirrors.

Redundant boot drive is only useful for avoiding downtime in case of failure. In a home use case this isn’t so critical. Get a 100 ish GB SSD and run of that. Just make sure you have spare parts within reach (short delivery time or on a shelf) and maintain a config copy somewhere you will be able to reach that. Your data is separate from the OS and a OS failure will be very unlikely to cause data loss, but backup is a must. Follow the 1-2-3 rule for the data you cannot lose.

It’s basically impossible to recommend specific hardware (and a great personal risk) without knowing what you intend to do with it. Supermicro has mITX boards with soldered Atom chips that are more then able to run a NAS, but if you intend to host more services they might fall short. Chassi is a big challenge to me as I try to limit the dead volume inside. Again Supermicro has a descent 4 bay chassi for mITX board, the one used by iX for FreeNAS Mini https://www.supermicro.nl/products/chassis/tower/?chs=721
Most systems on this forum tends to be way over powered on CPUs (which is not a bad thing in it self), but it’s hard to optimize. It’s easier to get them with room to grow. I had a P4 run for just shy of 100k hours, it was great when I got it, but barely hanging in there at the end.

And as a final note, plan for your next system. This is something that’s always forgotten. Plan for he life of this system and your exit strategy. ZFS makes it easy to just grab your drives and plop them in a new one, but your drives will be old too.

 

[JKLs]

Thanks for your answers.
I know the backgrounds of ECC RAM but for me it is to unlikely that "garbage" will be created to invest the money for it. I will have an eye on my backups and that has to be enough.

As downtime is not an issue for home use I will also go with just one boot disk.

Why?

It is just to have some load balancing in the case that I access the NAS from two clients. And a second NIC shouldn't be expensive at all.

I'm really struggeling when it comes to the hardware decisions. Thats hard for me

 

[danb35]

And a second NIC shouldn't be expensive at all.

A second NIC isn't expensive at all, but it's highly unlikely it will do you any good either. Edit: see https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/lacp-friend-or-foe.30541/

 

[jro]

I don't think that I need ECC RAM. In case something goes wrong it is okay for me to restore some backups. I think I want to use at least 12 GB of RAM (since 8 GB is the absolute minimum recommendation).

Not using ECC memory is fine for your purposes, but I would recommend 16GB if you can find room in your budget for it.

Do you recommend a redundant boot disk? Or can I just do a fresh install of Freenas to a new device in case of a failure? And will I be able to access the data on the drives again with that fresh installation?

You don't need redundant boot disks, the FreeNAS config is trivial to backup and restore. I have a script here that can perform this backup automatically: https://github.com/edgarsuit/FreeNAS-Report

A single USB drive from a reputable manufacturer is fine-- just don't use one of those trade show freebie ones. A boot drive failure will not corrupt your data storage in any way; it will either be automatically mounted for you when you restore the config, or you can import the volume manually.

I want the NAS to have at least two NICs.

Depending on the protocol you want to use, this may or may not be worth it. iSCSI with MPIO will allow you to enjoy higher data rates to a single client, but SMB, AFP, and NFS will not. These protocols will leverage the LACP link to either give you failover or increased total bandwidth, but you won't see higher data rates to a single client. Then again, if a PCIe card with two NICs is $10 more than a single NIC card, go for it.

I hope you can give me some specific suggestions about mainboards, CPU etc.

Looking for a motherboard from a reputable manufacturer is the most important thing for your use case. You won't need a ton of PCIe lanes or other bells and whistles so just find one with good reviews and enough SATA ports for your needs. As for a CPU, prioritize single thread speed over core count. Most of the operations that run on FreeNAS are not heavily threaded (and many of them are only single threaded), so high core count CPUs are usually not worthwhile.

edit: forgot to mention, you'll want to get a CPU with an integrated GPU for all the initial install stuff. Make sure the motherboard supports this, too.

 

[JKLs]

Looking for a motherboard from a reputable manufacturer is the most important thing for your use case. You won't need a ton of PCIe lanes or other bells and whistles so just find one with good reviews and enough SATA ports for your needs. As for a CPU, prioritize single thread speed over core count. Most of the operations that run on FreeNAS are not heavily threaded (and many of them are only single threaded), so high core count CPUs are usually not worthwhile.

Do you maybe know a good source for hardware reviews?

 

[Jailer]

Have you considered a FreeNAS Mini?

https://www.ixsystems.com/freenas-mini/

 

[jro]

FreeNAS Mini would also be a good option, but if you want to roll your own system, read component reviews on PCPartPicker, Newegg, and Amazon (or whatever online retailer you use in Germany).

