SUPERMICRO CSE-721TQ-250B Mini ITX 40TB home file server first build

[naspcboss]

Hi everyone. My first post here and first NAS build. I've read the forum guidelines and the hardware recommendation pdf and came up with a parts list that caters to my needs below. (I wont be exposing any ports on the NAS to the Internet, fileserver side will be LAN only, could backups etc. over internet)

Needs:

1. As a LAN file server connecting via ethernet to,
   1. A PC for photo & video editing
   2. Nvidia shield + KODI for playback w/o transcofing via gigabit ethernet via Samba (No Plex)
   3. Multiple Wireless clients for backups via Samba (Time machine etc.)
2. In a Linux VM run Spideroak could backup
3. In a Linux VM run a Torrent client
4. Run Syncthing plugin
5. RAIDz2
6. Small footprint (hence mini-ITX)

Parts list:

1. CPU: Intel - Pentium Gold G5600 3.9 GHz Dual-Core Processor
2. Cooler: Noctua - NH-L12S 55.44 CFM CPU Cooler
3. MB: ASUS P11C-I LGA1151 DDR4 EEC/non-ECC UDIMM Mini-SAS HD M.2 C242 Server Workstation Mini ITX
4. SAS to SATA: Internal HD Mini SAS Cable, (SFF-8643 Host) - 4X SATA (Target) Cable
5. RAM: 2x Kingston ECC Unbufferred - ValueRAM 16 GB (1 x 16 GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (32GB Total)
6. OS drive: Transcend - MTS400 128 GB M.2-2242 Solid State Drive
7. Storage: 4x WD 10TB White (Shucked from Bestbuy version)
8. Case: Fractal Design - Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case
9. PSU: SeaSonic - FOCUS SGX 450 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply

Questions:

1. Will it FreeNAS?
2. Anything I missed and/or recommendations for improvement?
3. Can FreeNAS give throughput more than the speed of a single drive (around 100MB/s) when in z2? Is gigabit ethernet a bottleneck?
4. It seems like the IPMI on the Asus motherboard (ASUS Control Center) can boot, shutdown and monitor status over LAN out of the box, is it correct?
5. Is the best way to run Spideroak client through a VM? (since it will update with package manager instead of manually compiling every update)
6. In light of recent Intel vulnerabilities, should anyone worry about getting Intel CPUs?
7. Thoughts on the 2 VMs for Spideroak and Torrent client? Separate or single?

Thank you so much for reading my post and any comments in advance. Thanks ixsystems for the awesome FreeNAS!

 

[KrisBee]

4. P11C-I features an optional embedded iKVM module ... i.e you have to pay extra for this add-on module, unlike say a Supermicro or Asrock m/board. Judging by various hardware forum posts, Asus' track record of keeping their java based IPMI implementation has not been good in the past, is this version html5 based?

You could consider one of Supermicro latest mITX boards, e.g: https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/X11/X11SCL-IF.cfm Only 4 SATA ports plus internal USB header, but has a better M.2 2280 form factor. Small print of ASUS m/board website shows you loose one SATA port if you use an M.2 drive, so is still one SATA port ahead.

 

[artlessknave]

Q&As:
1. overall should work fine. Supermicro is generally recommended by the freenas community, but you do at least have ECC.
2. 450W seems low. not sure it would have enough for the current hardware much less any expansion later. you generally want 50-75% load, as PSU's provide less power as the components age, and most PSU's have the best efficiency around that point as well. there are PSU calculators that can give you an idea what wattage should be best. I would recommend the 650W at only 30$ more.
3. sometimes. freenas uses your RAM for primary read/write cache, so anything that can fit into RAM will go at full speed.
4. yes. IPMI can be somewhat insecure but if you keep it internal should be fine
5. I'm not familiar with spideroak, but if there is a freebsd package for it or a plugin, you will most likely see way less overhead than with a VM
6. no?
7. why a linux VM at all? you can run qbittorrent, transmission, or deluge right from plugins. a VM will add a ton of overhead for limited or no benefit.

 

[naspcboss]

Thanks KrisBee and artlessknave for the replies :)

KrisBee:

1. The Supermicro X11SCL-IF motherboard page says IPMI2.0, KVM with dedicated LAN. Googling around shows HTML5 web Console Redirection. So I assume their IPMI implementation is using HTML5?
2. If I need to add more drives I can use the PCI expansion right?

artlessknave:

Thanks a lot for the answers. I changed the MB to X11SCL-IF and PSU to 650W.

