1st FreeNAS build - File Server, PLEX, and Minecraft

[FuzzyWerebeast]

I am looking to build my 1st FreeNAS box and wanted to make sure that this would work before getting too far down the rabbit hole.

The main purpose is for a file server and PLEX. If the system is able to handle it, I would also like to run MineOS in a jail to run a Minecraft server for the kids. Here is the hardware I'm looking at...

• Mother Board
  • Super Micro LGA 1155 Intel C204, Micro ATX Server Motherboard X9SCM-F
• Processor - One of the following
  • Intel Core i3-3220 Ivy Bridge Dual-Core 3.3 GHz LGA 1155 55W BX80637i33220 Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2500
  • 3.3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor with 8MB Cache -- E3-1240 - I would need to get a heatsink for this
• Ram
  • Supermicro MEM-DR380L-HL01-EU16 Hynix Memory 8GB DDR3-1600MHz 2Rx8 Un-Buffered ECC - I think I would start with 2 of these then add 2 more after the build.
• Hard Drives
  • I will use some that I have lying around to tinker with before getting the production ones installed.
• Case & Power Supply
  • Reuse from prior desktop PC.

I know these components are a little older, but the price needs to go thought the appropriations committee. Am I barking up the right tree or am I missing something. Any assistance is welcome.

 

[ThreeDee]

That looks like my old setup Intel mobo instead of Super Micro .. E3-1230, w/4x8gb ECC UDIMM's .. I had up to 7 users at once on that setup

UDIMM's are a lot pricier than RDIMM's though, hence why I "upgraded" to my current setup in my sig .. I got one of those Chinese knock off's .. CPU,motherboard and 32GB of ECC I picked up for $125 .. .then sold off the 32GB for $45 and picked up 64GB ECC RDIMM's for $80 off of Ebay.

I run up to 8 users at once pretty frequently, streaming off of my Plex from wherever they live and it handles the load fairly easily.

I was skeptical with the knock off motherboard .. but it's been rock solid. Only issue is that it wouldn't detect a 32GB M.2 SATA ... but is fine with NVMe SSD's. For a home setup, I highly recommend.

..and the HBA card in sig was only $20'ish on Ebay as well ..

 

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

You'll be fine. These are overkill for a local Plex server of a few users. If you're goal is to output Plex media to lots of clients online, like dozens, then that's different, and you need significant hardware (and bandwidth). But if this is for home and personal use with a few clients, that single Xeon CPU will not even work to do this job.

I would suggest you stay with the Supermicro series and a Xeon CPU along with ECC memory. Burn it in and do a few days of Memtest86 and if you don't get any significant errors or repeating issues, you can move forward. Used is great way to get good hardware inexpensively for this.

My Xeon x3440 doesn't even spike load during Plex use streaming to a single client over my network (streaming HD264, AC3) at 5Mbps and again the CPU doesn't even experience load, the power consumption doesn't budget, and the CPU just goes from 0% to 3% or so, at best, randomly. I tried doing it with 3 clients streaming and again it barely touched the CPU. If you're using a codec(s) that is readily hardware handled, it will be very efficient. If you're using something that requires significant software handling, the CPU will experience more load.

Very best,

 

[pschatz100]

Your proposed system is very similar to mine, which has been running well for several years. I would go with the Xeon processor if it is available for a good price. Stock CPU cooler will be good enough. You don't need anything fancy.

I started with a Core i3 processor - which worked great for a file server. I upgraded to the Xeon when I started using Plex with full HD 1080p video. The extra horsepower of the four core processor will be helpful if you need to transcode. I don't know anything about Minecraft server, but I suspect that a four core CPU will handle a mix of tasks better than a two core CPU.

You didn't say anything about the amount of storage you intend to configure, but 16Gb memory should be enough to start. Keep an eye on the amount of Swap being used. If swap use is zero, then you have enough memory.

 

[FuzzyWerebeast]

Thank you everyone for the insight. I was originally leaning closer to the Core i3 processor but it sounds like I would be better off getting the Xeon.

Because of funding, I have to build this system in stages. At first, I'm just going to toss in some extra hard drives that are not currently being used for anything (120GB, 360GB, and 500GB). The plan is to put in some 4TB drives in a raidz1 or raidz2. This is going to mainly be used for music and movies, at least for now. I'm leaning toward the raidz2, but price is a factor. So, I'll probably just go with a raidz1.

 

[pschatz100]

If you are planning to use large drives such as 4TB or greater, you should plan on RaidZ2. A four disk RaidZ2 pool is perfectly reasonable if it meets your capacity requirements and will be a good investment. Do some searches about resilvering with large capacity drives to understand why.

For initial learning and playing around purposes, I would use the 360GB and 500GB drives in a mirror. Don't bother with the 120GB disk. Also, use a small SSD for the boot device. While it is still possible to configure a flash drive as a boot device, newer versions of FreeNAS are much happier on a small SSD (which are cheap, nowadays).

 

[FuzzyWerebeast]

I'll look into the resilvering of larger disks. In the little that I've read about it, the discs seem to be put through their paces during the process which can cause additional failures.

I was going to mirror 2 flash drives as the boot device. The motherboard I am looking at only has 6 SATA ports and I didn't want to worry about getting a card to attach more drives. On that note, would I be able to strip the 360 with the 120 and mirror that to the 500? If that would work, would I be able to remove the 2 smaller drives to make space for the larger drives then migrate the data from the 500 over to the new datapool?

 

[pschatz100]

Technically, you can do what you suggest - but it will be fragile. Personally, I wouldn't.

Also, I would not use flash drives for the boot device. For slightly more money than two flash drives you can get a small SSD. You don't really need to mirror an SSD boot device as long as you keep backups of your system configuration. At some point in the future, if you need all six sata ports for data then you can mount the SSD via a usb adapter.

 

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

Avoid flash sticks. A SATA card with controller is like $60~80 to increase your SATA count, like this one:

Amazon.com

SAS to SATA and you're set.

Instead, use SSD discs for boot. If you want a mirror, then do two. Or, at the very least, do a SATA for your primary boot and a flash stick as your mirror, but really if you're concerned for redundancy just use two SSD and save your config often.

For discs, I would suggest you get a large capacity drive and just go for a mirror. 1:1 redundancy, no slow resilvering with RAID stuff, better overall performance. High capacity drives are affordable.

Very best,