 

[JKLs]

Have you considered a FreeNAS Mini?

https://www.ixsystems.com/freenas-mini/

Yes, I read about them, but for my taste they are way too expensive.

 

[JKLs]

I finally looked for some specific hardware and I kindly ask to verifiy my configuration (also for compatibility).

You can view it on PCPartPicker or Geizhals (a german website for comparing prices):
https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/7r4wD2

2 Western Digital WD Red 6TB, 3.5", SATA 6Gb/s (WD60EFRX)
1 Intel Pentium Gold G4560, 2x 3.50GHz, boxed (BX80677G4560)
1 Kingston ValueRAM DIMM 16GB, DDR4-2400, CL17-17-17-32, ECC (KVR24E17D8/16)
1 Supermicro X11SSL-F retail (MBD-X11SSL-F-O)
1 Nanoxia Deep Silence 4 schwarz, schallgedämmt (NXDS4B)
1 Seasonic G-Series G-360 360W ATX 2.3 (SSR-360GP)

I know that a boot device is still missing. I will probably go for some proper USB Stick like SanDisk.
And yes... I decided to pick ECC RAM.

So what I mainly want to know is if everything is compatible. I am espescially unsure about the RAM (Supermicros test list is very short).
However, I am open to any kind of opinions, alternatives etc.

 

[joeschmuck]

I'm going to interject here and ask you a very pointed question before you purchase any hardware and make a costly mistake...

List exactly what you expect to do with this NAS and how much storage you expect to need for the next 5 years. Do you plan to leave this operational 24/7?

Why do I ask how much storage you will need for 5 years? Becasue hard drives typically are lasting that long if you keep them cool and running 24/7.

Some comments about your hardware selection:
1) The case is of nice size however I can't tell if there are cooling fans in the front of the case to flow air across the hard drives. This is important to me. If it does not come with fans, can they be mounted?

2) The storage capacity you will have for Mirrored drives is ~5.5TB minus 20% (1.1tb) equals ~4.4TB of actual storage. If you are using this for iSCSI then you only get 50% of 5.5TB equals ~2.75TB of storage. I try to advise people to double thier current storage needs as most people will use up the storage fast over the next several years.

3) The motherboard is solid, good choice but will need BIOS version 2 to work with your CPU selection, otherwise it will not bootstrap.

4) The Seasonic Power Supply is also rock solid, another good choice.

5) The CPU may not work with your motherboard. Read the link below:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/x11ssl-cf-boot-time-bios-and-kaby-lake-g4560.55475/

6) I don't know if the RAM you selected is compatable, it probably is but until you plug it in and run MemTest86+ on it, you won't really know.

 

[JKLs]

I'm going to interject here and ask you a very pointed question before you purchase any hardware and make a costly mistake...

List exactly what you expect to do with this NAS and how much storage you expect to need for the next 5 years. Do you plan to leave this operational 24/7?

Why do I ask how much storage you will need for 5 years? Becasue hard drives typically are lasting that long if you keep them cool and running 24/7.

Some comments about your hardware selection:
1) The case is of nice size however I can't tell if there are cooling fans in the front of the case to flow air across the hard drives. This is important to me. If it does not come with fans, can they be mounted?

2) The storage capacity you will have for Mirrored drives is ~5.5TB minus 20% (1.1tb) equals ~4.4TB of actual storage. If you are using this for iSCSI then you only get 50% of 5.5TB equals ~2.75TB of storage. I try to advise people to double thier current storage needs as most people will use up the storage fast over the next several years.

3) The motherboard is solid, good choice but will need BIOS version 2 to work with your CPU selection, otherwise it will not bootstrap.

4) The Seasonic Power Supply is also rock solid, another good choice.

5) The CPU may not work with your motherboard. Read the link below:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/x11ssl-cf-boot-time-bios-and-kaby-lake-g4560.55475/

6) I don't know if the RAM you selected is compatable, it probably is but until you plug it in and run MemTest86+ on it, you won't really know.

Yes, I plan to run the system 24/7.
I will mainly store documents, music etc. and backups on the NAS.

1) Yes, there is a fan in the front.

2) I currently have a 3TB HDD where all my data is stored right now. So I thought 6TB should be enough for the future (I don't expect it to increase much).
I don't plan to use iSCSI but why half of the storage is lost then?

3/5) Hmm, the question is: Is worth to take the risk or should I go with a G4400?

