Wanting to start my first FreeNAS build but have some hardware questions about it.

[DmcDenissen]

Hi FreeNAS guru's,

My name is Dave, I live in the Netherlands and work as a webdeveloper. Recently I've had some problems with vacation photo's that I put on a brand new SSD disk. After 2 second boot the drive seemed to be corrupt (luckely I had the source files).
Otherwise I was scr****. That was the reason I was looking to get a NAS. I looked for a ready to use solutions, but I like to tinker and the less money I could spend the better. I found FreeNAS, the more I was reading about it, the more
I was getting in "love" with it. But ofcourse I have some questions I hope you can answer and I'm hoping I'm putting them in the right forum...

Hardware ?
What Hardware should I buy, I currently have created to sets.

My Scenario: the basic usage will be filestorage and backup, a local plex server for in house (FullHD TV's no smartphones) and maybe some solutions like couchpatato and so ;)
Power Usage I don't mind, that much of a yearly difference would never be $100 or so (And I find that exceptable)

- AMD based (I saw some guys in forum that use systems like this)
CPU: AMD FX FX-4300 Boxed
MB: Asus M5A78L-M/USB3
Memory: Kingston ValueRAM DDR3 16GB ECC
PSU: Corsair 430Watt PSU I have laying around.
HD: 4x WD Red 2TB / 4x WD Red 3TB = RaidZ2 (Have a additional question down below)

- Intel Based
CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 Boxed
MB: Gigabyte GA-X150M-PRO ECC
Memory: Kingston ValueRAM DDR4 16GB ECC
PSU: Corsair 430Watt PSU I have laying around.
HD: 4x WD Red 2TB / 4x WD Red 3TB = RaidZ2 (Have a additional question down below)

Which one do you guru's recommend for the scenario I've given ? The difference is about 100$ between the sets (AMD = cheaper).

HDD's ?
Other question, On the forums some ppl use WB Green without any problems with tweaks like WDIDLE. Is the difference of tweaked GREEN that much of a difference
with the RED ? (for the same amount of TB's it saves about 20$ a drive, this could mean I could go from 2TB to 3 TB)

Webdav from FreeNAS to External ?
I also have a question related to software. I'm a bit paranoid and would like to use an offsite backup of a selection of data (like photo's), In the netherlands there is a company who offers cloudstorage for free. (TransIP stack it is called)
And I could transfer / Sync Data through webdav because they mainly use this. But I can't seem to find anything like this within FreeNAS.
Does anyone know if there is support or something and how it can be done within FreeNAS ?


I know alot of questions but I hope you could answer one or all of them ? I would be forever grateful
(Sorry If I posted it in a wrong forum please forgive me )

 

[ttabbal]

A couple of thoughts... 430W is on the low end for 4x HDDs and the system gear. It might work, but I would definitely double check the power draw.

For the Intel, check and verify that the CPU can use ECC. Intel ARC is a good place to look. Last I heard, i3/i5/i7 was iffy. The CPU, MB, and RAM all must support ECC properly, or it's useless. Which is why AMD systems are frowned on for it. I guess many have had issues with BIOS support etc.. I will say it seemed to work for me, but I did pick hardware specifically for it. If you don't need a powerful CPU for transcoding or similar, there are some Pentium chips that properly support ECC.

For Green drives, I avoid them due to the issues reported that you have read about. Not worth the bother when good consumer drives are available for similar pricing that don't have those issues.

With 4 drives, consider mirrors over raidz2. The same space efficiency, higher performance, easier to upgrade later. And take the time to burn them in. It takes days, just do it. I've found drives with issues that didn't show up until the last badblocks pass.

You also might look into used server gear. There are some good deals for older gear that is known good for freenas and other similar platforms. And it's designed to be hammered 24/7. I've done it both ways, and I'm convinced server class gear is worth it.

 

[Dice]

I'll offer some comments, partly reinforcing what's being said.
- Your use case fits well with an i3-6100, and probably about 16GB of RAM to start, or better - get 2x16GB sticks for 32GB if you can squeeze it within budget.
- Having a complete failure of a FreeNAS box with unexpectedly corrupt drives is a real threat. Beyond what is repairable by ZFS. By burning in your drives according to the sticky threads procedures and analyzing the results, problematic drives can be RMA'd.
- 430W quality PSU is a lot for an i3 and 4 drives. I wouldn't say it is 'overkill' but definitely a certain death ;)
- Go with intel. Extremely few are using AMD on the forums.
- The tried and true motherboard brand is SuperMicro. Try sourcing an X11 board. The X11-SSM or X11-SSL are common picks. Check the sticky thread on 'so you wanted to get an X11 board' (-F = IPMI get it. Even if you never used it before, you'll never be getting another board without it after your first)
-Green vs Red. I've both. I've wdidle3.exe'd my greens. It is no big deal. Typically REDs are recommended.
-Consider using a small SSD for boot device.

