Request for help identifying types of hardware for new home FreeNAS

[sdrose]

Hello All!
I'm very glad to have found this forum and the FreeNAS distribution. This is my first post -- in the 'Will it FreeNAS', I'm hoping this post is appropriate.

I read -- a couple times -- Ericloewe's 'Hardware Recommendations' PDF, and would like to follow-up with some specific questions for a direction of building a system. I appreciate, and encourage, constructive feedback.

Cameras and photography is important to me. I have about 70,000+ photos I've taken in the past several years with my dSLR. A large percentage are of my son from the day he was born thru now (6 years). My wife and I also use a couple Mac systems for our data from the work we do, plus I have a Windows laptop, and multiple Linux VMs.

My use-case is for a centralized FreeNAS repository for storing my photographs & other data, plus a centralized TimeMachine repository for the 2 Macs. As Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom does not allow use over a network, I expect I would rsync from the Mac's local drive to the FreeNAS box. I also want to use the FreeNAS box as a centralized (probably via RSync) data repository for the notebook computers & VMs.

I have no intention for 'Plex'-type use. I can't think of any 'transcoding' operations I would want to do. Maybe I might make light use of plugins / jails, such as maybe host an Apache server locally, so I can export photos out of Lightroom and have an internal webserver host them so my wife and friends could view them in the livingroom, maybe on the large-screen TV.

I expect I would want to have a 6-drive RaidZ2 system. Probably 3tb drives. I would want the system to be running constantly; however, I'm concerned about 'burning money in electrical costs'. I'm focused in trying to lock down the most energy-efficient system I can.

Reading, I see the Intel Atom C2570 systems use 8w Octo-core systems. I also read the 'energy-efficient' Xeon-D system has about 51w or 55w. And the Pentium G4600 systems are running about 45w.

I've also read 5400 rpm drives are also much more energy efficient than 7500rpm (or faster).

Yet, EricLoewe's Hardware 2016r1e PDF states to be weary of CPU TDP ratings, as that rating is 'peak', and systems run rather 'bursty'. While I want as small a system as possible, I'm resigned to the fact that it might be a microATX system I use.

I'm trying to avoid focusing on the 'paper ratings' which may not be accurate to real-world experiences. My hope is that if I were to give insight into what I have researched, and to express what it is I wish to accomplish, that maybe forum members with good hands-on experiences might lead me to an appropriate architecture.

So I'm asking for help to decide ... is an Atom-based system, or an x86_64-based architecture, such as Pentium, i3 (or 5,7,9), or Xeon CPU, the best way for me to begin this journey?

What wattage-rating PSU should I focus on?

I know most people want to ask about ECC Ram, motherboard and cases, to start their system configs. But I think the questions I started with are the best way to start spec'-ing a system.

I appreciate all help and direction!
-dave

 

[Chris Moore]

Just as a side note, you can do a SAMBA mount on your MAC to a share on the FreeNAS that will appear as a local directory on the MAC and I would expect Lightroom to be incapable of distinguishing the difference. I thought Lightroom was a Windowz program.

so I can export photos out of Lightroom and have an internal webserver host them so my wife and friends could view them in the livingroom, maybe on the large-screen TV.

That is something you can do with Plex and don't even need to make a website.

For sizing of your power supply, you should figure the maximum power draw of the hard drives selected (say 10 watts) times the number of drives (say 6) gives you 60 watts, plus the max power consumption of the CPU (say it is 80 watts) gives you 140 watts but you need to allow some overhead for waste and the memory and system board itself takes power. If you have a very low power system, you can probably get by with a 450 watt PSU, but I would stay with a 550 as they are usually less expensive and you will only use as much power as you need.

Don't use any CPU that doesn't support ECC which rules out all the i5, i7 and i9 CPUs. ECC is important for reliability.

 

[Pitfrr]

I am using a C2750 board and I find it to be really nice regarding all the proposed features although given the problems related to the C2x50 boards, I wouldn't recommend it.

When specifying your system, you might keep a little "extra" CPU power for unexpected uses (like for example you said you're not going to use Plex but maybe there are some usages of Plex you didn't expect like @Chris Moore said).

I find that the combination of 6 5400rpm drives in RAIDZ2 is a good starting point.

For the PSU, have you seen this thread?

Did you also consider your backup? Don't forget about that... ;-)

You could also take the path of a system with a modest CPU (like Pentium) to later move to a more powerfull one if needed?

 

[Chris Moore]

For the PSU, have you seen this thread?

Regarding the power supply, a few years ago, I built a system with a 650 watt Gold rated power supply and, under load, the draw from the wall was only 150 watts. The point being that the rating of the power supply needs to be more than the load but it isn't wasteful to have more power available than you will actually use. Also, with many modern power supplies, they will run silently with no fan use at all if they load on the power supply is under a certain threshold.

I did build a system to be low power consumption at one point using an Intel Pentium CPU G2020T @ 2.50GHz (1 package x 2 cores) and I achieved the low power result but I was unhappy with the performance of the system and ended up replacing it with a more powerful system after only a year of use. My concern about anyone that starts with the goal of low power consumption is that they will be disappointed with the performance and blame it on FreeNAS instead of realizing that it is the low power components.