Well the time has come

[Christmas]

Well the time has come. My QNAP and WD NAS are maxed out so it’s time for an upgrade. I’ve been playing with FreeNAS for the last couple of months on an old laptop, and feel that this could be the way to go.

Decided I wanted to go the open source DIY route as I got frustrated by QNAP changing the compatibility list just after I purchased my four bay machine a few years ago, meaning that it no longer support the disk that I wanted to use. Also the initial outlay costs are very high.

My main goals/guideline of the project is to build a NAS that is power efficient, as it will be on 24/7 and possible idle for 80% of the time and it must be expandable. So the storage can grow as my needs grow, unlike the restrictions that I have with my existing QNAP and WD NAS.

Could one of you kind folks look at the list of parts that I have put together and see if you think everything will work smoothly with the latest version of FreeNAS If anyone is running a similar spec then I would be happy to hear your experience and what the power usage is like.

- Motherboard (one of the following):
- SuperMicro X10SLL-F
- SuperMicro X10SL7-F
- AsRock E3C226D2I​

- Processor: Intel i3-4130
- Memory: Two 8GB DDR3 PC3-12800 Crucial Unbuffered ECC
- Storage: Four 4TB Seagate or WD Red NAS drives
- Case: Lain-Li Q26b
- PSU: 250w 80plus gold/titanium

- Future expansion: IBM ServerRAID M1015​

Any help would be more than appreciated

Thank you

 

[danb35]

The PSU looks a little light for that build, and more so if you're planning on expanding to the point where you might need the HBA. If you envision expanding beyond six disks, go ahead and get the X10SL7; it includes the LSI HBA onboard, so you won't need to buy the M1015.

You don't say what you expect to use the server for. If just serving files, you could probably drop the CPU down to a Pentium G-series. If you're going to be transcoding media with Plex, you may want to step up to a Xeon. If you're going to be running other apps in jails, it would depend on the apps.

FreeNAS doesn't seem to be particularly designed with energy efficiency as a priority. For example, unless you set up a separate pool on an SSD, your drives will not spin down, since they'll be constantly accessed to write logs and such on the .system dataset.

 

[Christmas]

Hi Danb35


Thanks for helping.


The server is going to be a home server servicing just family members and used for file storage, backups for windows clients and media streaming via Plex. This will be music and HD movies so some transcoding will be needed, but not much as it will be used viz the main household TV.

I noticed your comment about using an SSD drive for the logs to allow the main dataset drives to spin down when idle. I was thinking of purchasing a small SSD drive for the OS as the prices have come down considerably. If this is large enough then can this be setup to store all the logs so that none of them are on the main dataset drives? Maybe even have two SSD drives as an OS mirror.

I was leaning towards the X10SL7-F as I like the idea of having the built in SAS controller, as you mentioned this would mean not needing the additional HBA. My plan was to start with four drives with the plan to grow, with an idea of expanding to ten plus drive as additional storage is required.

 

[danb35]

FreeNAS will definitely allow you to expand your pool, but you need to plan it correctly--you can't just add a disk at a time to your pool and maintain redundancy. If you haven't already, make sure you check out @cyberjock's guide to ZFS in the "New to FreeNAS" forum. I was able to expand, in stages, from 3 disks to 12, but it was a bit of hassle which I could have avoided if I'd planned better at the outset.

I believe a recent update to FreeNAS 9.3 allows putting the .system dataset on the boot pool. If that's the case, you'd be able to do what you describe. Any activity in any of your jails, though, would still wake the drives.

 

[Ericloewe]

- PSU: 250w 80plus gold/titanium

I've never seen such a beast.

Titanium units are still extremely rare and there are none in the low-power segment.
Platinum units start at 400W, but they're expensive and fanless, so you need to ensure good airflow.
Gold units are easily found starting at 360W.

For the kind of expansion you seem to be planning (14 drives total), I'd start by looking at a Seasonic G-550. If you want to go beyond that, a Seasonic Platinum 650 would be my next choice.

 

[Christmas]

My plan was to start with three or four drives set as a RAIDZ. Then in the future as needed to purchase another bank of three and four drives and set them up in a similar manner. But I will read the information that you have referred to.

Hi Ericloewe, I’ll be honest I haven’t really research the PSU side of thing yet not sure how much power I will require and what to go for. So my comment of a 250w 80plus gold or titanium was from some very quick research, but I will look into what you have suggested

At this point I’m mainly interested as to whether the board, CPU and other bits will work happily together to meet what I want from the projector, something thats power full for future expansion and power efficient at the same time.

 

[Ericloewe]

At this point I’m mainly interested as to whether the board, CPU and other bits will work happily together to meet what I want from the projector, something thats power full for future expansion and power efficient at the same time.

No real problems there. The only limitation is the 32GB maximum RAM, which can be painful if you plan on expanding beyond 64TB of disk space.

 

[JDCynical]

My plan was to start with three or four drives set as a RAIDZ. Then in the future as needed to purchase another bank of three and four drives and set them up in a similar manner. But I will read the information that you have referred to.

Strongly suggest reading the referenced info.

"Storage: Four 4TB Seagate or WD Red NAS drives"

With 4tb drives, running RAIDZ and not RAIDZ2 is kind of risky IMO.

 

[Christmas]

With 4tb drives, running RAIDZ and not RAIDZ2 is kind of risky IMO.

Hi Justin

Thanks for the comment about the drive configuration. Could I ask why you feel that I should run RAIDZ2 with the 4TB drivers. This would mean that with only four drives I would lose half the available capacity to parity. I see the point in running RAIDZ2 when running a lot of spindles but only having four spindles seems a bit over kill.