 

[joeschmuck]

I don't plan to use iSCSI but why half of the storage is lost then?

For iSCSI to be efficient the rule of thumb is to maintain 50% free space. I don't know how accurate that is but that seems to be what I've seen promoted.

I currently have a 3TB HDD where all my data is stored right now. So I thought 6TB should be enough for the future (I don't expect it to increase much).

So you would have ~4.4TB of usable storage with two 6TB drives in a Mirror configuration. If that is acceptable then you are set however I'm willing to bet that you expected closer to 6TB of usable storage. Here is the deal, a fast pool needs 20% or more fre space, when you drop below 10% free space your pool will drop into a write optimization mode and writes will be very slow. If you want more storage then I'd recommend ading one more 6TB hard drive and creating a RAIDZ1 pool. You will still have a fault tolerance of any single drive failure but you will also increase your pool size to 10.9TB minus 20% (2.18TB) equals ~8.72TB of usable storage. I have a similar setup but I use four hard drives in a RAIDZ2 configuration so I can have up to two drive failures and still be fine. Sounds like a lot of money wasted only getting less than half the capacity I purchased however data redundancy is what you get when configured like this.

3/5) Hmm, the question is: Is worth to take the risk or should I go with a G4400?

Good question. If you know who you are buying from maybe you can contact them and ensure the motherboard comes with the correct BIOS version.

I will mainly store documents, music etc. and backups on the NAS.

So you just need a bare bones setup. So 8GB RAM will be fine however I would recommend you stick with 16GB RAM as software as it is enhanced just never has a reduction of requirements and in a few years the 8GB RAM minimum limit could be an issue. I would highly recommend a SSD as a boot device, just one is fine. You can use a USB flash drive for now and upgrade at a later date. I do not recommend using dual boot devices, they rarely work as people expect them to. It's best to keep your system dataset on your pool (set by default) and it will maintain a copy of your configuration data. Also I recommend your manually backup your configuration file after you have your system configured and working, this will make restoring your system very quick and virtually painless.

You never mentioned an UPS. We all here highly recommend everyone using a good UPS that can connect up to your system to notify it of a power failure and to commence an automatic shutdown to keep your data safe.

 

[pschatz100]

I would agree with @joeschmuck :

+ Use a small SSD for the boot drive. They are inexpensive and will be much more reliable
+ Add a UPS to your configuration. Reliable power will help keep your system stable.

 

[JKLs]

So you would have ~4.4TB of usable storage with two 6TB drives in a Mirror configuration. If that is acceptable then you are set however I'm willing to bet that you expected closer to 6TB of usable storage. Here is the deal, a fast pool needs 20% or more fre space, when you drop below 10% free space your pool will drop into a write optimization mode and writes will be very slow. If you want more storage then I'd recommend ading one more 6TB hard drive and creating a RAIDZ1 pool. You will still have a fault tolerance of any single drive failure but you will also increase your pool size to 10.9TB minus 20% (2.18TB) equals ~8.72TB of usable storage.

I think 2x 6 TB should be enough. Of course I know that there is a difference between TB and TiB.
However... Is it possible to add a third HDD later and change the RAID level of the system? Or do I need to format the drives then?

If you know who you are buying from maybe you can contact them and ensure the motherboard comes with the correct BIOS version.

That's probably the best because the other CPU is older, more expensive and probably worse.

Any other worries about my setup?

 

[danb35]

Is it possible to add a third HDD later and change the RAID level of the system?

No, you'd need to recreate the pool then.

 

[joeschmuck]

I think 2x 6 TB should be enough. Of course I know that there is a difference between TB and TiB.
However... Is it possible to add a third HDD later and change the RAID level of the system? Or do I need to format the drives then?

Have you read this? Before you start spending your money you would be best to do some reading and do not assume FreeNAS is a simple windows like and super forgivable system, it by far is not.
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

Also read the User Guide (link at top of page) from cover to cover, twice.

My last recommendation is to create a virtual FreeNAS on your computer and play with it. You will be able to create virtual hard drives and then pools/vdevs and see how things work. You may find out that you don't like the limitation that you can't add one hard drive to expand your storage capacity to your RAIDZ2 vdev, not without putting it all at high risk.

I hope that once you are done reading up on FreeNAS that you find it is what you really want. I really like FreeNAS and have been with it for quite some time now. It does much more than what I need it to do and it does it reliably for me. You need to buy good hardware and have good discipline for a system like this.

Enjoy the reading assignment :)