MalVeauX
Contributor
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2020
- Messages
- 110
Hello all,
Forgive yet another thread of this nature, we all start some where...
Anyhow, I would like to build a home server and after reviewing options I think I've settled on FreeNAS overall as I would like a GUI and console without getting into anything super complex as I'm a novice to this and the last thing I want to do is have no clue on how to use the software when a fault happens. That's what I'm trying to avoid. I have used Linux & Windows mostly and have had basic file servers over the years, but they were just to move data around, nothing important so I wasn't too concerned with data integrity and redundancy. Now, I'm a lot more interested in integrity and redundancy so instead of buying a NAS I think it's time to simply build one with more control over selection of equipment.
Electrical Consumption:
I'm trying to weigh the options between building a modern low power PC basically or going with fairly old and used server equipment. I do care about the electrical foot print of consumption and heat as I don't want a monster electric bill generator along with a heat box here in Florida; it's hot enough. While I do not have a number in my mind, I do at least think less than 100 watts is appropriate and of course would love to target something in the 20's and 30's. That said, after reviewing things, I may end up in the 50's. I'm mostly interested in idle consumption compared to load consumption as it will spend more time idling or under minimal load.
Budget:
Currently I am not setting a budget, but I'm trying to keep the budget foot print on the lower end. This is a home server and not part of a business or anything. Simply to handle redundancy with my photos, videos and my imaging data that we don't want to lose to a single fault. I would rather put money into the hard drives than into a monster system as I'm not going to be running VM's or anything and it's not going to do anything with the internet. Just local home network file sharing basically with integrity checking and redundancy. If you need a number, I'd like to keep the PC around $250 or less and that does not include the data hard drives. That's just the base machine. I will likely be using WD Data Center HDD's (I already use these), and so that will be a separate thing and no budget for HDD's as I want redundancy in that more than anything so good drives are a must and several of them.
Purpose:
I generate a fair amount of data that I would prefer to not lose. While I realize this is not a bullet proof backup system, I just want to get a better redundancy. In the past, I've simply just kept two physical copies of anything important, separate and unplugged. But that is tedious. I also add data regularly so maybe it's time to do an always available option, like a file server over my network. I generally want to explore both integrity of data (to avoid errors corrupting data) and the redundancy of the data to avoid simple loss from a single fault or hardware failure. This data is in the forum of a fairly large library of media content (thousands of AVI's and thousands of FLAC/MP3's) along with our yearly pictures (family and the kids). That's the data that will be accessed by everyone in the house daily. The other data is my photography data that I generate when I'm doing astrophotography (I do ultranarrowband solar photography) which generates about 100Gb of data each session. I later cull the data to keep only the good data I want to process, so the foot print goes down every few weeks when I cull it. But, I'd like to keep the data as I review it sometimes later and it's often used for confirmation purposes of events (I share information and submit with SpaceWeather and other enthusiasts). After managing the data to be culled, ultimately I can fit everything after the past few years comfortably onto an 8TB capacity system. So it's not a tremendous amount of data. But it's still a bit more than a few cheap externals can manage without integrity and redundancy checks. So this file server needs to host data that will stream over my 5G wifi network to other systems in the house and it will store pictures, video and my imaging data that will be less frequently accessed and act as an archive for those with redundancy.
I'm thinking I will start with 8TB with redundancy with the ability to expand, but I don't need major expansion, more like the ability to expand to a 2nd pool and transfer the data there and logically upgrade to larger capacities as I approach the need and as the larger capacities become available and affordable.
Hardware Options:
I have reviewed the links for the minimum/recommended hardware for FreeNAS. I don't know all of it and I have questions. I also have questions about which direction to take with respect to hardware given the purpose above (integrity & redundancy).
So before reviewing some hardware choices, here's some questions that I've seen posed in other ways and answered in other ways, but I think its fair to clear this first:
Would it be fine to use basic low power PC gear, such as a modern AM4 motherboard and modern low power APU (Athlon 3000G) with some non-ECC RAM to generate the bones of the system and focus on having more hard drives with a higher level of redundancy? And if so, what level in ZFS (mirror versus something with even more redundancy than mirror?). Or, would it be better to get older server hardware (Intel XEON platform) with ECC registered memory and be ok with less hard drives with redundancy (the idea being adding integrity to redundancy). My only reason that I'm aware of to go this route would be to get access to an affordable platform with ECC memory, versus new modern ECC capable equipment that is very, very expensive. While I do not have a set budget for this, I would rather most of the budget go into the hard drives themselves (I will not be using cheap drives, I will use Data Center class drives).