Out of interest in my original post o mentioned three different motherboards, two SuperMicro and one Asrock. Which is the better board to go for? Any info is very much appreciated


Thanks

 

[danb35]

I'll quote myself, from the first reply to this thread:

If you envision expanding beyond six disks, go ahead and get the X10SL7; it includes the LSI HBA onboard, so you won't need to buy the M1015.

 

[JDCynical]

Thanks for the comment about the drive configuration. Could I ask why you feel that I should run RAIDZ2 with the 4TB drivers. This would mean that with only four drives I would lose half the available capacity to parity. I see the point in running RAIDZ2 when running a lot of spindles but only having four spindles seems a bit over kill.

The size of your drives really. As drive sizes increase, the time needed to resilver a replacement increases, which means that the amount of time you are unprotected is greater, which means that if another drive in your pool has a problem, you can pretty much kiss your data goodbye.

ZFS recovery tools currently do not exist, and from a recent thread of someone who lost their pool, the cost of a data recovery that says they can deal with ZFS is in the range of five to six digits to the left of the decimal point to recover most of the data.

For more detail, read this: http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-5-stops-working-in-2009/

This is why RAIDZ1/RAID5 is considered 'dead'.

But it's your data, and only you can determine if the risk vs cost/storage space is acceptable.

Out of interest in my original post o mentioned three different motherboards, two SuperMicro and one Asrock. Which is the better board to go for? Any info is very much appreciated

Well, I tend to try to 'overbuy' and plot builds with future growth in mind. Supermicro also tends to be the ODM/OEM of choice around these parts, and there are stickied posts about them as well.

That being said, my own views on the boards you listed:

ASRock: Not on my list. The lack of RAM and PCIe slots is a deal breaker for me. But from what I've seen and read, they do appear to be a good choice for minimal foot print builds.
SM boards: The main differences between the boards is the SLL has one more 8x PCIe slot over the SL7, but doesn't have the built-on SAS HBA the SL7 does (which explains the lack of the 8x slot).

My own view is that I would go for the SLL and if a HBA is needed for more drives, pick one up at that point. It may cost more overall vs getting the SL7, but when the new HBA hotness appears or it dies an early death, I'll be able to pull out the old one and replace it with the new and not have a 'now useless' HBA stuck on my board tying up an 8x PCIe lane with no ability to reallocate it for anything else.

Granted, the chances of this happening in the lifetime of the board are not that great, but I would rather have the ability to do so, just in case.

 

[joeschmuck]

I see the point in running RAIDZ2 when running a lot of spindles but only having four spindles seems a bit over kill.

When choosing a drive configuration you have to be mindful of a few things and once you have answered these things you will know what configuration type you should use.

1) How much storage do you require?
2) How important is your data?
3) What can you afford?

So, question 1, How much storage do you require? This is actual storage capacity that you feel will hold you over for the next 5 years. I only need about 5TB of storage plus I added some extra in case I do need to go beyond that so I'm at just over 7TB. You need to know what this value is for you for right now and to cover the first 5 years (just a value I pulled out of my butt).

Question 2, How important is your data? This is a tricky one because lets say you are only storing ripped videos. Well that isn't very important if you lost them, you could get them back with a little bit of time. But how much time and is it worth it to add one more drive to eliminate the need to recover all your data just by adding a little more redundancy? Maybe you have some data which is very important to you and a huge amount of data which isn't that important so you could create two pools, one for your important data (lets use a 3 drive mirror of 2 TB drives for an example, almost 2TB), and you could have for you non-important data of say a zillion videos a single RAIDZ1 of four 4TB drives (almost 11TB). Overall most people just choose RAIDZ2 because it's the best compromise for most uses. If you can plan ahead of time, maybe you need 7TB of storage today and want double that in 3 years, well you could purchase six 2TB drives now and in 3 years replace them (one at a time) with 4TB or larger drives and then your upgrade process is easy. This would be good planning because you should never plan on a hard drive lasting beyond its warranty period. They typically do last longer but financially plan for the failure and you will feel better when it does occur and you can save some money up front.

Question 3, What can you afford? This by far is the one answer which too frequently determines the configuration beginners start with. It actually is a limitation most times. The cost of the hardware minus the drives should be constant, however the number of drives to meet the capacity and redundancy level will fluctuate due to your limit of cash.

Also, you had a question about using a SSD as the boot device, that is a great idea. You can create this as a mirror just like when using mirrored flash usb devices if you like but in my opinion it's not worth the added cost.

If you desire the hard drives to spin down when not in use, unless you have a very clear plan and know how to implement it, it's not going to work. You will need to do some research in the forums (don't just ask another question because this has been answered many times here, use Google to do a search as pointed out in the forum rules we created).

 

[Christmas]

Justin thanks for going into more detail regarding the RAID levels. I wondered if it was to do with the drive size. So I will seriously consider going for RAIDZ2 instead of my original plan. Obviously I don’t want to lose any data with something as silly as a second drive going in the RAID, but as part of this project I am building in a full backup plan that will allow for two levels of data protection. The only part I won’t have is a full off site backup but I can live with that.


Interesting point you go on to make about the SM board. I had pretty much come to the same conclusion. I like the idea of having the built-in SAS controller but it’s at a cost that I may not require for a little while. Plus I do like the idea of having the second PCI slot that can accommodate a pair of HBA’s in the future, and as you say if they went faulty I can pull them and insert a replacement.


I re-asked the question about the boards to get a feeling of what you guys felt about the Asrock board compared to the SM board. Before posting this tread I was going to go for the Asrock board but now after reading your responses I’m going for the SM board as it seems to be the best option for expandability and support


Just need to sort out the other parts now and of course convince my better half that I need some money for the parts