 

[DmcDenissen]

Thanks for the replies.
- The PSU should be fine. I ran it through some psu generators and I should be around 250 - 300watts max.
- The Intel i3 6100 and Gigabyte GA-X150M-PRO ECC have ecc enabled (I even contacted Gigabyte for confirming that the i3 would work on the mobo) They told me if the cpu had ecc capabilities it should work.
- Basicly your saying best way to go is Intel because of know to have less problems and better support, Think I'm going for that then but In terms of needed performance would both be enough ?
- The SM motherboards look nice but are way more expensive, and If I look at the difference to my mobo there is not much difference in features.
- Hmz About the HD's one says pick reds, other one says I've greens (WDIDLED). Still not the answer I was looking for :S

 

[gpsguy]

You won't find much love for AMD and/or desktop motherboards on the forums. The Gigabyte motherboard is a desktop board and the purists will tell you that you need a server board that doesn't include sound, etc.

Will that AMD mobo and CPU work with ECC RAM. Yes. Will you be able to see RAM errors in the BIOS, no. Neither mobos include IPMI. Is it absolutely necessary for a home user, no. Is it convenient, yes.

One of our moderators, @joeschmuck used to use that AMD motherboard for FreeNAS, before he upgraded to a Supermicro/Intel server. I also one on my Windows 7 desktop.

 

[ttabbal]

Either setup will likely be fine. I know people around here are down on AMD, but my old server ran an AMD gaming board for about 7 years with no issues. Like everything else, it's about picking the trade-offs you are comfortable with. Support on the forums is far better for Intel setups, just more people with Intel based setups here.

For example, I have almost as little trust for power supplies as I do for hard drives. That said, you do have a decent brand, so it's probably alright. You don't have a lot of room for expansion, but you might not need it.

The reason people recommend supermicro isn't features. It's that they are rock solid dependable boards that are designed for 100% duty cycle. Most consumer boards are not, they cut corners on things like power supply capacitors to push the cost down and add features. They also include quality Intel LAN chips. Most consumer boards use Realtek. If these things are important enough to you to spend the extra money on them is up to you.

It's kind of the same thing with green vs red HDDs. The greens can be made to work, and probably work well. The reds are designed for NAS applications. It may well be that the mechanical parts are the same and you get most of the changes by using something like WDIDLE. I'm somewhat paranoid about HDDs, so I prefer to spend a little more when I get more quality and/or warranty. That said, I did recently buy a bunch of 2TB used enterprise drives on eBay. It's all about cost/reward trade-offs.

I looked up the i3 on Intel's site. They say ECC support is there. You should be fine. Freenas doesn't need a lot of CPU. Some things that you might install in jails might. You mentioned Plex, but it sounds like you don't need transcoding, and that's the CPU heavy part.

 

[joeschmuck]

One of our moderators, @joeschmuck used to use that AMD motherboard for FreeNAS, before he upgraded to a Supermicro/Intel server.

Ding Ding Ding, someone said my name....

For a simple home server the AMD setup is fine in my opinion and it's sitting right here in front of me. Wish you lived in the USA, I'd sell it to you all preconfigured and ready to add hard drives. It's a great machine. I did upgrade to a Supermicro system for two reasons: 1) I wanted IPMI, 2) I was building an ESXi Server and the AMD system was maxed out in RAM capacity so an upgrade was required (and I like to tinker as well).

And it is true, there isn't a lot of love here for an AMD cpu but I can live with it. With that said, an Intel system is fine too and generally cost just a little bit more money.

You said you were looking into NAS units and dollar for dollar a FreeNAS system will seriously out perform than a cookie cutter NAS of the same price.