Hardware I'm looking at based on the above questions:
AMD modern platform, low power, but non-ECC, no integrity checks, just build more redundancy maybe:
ASUS Prime B450M-A/CSM Motherboard (6x SATA, 4x RAM slots)
AMD Athlon 3000G (APU) AM4
Silicon Power 16GB (8x2) DDR4 PC4 25600) RAM
I think I would need to add an Intel NIC to this still. But ultimately I think that's all is needed beyond the hard drives and power supply. The guts anyways would be something like the above. I've read about higher end series of AMD CPU's with ECC but it doesn't seem to be confirmed working and simply is there. I realize no ECC with these low end APU options and the above system has no integrity handling at all so the focus would be redundancy only and has plenty of SATA ports to get going. I was looking at the above simply because it's low power (35 watt CPU) that has everything needed and it's lower priced for modern stuff.
Alternatively, I'm also looking at old Intel XEON platforms, old servers. The goal would be to get integrity into the system in the form of ECC affordably.
Intel XEON platform, higher power, adds registered ECC:
Supermicro X8SIL-F Motherboard (6x SATA, 4x RAM slots, Dual Lan NIC)
XEON X3440 CPU
16GB DDR EEC Registered RAM (unknown make on this link)
This above hardware is a single package. My main concerns are whether the RAM is any good and if the ECC is truly real and registered ECC and appropriate. I'm also concerned with the dual LAN and whether I need to upgrade to an Intel NIC or if this board's onboard LAN is appropriate. And of course, overall, I'm just concerned with some really old hardware that has been used heavily and whether it will be a good idea to build a redundancy based system around old used hardware like this. I realize this is often done. But I've not done it so naturally there's some concern there.
Network:
My current network a wireless 5G network between my machines. I'm thinking I will let this particular machine be plugged in via LAN to my router and served out wireless for most of its job to my local machines. For my data that I generate lots of, I will likely look to find a wired way to transfer the data to the NAS, so I may change my current workstation to wired LAN to be able to do that rather than try to move 100Gb at a time over 5G wireless (that sounds like a bad idea and slow). Any suggestions here are appreciated. I would love a 10Gb network, but I'm not there yet. So I need to maximize the 1Gb network.
Thanks for reading so far!
I look forward to any criticism, input and suggestions or direction on this!
Very best,
Marty
Forgive yet another thread of this nature, we all start some where...
Anyhow, I would like to build a home server and after reviewing options I think I've settled on FreeNAS overall as I would like a GUI and console without getting into anything super complex as I'm a novice to this and the last thing I want to do is have no clue on how to use the software when a fault happens. That's what I'm trying to avoid. I have used Linux & Windows mostly and have had basic file servers over the years, but they were just to move data around, nothing important so I wasn't too concerned with data integrity and redundancy. Now, I'm a lot more interested in integrity and redundancy so instead of buying a NAS I think it's time to simply build one with more control over selection of equipment.
Electrical Consumption:
I'm trying to weigh the options between building a modern low power PC basically or going with fairly old and used server equipment. I do care about the electrical foot print of consumption and heat as I don't want a monster electric bill generator along with a heat box here in Florida; it's hot enough. While I do not have a number in my mind, I do at least think less than 100 watts is appropriate and of course would love to target something in the 20's and 30's. That said, after reviewing things, I may end up in the 50's. I'm mostly interested in idle consumption compared to load consumption as it will spend more time idling or under minimal load.
Budget:
Currently I am not setting a budget, but I'm trying to keep the budget foot print on the lower end. This is a home server and not part of a business or anything. Simply to handle redundancy with my photos, videos and my imaging data that we don't want to lose to a single fault. I would rather put money into the hard drives than into a monster system as I'm not going to be running VM's or anything and it's not going to do anything with the internet. Just local home network file sharing basically with integrity checking and redundancy. If you need a number, I'd like to keep the PC around $250 or less and that does not include the data hard drives. That's just the base machine. I will likely be using WD Data Center HDD's (I already use these), and so that will be a separate thing and no budget for HDD's as I want redundancy in that more than anything so good drives are a must and several of them.
