BUILD Suggestions

[Nick Howard]

Hi Everone, my first post so hello to all.

Firstly let me say a little bit about where I'm coming from, I've currently got an old 4 bay Synology NAS that is in need of an upgrade. I had played with the idea of getting the 1513+ as the Synology has served me well. However, I seriously wanted a little more cpu power than the Synology offers and hence I started to look at my options. I'm also looking at building a ESXI server in the coming months and had originally hoped to kill two birds with one stone. From reading this forum I've gathered although it is possible to run the Freenas O/S as a VM it isn't really ideal and therefore will be building two separate systems. The Freenas box will act as a fileshare for 5 other pc's and will also act as a media server running plex. I've also got 5tb of flac music files to go onto it.

So, the Freenas build and what I already have:

Picked 14 of these drives up at a car boot sale for £120! all in perfect working order and have had very little run time http://www.softmart.com/products/de...=6675010&from=ezsearch&backVal=4&expand=Specs

I've also got an I5-4670k cpu that I can use. (I could trade this if needed for a better alternative)

I'm also thinking about this case as it would hold 8 of the drives (all i need for now) but I'm wondering if I should getting a larger rack mounted case and have one eye on the future. (The Synology would let me grow with the expansion boxes): http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=452

So any thoughts on what I could add to make this the perfect Freenas setup? I don't have a budget really and haven't yet investigated a system board and memory combo that will also work with the I5, although I gather ECC memory is a must. Also what PSU is recommended and which raid card for connecting the drives.


Thanks in advance.

 

[Yatti420]

I though the i5s didn't support ECC ram.. You might want to look into rack mounted gear for that many drives.. You will want to look at the hardware stickies..

 

[cyberjock]

i5 won't do ECC RAM.. so either ECC is out of the question or you find a new CPU.

 

[Nick Howard]

New CPU it is then. Are the recommendations in jgreco's thread still the best choices? I only ask as the post date was 12 months ago. I've also looked at a few threads here and have seen the debate between rack mounted cases (fan sizes). I'm guessing the 80mm fans would be too noisy for me also as this is going to be in my spare room come office. I'm I also correct is saying that 16gb of ram would be fine for 14 x 2tb drives or is 32gb more suitable?

 

[cyberjock]

Yep. Still the best recommendations.

If this is for home use and not much more than media streaming and some document/picture sharing 16GB should be fine. But definitely go with 8GB sticks just in case you need to add more later. ;)

 

[Nick Howard]

Great thank you :)

 

[Nick Howard]

I'm hoping that you fine gentlemen would cast an eye over this proposed build. Most of the supermicro kit as recommended is really hard to find here in the UK. I've read a few threads on this board and see the general opinion is to still pick up a Xeon based system, however this all just seems to fit in nicely for what I'm looking to do. The fact I can house 8 hot swap drives in such a small tower and also have the 12 sata ports on board are a big draw. I've not splashed any cash yet, so it's not 100% I could still probably be talked out of it!! if there was by far a better option for the money. This will be my first Freenas build so I want to make sure I don't make any mistakes. I have everything I need here right? I've not missed anything off the shopping list?

Case: Silverstone DS380 http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=452 £107

System Board/CPU: ASRock C2750D4I http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=C2750D4I £346

PSU: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/450w-silverstone-sst-st45sf-g-strider-sfx-modular-80plus-gold-psu £76

Memory: Crucial 2x 8gb ddr3 pc3-12800 Unbufferred ECC. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/8gb-...0)-240-pins-ecc-unbuffered-cas-11-low-voltage £126

Already have 8x 2tb sata Hitachi enterprise class drives.

Total cost = £655 or $1106

Considering I was looking at the Synology DS1513+ that comes in at only just cheaper than my proposed build, the performance gains and extra drive space it seems a much better option.


Thanks again : )

 

[wags]

This is the exact setup I want to purchase. If you purchase it, are you able to post your network thoughput, stability etc

 

[Nick Howard]

This is the exact setup I want to purchase. If you purchase it, are you able to post your network thoughput, stability etc

I've actually rebuilt it three times now, not that anything was wrong I just wanted to play around. I did a factory restore yesterday so I could see what happens when you import a volume. Because of all this tinkering I haven't really run many performance tests as yet, I did play around with iperf for a while and that reported an average of 90mb/s. I'm running a 10 disk raidz2 and I'm more than happy with that. No problems at all with the Kingston memory either, so that was a relief. The only thing of concern is the temps my hdd's are reaching. The cooling in this case with 10 disks installed isn't ideal. I've added an additional fan to the front and to the bottom of the case. The main problem seems to be the disks block the air flow from the front. I've taken the 5.25 blanking plates from the front and always leave the front panel door open too which does help. Before that the drives were hitting 50c under heavy load but I've got that down to 43c with the front door open. I'm probably going to take some of the sound proofing foam out from the top and maybe even add another fan... or two!