As for the reason to use VMs there is a port of Spideroak but it doesnt look active. So I was thinking: since freeNAS supports bhyve I can run a minimal Ubuntu VM and run Spideroak. Additional benefits maybe some setup like automated Sonarr setup in it for automatic downloads which maybe easier to setup on its own environment. And if I screw it up I can just delete the VM. What do you think?

 

[artlessknave]

supermicro ipmi uses both java and html5. the java is required for remote image functions (ISO mount) currently iirc. there is also IPMIview which manages servers, with prepackaged java version - works pretty well, a bit smoother than the web interface, which has a java error every time you do literally anything.
PCI-E expansion. PCI (& PCI-X) is an older tech superseded by PCI-E. but yes, you can add more drives with a SAS or SATA HBA controller (*NOT* RAID). the SAS ones are usually superior.
plugins or jails can just be deleted too, their main advantage is that they aren't full blown virtualization. naturally, if your app isnt available in either plugin or pkg/ports, VM might be the only option. there is a sonarr plugin though.
you might be cutting it a little close with "only" 32 GB of RAM when also virtualizing.
try and double check the RAM and CPU compatibity. SM usually have tested lists.

 

[KrisBee]

@naspcboss Your original PSU choice seems fine to me. To put this into perspective, Supermicro sells a case/server that marries this m/board with a 250W supply, see: https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/midtower/5029/SYS-5029C-T.cfm

I personally have a asrock e3c226D2I + xeon e3-1220v3 + 4HDDs and one SSD running in a SC721TQ-250B case with a 250W supply.

 

[naspcboss]

@artlessknave Thanks for the info. I checked on the SM page and googling but could not find anything related to CPU compatibility lists. They did have for memory and storage but those were pretty paltry. Here is hoping that the choices will work out.

@KrisBee Yeah pcpartpicker did show the power consumption to be 186W too. That case by SM would make it a super tight build. I know you didn't recommend it personally but would you? I would like the make the as small as possible but it looks like that case will have horrible cooling and I will need to get a better PSU than the included 80+ Bronze .

 

[artlessknave]

I have one of the SM 5029C-T cases. it's solid, and not bad to work in, but it is limited to 4 drives, forever. I had to remove the backplane entirely to get a PCIe card in. also, if you want 2.5" drives in it you have to by 30$ drive trays extra, as the supplied trays are ONLY 3.5"

I forgot that SM tends to list the RAM chip, unfortunately, not the manufacturers RAM DIMM, so it can be nearly impossible to check it.

 

[JohnnyGrey]

@naspcboss Your original PSU choice seems fine to me...

I agree. While my knowledge of FreeNAS and NAS's in general is pretty much "beginner," I do know a lot of people tend to overshoot PSU requirements, even for gaming rigs.

To add my perspective, I have an X11SSH-F-0 motherboard, i3 6100T (35w), 8x2tb Ironwolf drives, and 6x Corsair ML120 fans all powered by an Antec Earthwatts 380w PSU, and I doubt I've ever come close to hitting that kind of wattage.

If we are more concerned with sipping power from the wall, there's the whole efficiency curve thing, plus the whole 80+ rating. It's not like these rigs power SLI'd graphics cards or overclocked CPUs. I think the biggest power draw comes from spinning up the drives.

 

[KrisBee]

@artlessknave Thanks for the info. I checked on the SM page and googling but could not find anything related to CPU compatibility lists. They did have for memory and storage but those were pretty paltry. Here is hoping that the choices will work out.

@KrisBee Yeah pcpartpicker did show the power consumption to be 186W too. That case by SM would make it a super tight build. I know you didn't recommend it personally but would you? I would like the make the as small as possible but it looks like that case will have horrible cooling and I will need to get a better PSU than the included 80+ Bronze .

If you want a compact 4 drive NAS case, then yes I'd recommend that supermicro case. I think of it as best in class, compare it to the inferior IWIn IW-MSO4 for example. It's solidly built and has available spares. The removable m/board tray makes it easy to work with ( don't know why @artlessknave had a problem with fitting a pci-e card). Cable management can be fiddly, the X11SCL-IF layout is not quite ideal as the SATA ports would be better placed for cabling if they were near the pci-e slot. The power connections make fitting the RAM a tight squeeze, but are well placed wrt the PSU. Personally, I don't see a need to swap out the 250W psu, but there are Seasonic alternatives, just take care with dimensions/fittings - is it 1U or Flex?