Purpose:
I generate a fair amount of data that I would prefer to not lose. While I realize this is not a bullet proof backup system, I just want to get a better redundancy. In the past, I've simply just kept two physical copies of anything important, separate and unplugged. But that is tedious. I also add data regularly so maybe it's time to do an always available option, like a file server over my network. I generally want to explore both integrity of data (to avoid errors corrupting data) and the redundancy of the data to avoid simple loss from a single fault or hardware failure. This data is in the forum of a fairly large library of media content (thousands of AVI's and thousands of FLAC/MP3's) along with our yearly pictures (family and the kids). That's the data that will be accessed by everyone in the house daily. The other data is my photography data that I generate when I'm doing astrophotography (I do ultranarrowband solar photography) which generates about 100Gb of data each session. I later cull the data to keep only the good data I want to process, so the foot print goes down every few weeks when I cull it. But, I'd like to keep the data as I review it sometimes later and it's often used for confirmation purposes of events (I share information and submit with SpaceWeather and other enthusiasts). After managing the data to be culled, ultimately I can fit everything after the past few years comfortably onto an 8TB capacity system. So it's not a tremendous amount of data. But it's still a bit more than a few cheap externals can manage without integrity and redundancy checks. So this file server needs to host data that will stream over my 5G wifi network to other systems in the house and it will store pictures, video and my imaging data that will be less frequently accessed and act as an archive for those with redundancy.
I'm thinking I will start with 8TB with redundancy with the ability to expand, but I don't need major expansion, more like the ability to expand to a 2nd pool and transfer the data there and logically upgrade to larger capacities as I approach the need and as the larger capacities become available and affordable.
Hardware Options:
I have reviewed the links for the minimum/recommended hardware for FreeNAS. I don't know all of it and I have questions. I also have questions about which direction to take with respect to hardware given the purpose above (integrity & redundancy).
So before reviewing some hardware choices, here's some questions that I've seen posed in other ways and answered in other ways, but I think its fair to clear this first:
Would it be fine to use basic low power PC gear, such as a modern AM4 motherboard and modern low power APU (Athlon 3000G) with some non-ECC RAM to generate the bones of the system and focus on having more hard drives with a higher level of redundancy? And if so, what level in ZFS (mirror versus something with even more redundancy than mirror?). Or, would it be better to get older server hardware (Intel XEON platform) with ECC registered memory and be ok with less hard drives with redundancy (the idea being adding integrity to redundancy). My only reason that I'm aware of to go this route would be to get access to an affordable platform with ECC memory, versus new modern ECC capable equipment that is very, very expensive. While I do not have a set budget for this, I would rather most of the budget go into the hard drives themselves (I will not be using cheap drives, I will use Data Center class drives).
Hardware I'm looking at based on the above questions:
AMD modern platform, low power, but non-ECC, no integrity checks, just build more redundancy maybe:
ASUS Prime B450M-A/CSM Motherboard (6x SATA, 4x RAM slots)
AMD Athlon 3000G (APU) AM4
Silicon Power 16GB (8x2) DDR4 PC4 25600) RAM
I think I would need to add an Intel NIC to this still. But ultimately I think that's all is needed beyond the hard drives and power supply. The guts anyways would be something like the above. I've read about higher end series of AMD CPU's with ECC but it doesn't seem to be confirmed working and simply is there. I realize no ECC with these low end APU options and the above system has no integrity handling at all so the focus would be redundancy only and has plenty of SATA ports to get going. I was looking at the above simply because it's low power (35 watt CPU) that has everything needed and it's lower priced for modern stuff.
Alternatively, I'm also looking at old Intel XEON platforms, old servers. The goal would be to get integrity into the system in the form of ECC affordably.
Intel XEON platform, higher power, adds registered ECC:
Supermicro X8SIL-F Motherboard (6x SATA, 4x RAM slots, Dual Lan NIC)
XEON X3440 CPU
16GB DDR EEC Registered RAM (unknown make on this link)
This above hardware is a single package. My main concerns are whether the RAM is any good and if the ECC is truly real and registered ECC and appropriate. I'm also concerned with the dual LAN and whether I need to upgrade to an Intel NIC or if this board's onboard LAN is appropriate. And of course, overall, I'm just concerned with some really old hardware that has been used heavily and whether it will be a good idea to build a redundancy based system around old used hardware like this. I realize this is often done. But I've not done it so naturally there's some concern there.
Network:
My current network a wireless 5G network between my machines. I'm thinking I will let this particular machine be plugged in via LAN to my router and served out wireless for most of its job to my local machines. For my data that I generate lots of, I will likely look to find a wired way to transfer the data to the NAS, so I may change my current workstation to wired LAN to be able to do that rather than try to move 100Gb at a time over 5G wireless (that sounds like a bad idea and slow). Any suggestions here are appreciated. I would love a 10Gb network, but I'm not there yet. So I need to maximize the 1Gb network.
Thanks for reading so far!
I look forward to any criticism, input and suggestions or direction on this!
Very best,
Marty
. But I think that you have some wants and needs that are not fully in line with each other. I leave it to others to go into the technical aspects of your plans. I want to tel you why I started with FreeNAS some 6 years ago.