The selection of a hard drive should be done this way in my mind, you purchase strictly based off the warranty period. If you buy a 2 year drive, expect to replace the drives in 2 years. That doesn't mean they will fail and you have to replace them in 2 years but it's a reasonable place to start because if they do fail, well you will be spending your money to purchase new ones. So I purchase the WD Red line which has a 3 year warranty for only a few more bucks. Now all my drives are beyond warranty and all are doing fine. I expect them to last another year or longer but I am prepared to pay for more drives if they start failing.

Additionally when selecting hard drives and redundancy (you know we all promote RAIDZ2) is you need to know what your usages capacity should be for the next 3 years (just based on my warranty period). If you plan to store 2TB of data right now, then I'd at least double that in usable drive capacity (after ZFS formatting). I use six 2TB drives in a RAIDZ2 configuration and I have a usable ~7TB of space. I have used about 55% of that (most of it backup files which I need to clean up). So I'm at a happy place with capacity and I don't expect my storage capacity to ever need to go up, not for what I use my system for.

One word of advice is try to plan on using a single SSD as your boot device. Any cheap SSD is fine, the cheaper the better, even a used on is much more reliable than a USB Flash drive. If you factor that in now, you will be happy about your decision. And this has nothing to do with boot times, it's strictly a reliability issue.

Back to the CPU... If you purchase a boxed unit it will typically come with a heatsink and fan. Use those. Both AMD and Intel have quiet fans these days. On all my systems the only thing that makes noise are cheap fans. Hard drives are quiet, cpu fans are quiet, my case fans are quiet except for one, it came with my case and is a 140mm (could be larger) fan. Since this sits in the basement, I don't really care but if this were in my computer room, it would be running from 7VDC vice 12VDC.

Also, if you do not have all the money at once, you could purchase all but maybe all the hard drives, this way you can build the system, test it out for a week (burn in testing), and then build up the software and if you have one or two hard drives you could then build a pool and play around with it, knowing you are not committing data to your pool (keep it safe elsewhere). This is where you would put data on your system, unplug a hard drive (SATA data cable only), scrub it, and learn how to combat probable issues you will have. If you go with USB Flash Drives then you need to know how to replace those properly. If you desire encrypted hard drives (I strongly recommend against it) then you MUST simulate a drive failure and see if you can fix your system using a different hard drive or wipe the one you removed and use it (a true full wipe).

Good luck on your component selection and welcome to the FreeNAS forums.

 

[Dice]

Excellent posts guys @gpsguy @ttabbal @joeschmuck !

 

[DmcDenissen]

@gpsguy thanks for the post ;) Never heared of IPMI but now I have, thanks (thumbs up). Is it that big of an issue ? What could I do with it if I had it, in perspective of ECC? the remote stuff is nice but I'm wondering what it will give extra for the way I will be using it.

@ttabbal thanks for replying. Never had any problems with "desktop" motherboards, I almost use them like server ones ;) but It's food for thought indeed. LAN chip is indeed an issue that concerns me with the AMD set, the gigabyte one for the i3 has an intel one I thought.

@joeschmuck Thanks for the wise words: To bad I think I would have bought your AMD setup,
- Liked your vision on the harddisks I now know for sure I'm going for WD reds.
- I was also looking in the SSD for bootdevice and found alot of inexpensive ones so Doing that also !
- Did you experience any wierd problems with the AMD system ? And thinking back to that time would you have done something different ?
- You also have gone for supermicro have looked in to them but find them expensive and I wondering if it's worth it ? for one I had never heared of IPMI and the question if I need it for my home situation...

Thanks all I appreciate the time and knowledge you reply

 

[gpsguy]

IPMI doesn't have anything to do with ECC, it's more about remote access to a server.

If you are able to connect a monitor and keyboard to you server when needed or perhaps use a KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) connection, then having IPMI (or it's eqivalent) is a luxury in a home environment. With IPMI you can run the server headless (no keyboard, mouse) and you have BIOS level access to the server. It's standard in a business environment.

 

[Mirfster]

It's standard in a business environment.

As well as lazy people, like me... ;)

 

[gpsguy]

To be fair, don't you have 6 or more C-2100 servers in your closet at home? If they all have DRAC (Dell version of IPMI), then why not use it.

As well as lazy people, like me...

 

[Mirfster]

To be fair, don't you have 6 or more C-2100 servers in your closet at home? If they all have DRAC (Dell version of IPMI), then why not use it.