Ideally you need to run this in a a well ventilated and dust free area. Cooling relies on front to back air flow forced by the single rear 120mm exhaust fan. The front door is metal mesh, each hd caddy is ventilated and the body of the case has a discreet front vent towards the bottom. With a standard intel CPU cooler I have found no problems with overheating. YMMV, as I'm not running this 24/7 and it's only lightly loaded and ambient temps might only reach 30C for limited periods in the UK. But from your intended use, I don't think you'd be stressing either the CPU or thrashing the hard drives.

One thing I didn't pick up on before is RAM. SM boards can be finicky with RAM, the brands you see most often on thier QVLs are: hynix, samsung and micron (crucial in retail). For the SM broad I would go for Crucial rather than Kingston RAM. The Crucial website will show compatible RAM.

The case in action:

https://imgur.com/gallery/HOhmk
https://b3n.org/supermicro-x10sdv-f-build-datacenter-in-a-box/

 

[artlessknave]

The removable m/board tray makes it easy to work with ( don't know why @artlessknave had a problem with fitting a pci-e card).

wait, what? removable tray? apparently I totally missed, or forgot, that that was even possible...wow. that might have made the card installation loads easier...although I would have had to unplug everything from the board so unsure if that would have been easier than what I did.
also, the chassis is actually CSE-721TQ-250B2, as the 5029C-T is a superserver
on the topic of power supplies, I do tend to just be lazy and overshoot, especially when the price difference is negligible. I also change my mind a ton and swap parts around, so having a psu that can only do one thing is less appealing to me. 1U and flex are the same iirc. the power supply speced out is sfx, so it wouldn't fit in the SM chassis anyway.

 

[artlessknave]

alternatively to the SM case, Unas produces a chassis with 8 hotswap bays in a form factor similar to the Node 304
http://www.u-nas.com/xcart/product.php?productid=17639&cat=249&page=1
http://www.u-nas.com/xcart/product.php?productid=17640&cat=249&page=1
I built a freenas box in the Matx one (x11ssm+g4620), it's pretty nice, well built and laid out, and no space wasted for video card space - just a motherboard, psu, and 8 drive bays. adding PCIe cards does require pcie rizer/cables, but can handle up to 3.

 

[naspcboss]

Thank you all for the super helpful comments, @artlessknave @KrisBee @JohnnyGrey

From what I gather

• I can go either with
  • The SM SuperServer 5029C-T case and it will come with chassis, mobo, PSU, shrouds, cables etc.. I wasn't able to find prices just for this though. Googling yielded vendors who want to sell this with drives, cpu, ram which I want to get separately. Where do you usually buy it from?
  • OR the UNAS case (However I don't need the hotswap bays and also it seems a bit expensive. But it seems to have better airflow than the SM case)
• And the PSU that comes with the SM chassis seem good quality. Bronze might be enough since I'm only running the system when I am backing up or until data is being backed up to the cloud.
• I can dump the CPU cooler since I'm not stressing the CPU and the G5600 is sufficiently clocked out of the box.
• Also could you please give me a RAM recommendation for the SM mobo?

All your replies were extremely useful and I'm glad to be part of a great community like this. Thank you all! <3

 

[KrisBee]

Can't help with US sellers, but make sure it's the CSE-721TQ-250B2 if buying separately from the SM m/board, etc. For RAM search here: https://www.crucial.com/

 

[naspcboss]

One last question:

• What are good UPS recommendations that support FreeNAS the best?

Finally I went with the following shopping list. Thank you all!

NewEgg
RAM 2x CT16G4WFD8266
MB SUPERMICRO MBD-X11SCL-IF-O
Chassis Superchassis CSE-721TQ-250B 250W
CPU G5600

Amazon
OS CORSAIR FORCE Series MP300 120GB

EDIT: Also thought of just doing Z1 since I have everything cloud backed up, so in the extremely rare chance of getting 2 drive failures I can restore from cloud. That'll leave me effective 30TB space.

EDIT2: Decided to do RAIDz2 because I dont want to be another statistic for data loss.

 

[artlessknave]

I have used both cyberpower and apc. both worked fine with the NUC drivers as is.

 

[JohnnyGrey]

• What are good UPS recommendations that support FreeNAS the best?

