Small Home FreeNAS System

[danb35]

The pre-built systems some of you mean are the FreeNAS Mini & Mini XL?

No, we're talking about (indeed, have specifically named) servers sold by Dell, HPE, Lenovo, etc. From time to time, you can find some very good prices on decent hardware that way.

 

[Holt Andrei Tiberiu]

joeschmuck referred to Pre-Build systems not necessary to MINI and XL, rather to pre-build systems that were suggested:
HP ML10
HP ML30
Dell T20

Branded pre-build systems.
For example a HPE ProLiant ML30 Gen9 E3-1220v6 8GB B140i 4LFF Non Hot Plug SATA No HDD 2x 1Gb NIC 1x 350W PSU, in Europe is around 900 USD new, on used market you find G8 series, and Dell 12'th generation for around 350 usd, and these are stable systems, they do work 24/7.
On Supermicro, which is realy good, i cannot give examples, in Europe they are not familiar, HP & Dell are market leaders.
Entry level servers with 1 cpu soket and 4-6 bay's usually use up to 70-80 w of power, so they are energy "efficient" also.

 

[Antioch18]

FWIW, some of the Synology lineup offer BTRFS capability which also has bitrot protection. ZFS is a more mature filesystem, but if you wanted the BTRFS Synology route is a possibility.

 

[Chris Moore]

a 2 x mirror is much faster than in a z2 setup. ( no parity has to be calculated

This would only be true in a CPU constrained situation. Normal resilver is constrained by drive access speed, not calculation capacity.

Performance from my point of view in this setup will be better than z2, because o parity not being calculated.

Again, unless the system is under powered with regard to the CPU, this is a non issue. The CPU can make those calculations faster that the disks can read or write data.

In a stripped mirror you get always the best iops performance,

performance is based on vdev count. With two mirrored pairs, you have two vdevs. It is the increased number of vdevs that improves performance, not the kind of vdev.

in a raid z setup, you get the iops of a single drive, always the slowest drive.

A vdev is approximately limited to the IOPS of a single drive, yes, the slowest one, but not the pool, unless you are talking about a small pool with only one vdev. I have a system at work that has a pool made up of ten RAIDz2 vdevs and the performance is very good because of the vdev count, but not everyone is going to have a system with sixty hard drives.

ZFS did not re-invent raid levels. The math behind iops is the same, be it freenas or a hardware raid card.

ZFS works completely different from any hardware RAID and the math is not the same. I think your intentions are good, but you have some incorrect information that you are going on. Please do more reading about the specific properties of ZFS.

 

[spotcatbug]

The Node 304 is the case I use (except mine's black, not white.) 6 internal bays. It's nice. I would recommend, if you need to worry about space, particularly height (which was the issue for me.)

I also use the ASRock Rack C236 WSI. This one I can't recommend. I mean it's working great and all, but there are better choices. Particularly, there's another, very similar ASRock board that has IPMI - wish I had that one instead.

 

[Chris Moore]

The Node 304 is the case I use (except mine's black, not white.) 6 internal bays. It's nice. I would recommend, if you need to worry about space, particularly height (which was the issue for me.)

I also use the ASRock Rack C236 WSI. This one I can't recommend. I mean it's working great and all, but there are better choices. Particularly, there's another, very similar ASRock board that has IPMI - wish I had that one instead.

Would you share the model number of the board you wish you had?

 

[Constantin]

The pre-built systems some of you mean are the FreeNAS Mini & Mini XL? Because the as far as I read bitrot can become a problem with Synology, QNAP, … that’s why I would rely on FreeNAS.

FWIW, the Mini and Mini XL used the C2750D4I board from ASRock when I bought mine two years ago. The somewhat slower version of this board (based on the C2550) can be had for about $250 and likely works just fine within a SoHo context. Just get one made after Feb 2017 to avoid the notorious AVR54 bug that Intel included in the C2xxx series manufactured before then.

I wouldn't go with the AsRock C2750D4I based on the prices I see out there (~$500) as there are potentially better-performing options at similar prices (see boards from ASrock, Gigabyte, or Supermicro based on the more recent C3xxx series or even the D-15xx series).

Another reason to go with a C3xxx or D-15xx series CPU is that getting to 64GB of server RAM (if that ever is a consideration) is difficult with the C2xxx series as they need very specific DDR3 (ideally ECC) UDIMMs. However, the MiniXL ships with 32GB of ECC RAM and that's usually plenty. 8GB ECC DDR3 UDIMM RAM sticks are much easier and less expensive to obtain also.

 

[Holt Andrei Tiberiu]

And these:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Micro-S...h=item3b25fe7a62:g:lC8AAOSw~B9bgYC6:rk:9:pf:0

https://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-T20-1...h=item520da2db4b:g:MPkAAOSwtuVa7ckb:rk:1:pf:0

 

[Constantin]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Micro-S...h=item3b25fe7a62:g:lC8AAOSw~B9bgYC6:rk:9:pf:0

LOL re: description. Rarely used and with original packaging. Wow. How many of us still have the original packaging of a NAS' they've bought?

I'd lean towards a 6-drive enclosure and neither of these seems to fit that bill. The T20 can be made to hold more disks but some assembly / modification seems to be required.

EDIT: Here is one example: A 8-drive unit similar to a diskless Mini XL currently for $430 used. That's 66% off what you'd pay for a new Mini XL at retail and the cooling inside is likely better than that of the Mini XL. The only issue is the motherboard, which likely is susceptible to the AVR54 bug. How well ASRock has treated people re: replacements under the extended warranty appears quite variable. iXsystems was super professional to me.

 

[spotcatbug]

Would you share the model number of the board you wish you had?

Well, I just now Googled “asrock mini-itx ipmi”

I’m pretty sure this is the one: https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=E3C236D2I#Specifications

I can’t say for sure that’s the one I saw before (I don’t follow this stuff super-close.) I didn’t write down the model or anything. I was just like “Oh man. There’s a mini-itx with ipmi. Oh well,” and moved on. I’m not even sure where it came to my attention - possibly on this forum. It’s been a while. I do know it was ASRock, for sure, because I remember thinking how similar it was to my MB.

 

[Constantin]

ASROCK also makes the C2750D4i board used in the Mini and Mini XL. It offers low power consumption and IPMI on board.