Oh, I use IPMI all the time; especially since I am so lazy. They are in a Server Rack ~7 feet from me with a KVM, but I still use IPMI. :)

 

[maglin]

IPMI. Seriously it doesn't sound like much until you start to use it. I recently had to pull out a monitor and keyboard for a server that I had to configure the IPMI on. Not only way I pissed off, but I had to work 10 more minutes just to access the BIOS. But seriously if you have never used IPMI then you have no clue what you are missing. Once you use it you not only get spoiled by it but become dependant on it. I have having to leave my main PC to do anything. That includes plugging in even a USB stick to load software. I like to do it all though IPMI.

TLDR: IPMI is a must have once you've used it.

 

[joeschmuck]

- Did you experience any wierd problems with the AMD system ? And thinking back to that time would you have done something different ?

So with my AMD system, it worked fantastic until FreeNAS 9.3 came out and then I started to have a slow down in my LAN throughput. It wasn't bad but it was irritating me so I added an Intel NIC. It wasn't required but I like to tinker and actually I wanted to prove it wasn't the onboard RealTek NIC, but it was. FreeBSD isn't the best for RealTek drivers unfortunately.

But the core system was and still is perfect and it will support FreeNAS 10 when it comes out. There was some debate on that in the past but FreeBSD now supports the AMD cpu. I currently plan to retain my AMD system and use it as a test platform for FreeNAS 10 Beta and Stable before I migrate my real FreeNAS system to that version.

So if you are seriously contemplating an AMD system, ensure you understand the limitations you will have. For my system my limitations were: Six SATA port, 32GB RAM (not a real issue), Two PCI-E ports and the small one cannot accept a long card at all due to a heat sink being in the way. Otherwise the motherboard is great. You can also connect additional add-on boards for more SATA ports or like I mentioned before, an Intel NIC card. If you have a PCI NIC, well there are two PCI slots available as well. Getting back tot he Six SATA ports, my system consists of six WD Red hard drives. All was fine in the beginning because FreeNAS ran great from USB Flash drives. Then comes USB 3.0 and flash drives fall like flies. I wanted to boot from a SSD but all my SATA ports were in use. A SATA add-on card would have solved my problem or I could purchase higher capacity hard drives and rebuild my pool but since I like to tinker, this gave me the perfect excuse to build my current server which I expect to have for at least a decade.

So you wanted to use four hard drives, if these were four 3TB drives in a RAIDZ2 then you would have around 5TB of usable space. This does not take into account any compression depending on the files you store. I know that when you purchase 12TB of storage media that it feels like a rip off that you are only getting 5TB of storage but two drives are for pure redundancy. You can have two drives fail and your data is still safe. If you add a fifth drive, then you get about 8TB of storage. Also with storage you really want to aim for using a maximum of 80%.

So, you did a cost comparison on an Intel system vs. AMD system, minus the hard drives and case and power supply? Motherboard, CPU, and RAM only. I have no problems promoting an AMD system but you should only purchase components which have been proven to work (some CPU/APU's have failed, mostly APUs) and know that some folks will tell you that you are going down the wrong path. Also with respect to the Intel NIC, if you find out you need to add a NIC, if you have one laying around that you can plug into this motherboard, that is fine but if you have to pay for one, add another $30 (or whatever it costs where you are at) and that should factor in to your decision. I believe in laying out all your options. I'm not a gung ho AMD man, I'm just an equal opportunity kind of guy.

With respect to IPMI, as others have said, it's the ability to pull up a terminal screen on a remote computer and you basically have a keyboard and video monitor of your remote computer. For me this is fantastic because my system is in the basement and if I wanted to do something to it like power it off and then enter the BIOS or run MemTest86, I can do all that remotely. It is not required at all for FreeNAS or anything but I think the folks who appreciate it the most are people who work in the IT world and who manage lots of systems remotely. Also for me, my Intel system is an ESXi Server so it makes more sense for my situation. In reality I rarely use it and when I'm doing an upgrade to my hardware, I bring the system out of the basement and connect a keyboard and monitor up to it directly.

Also, I didn't read or I missed any answer about WebDAV and I believe it is supported. It's in the FreeNAS user guide and in the configuration GUI but I've never used it so I can't comment on it other than it's there.

In conclusion, if you know what you need from a capacity storage point of view and what you plan to do with the device (just storage or maybe streaming video media via Plex), you can come up with a proper set of hardware, just realize that the hard drives which you will replace due to failure, cost the most of all the components. Temper your choices with that knowledge. Unfortunately nothing is free when it comes to the hardware unless you know people in low places. ;)