I have used both cyberpower and apc. both worked fine with the NUC drivers as is.

I got a CyberPower CST1300ALU for my birthday from my dad a couple years ago. It works great. It's nothing special, though. It's not listed in the drivers pull-down, so I just selected something similar, "Cyber Power Systems ups 2 CP1350AVRLCD USB (usbhid-ups)" and it works fine. Once in a blue moon I'll get an error that says something like "USB data stale," but it quickly gets up-to-date data again.

Show : upsc ups

Code:

battery.charge: 100
battery.charge.low: 10
battery.charge.warning: 20
battery.mfr.date: CPS
battery.runtime: 4350
battery.runtime.low: 300
battery.type: PbAcid
battery.voltage: 24.0
battery.voltage.nominal: 24
device.mfr: CPS
device.model: CST1300ALU
device.serial: CRVDT2002667
device.type: ups
driver.name: usbhid-ups
driver.parameter.pollfreq: 30
driver.parameter.pollinterval: 2
driver.parameter.port: auto
driver.parameter.synchronous: no
driver.version: 2.7.4
driver.version.data: CyberPower HID 0.4
driver.version.internal: 0.41
input.voltage: 119.0
input.voltage.nominal: 120
output.voltage: 136.0
ups.beeper.status: disabled
ups.delay.shutdown: 20
ups.delay.start: 30
ups.load: 7
ups.mfr: CPS
ups.model: CST1300ALU
ups.productid: 0501
ups.realpower.nominal: 810
ups.serial: CRVDT2002667
ups.status: OL
ups.test.result: No test initiated
ups.timer.shutdown: -60
ups.timer.start: -60
ups.vendorid: 0764

Show : upscmd -l ups

Code:

Instant commands supported on UPS [ups]:

beeper.disable - Description unavailable
beeper.enable - Description unavailable
beeper.mute - Description unavailable
beeper.off - Description unavailable
beeper.on - Description unavailable
load.off - Description unavailable
load.off.delay - Description unavailable
load.on - Description unavailable
load.on.delay - Description unavailable
shutdown.return - Description unavailable
shutdown.stayoff - Description unavailable
shutdown.stop - Description unavailable
test.battery.start.deep - Description unavailable
test.battery.start.quick - Description unavailable
test.battery.stop - Description unavailable

 

[vladak]

I wonder if you completed the build with said parts since I am trying to complete very similar build (also have the Node 304 case). I bought the Asus P11C-I motherboard and struggling to find a ECC RAM that would work. I tried various Kingston chips (first registered, than unbuffered). After a chat with Asus support, returned the Kingston chips and ordered Samsung UDIMMs that are qualified with the motherboard. Still no luck with these. My current hypothesis is that this is due to using unqalified CPU - Intel Core-i3 7100T which is 7th generation, not 8th/9th required by the motherboard. The symptoms are that the system goes through POST and ends up with code 55 which means memory is not installed.

The HTML5 based interface of the KVM add-on (ASMB9-iKVM) is rather nice I must say.

Bottom line is that one has to thorougly check the specs and qualified parts list for the motherboard.

Parts list:

1. CPU: Intel - Pentium Gold G5600 3.9 GHz Dual-Core Processor
2. Cooler: Noctua - NH-L12S 55.44 CFM CPU Cooler
3. MB: ASUS P11C-I LGA1151 DDR4 EEC/non-ECC UDIMM Mini-SAS HD M.2 C242 Server Workstation Mini ITX
4. SAS to SATA: Internal HD Mini SAS Cable, (SFF-8643 Host) - 4X SATA (Target) Cable
5. RAM: 2x Kingston ECC Unbufferred - ValueRAM 16 GB (1 x 16 GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (32GB Total)
6. OS drive: Transcend - MTS400 128 GB M.2-2242 Solid State Drive
7. Storage: 4x WD 10TB White (Shucked from Bestbuy version)
8. Case: Fractal Design - Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case
9. PSU: SeaSonic - FOCUS SGX 450 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply

 

[artlessknave]

why are you trying to use a CPU of the 7th gen when the mobo specs specifically say 8/9th gen?

 

[vladak]

why are you trying to use a CPU of the 7th gen when the mobo specs specifically say 8/9th gen?

Well, I have not built a PC in a long time so was quite oblivious to the fact that single socket variant can take multiple CPU generations and ignorant that generations could be so different.