Advice on light-use home build

[Bitrotphobe]

My paranoia about bits slowly flipping has finally gotten the better of me, so I decided to build a ZFS NAS, and the path of least resistance led me to FreeNAS. It would see only light, home usage, ~2 users max, used as weekly backup and a central source for media such as movies and music. The build I came up with is:

• Motherboard: Supermicro X11SSL-F
• CPU: INTEL Pentium G4400 - I would have preferred a Pentium G4560, but the motherboard requires BIOS version 2.0 for Kaby Lake support, and I found several posts from 2017 of how difficult it was to upgrade the BIOS before they were able to boot, with Supermicro demanding payment for an unlock key to enable BIOS updates through IPMI, and I'd really rather not deal with all that. If anyone knows if these boards ship with updated BIOS these days, I'd be very grateful. But how much would I even benefit from a G4400->G4560 upgrade? Lower power use, perhaps?
  
• RAM: 1x SUPERMICRO MEM-DR416L-CV01-EU26 16GB PC4-21300 DDR4 ECC
  Compatible according to http://store.supermicro.com/validatedparts/result/?cat=29&q=MBD-X11SSL-F, and the models listed on the motherboard's page are unavailable in my country.
• HDDs: 2x WD HDD Red 4TB (WD40EFRX) + 1x 3TB HDD whose brand I forgot (could be WD), currently in my desktop, in RAID-Z2. If I understand correctly, this should give me 3TB usable space, and when the 3TB disk fails/is replaced with a 4TB one, I'll have 4TB space? Would it be better to have the disks in RAID-1 instead? I realize then I couldn't expand the VDevice usable space by adding more disks - are there any other drawbacks to RAID-1 in this case?
• PSU: SEASONIC G-450 - if I ever want to expand to 5 HDDs.
• SSD: WD SSD Green SATA3 2,5" 120 GB (WDS120G2G0A) - to install FreeNAS on, and nothing more. Will it fit on the motherboard?
• Case: Old desktop midi-tower case.
• UPS: None so far. Honestly, I'd rather only use overvoltage protection. Power outages are very rare where I live, and I don't want to put more potentially flammable batteries in my home than I need to. Don't know about power spikes or how noisy the power is, though - I don't care about uptime/availability, but I do want to keep the hardware healthy for as long as possible.

And lastly, I'd like it to be as silent as possible, too - any fan recommendations?

The full plan is to use btrfs on my desktop, so I don't back-up corrupted data, and use one or more btrfs-formatted 4TB external drives that would serve as rotated monthly off-site backups of the entire NAS. That's also why I'm hesitant to have more than 4TB space - then the backup disks would also have to increase in number and/or size.

That's about it. So - will it FreeNAS? Thanks in advance :)

 

[Inxsible]

used as weekly backup and a central source for media such as movies and music.

Are you going to use Plex or Emby? Will you be transcoding on the fly or are you talking about just streaming in native. This will be important in choosing the processor.

Motherboard: Supermicro X11SSL-F

I would strongly recommend going with a X10 or X9 based board especially since you mentioned your build will be for light-use. It will save you a lot of money on the RAM. DDR4 RAM is super expensive currently. This would necessitate changing the processor as well, but that would also save money buying older hardware.

Are you ok buying used? That will save you some money too.

HDDs: 2x WD HDD Red 4TB (WD40EFRX) + 1x 3TB HDD whose brand I forgot (could be WD), currently in my desktop, in RAID-Z2.

You might save money by using Desktop drives instead of NAS (Red or Ironwolf) drives. I am going to go with 6 or 8 Desktop drives for my new build as well.

If I understand correctly, this should give me 3TB usable space, and when the 3TB disk fails/is replaced with a 4TB one, I'll have 4TB space?

Correct

Would it be better to have the disks in RAID-1 instead? I realize then I couldn't expand the VDevice usable space by adding more disks - are there any other drawbacks to RAID-1 in this case?

As you know, you cannot add drives to the same vdev. You can add a different vdev to the pool however. RaidZ1 gives you only 1 drive redundancy whereas RaidZ2 gives you 2. You are better protected with RaidZ2. How many drive bays does your chassis have?

PSU: SEASONIC G-450 - if I ever want to expand to 5 HDDs.

That should work fine for about 5 drives + MB + CPU+ a few peripherals(cards etc). You might want to bump that up to 550W or 600W just to give you some headroom for future expansion into a bigger chassis with more drives etc.

SSD: WD SSD Green SATA3 2,5" 120 GB (WDS120G2G0A) - to install FreeNAS on, and nothing more. Will it fit on the motherboard?

120GB is way overkill for FreeNAS install. Try to find a 16GB or 32GB SSD. As for fitting on the motherboard, -- you have 6 SATA ports on the X11SSL-F (if you change the motherboard to X9 or X10, then we might have to re-visit this). And if you plan to only have a max of 5 storage drives, then 1 SATA port will be available for your SSD. Another option is to use all 6 SATA ports for storage drives (if your chassis/tower supports 6 storage drives) and use 1 or 2 USBs(in mirror) as your freenas boot devices.

Case: Old desktop midi-tower case.

How many total drive bays in this?

And lastly, I'd like it to be as silent as possible, too - any fan recommendations?

That would depend on your chassis/tower and the space available in it. But you cannot go wrong with Noctua fans.


Let us know if you have additional questions.

 

[Inxsible]

If your tower allows for a max of 5 drives -- then you might be better off just buying the additional 3 drives and creating a RAIDZ2 array. Because a RAIDZ2 of 3 drives is effectively going to give you the space of only 1 drive.

 

[Mirfster]

HDDs: 2x WD HDD Red 4TB (WD40EFRX) + 1x 3TB HDD whose brand I forgot (could be WD), currently in my desktop, in RAID-Z2.

IIRC you need at least 4 drives for RaidZ2....

 

[Chris Moore]

That's about it. So - will it FreeNAS? Thanks in advance

Putting "Home" as your location is so rude. If you would at least tell your country, it would make it easier to give you suggestions that could be meaningful. Just earlier this week I was making recommendations to someone and they come back to tell me they can't get those parts in their country.
That said, I would point you at specific hardware if I knew where you were in the world, because you could certainly get a better value elsewhere.

I don't want to put more potentially flammable batteries in my home than I need to.

Who told you that a desktop UPS would catch fire? Cite your source.

I don't care about uptime/availability, but I do want to keep the hardware healthy for as long as possible.

If you want the hardware healthy, you need a UPS.

 

[danb35]

120GB is way overkill for FreeNAS install. Try to find a 16GB or 32GB SSD.

Yes, 120 GB is much more capacity than is needed, but often the price delta is minimal, and the greater capacity allows for wear-leveling.

potentially flammable batteries

Every UPS that I've seen uses a lead-acid battery, and I've never heard of battery fires with those. Li-Ion, yes, but nobody's using those in a UPS--they're just too expensive.

 

[Jeff Armstrong]

Are you going to use Plex or Emby? Will you be transcoding on the fly or are you talking
...

Let us know if you have additional questions.

All great advice.

 

[Bitrotphobe]

Are you going to use Plex or Emby? Will you be transcoding on the fly or are you talking about just streaming in native. This will be important in choosing the processor.

I guess just native - NAS only sends the file, client PC does the rest.

I would strongly recommend going with a X10 or X9 based board especially since you mentioned your build will be for light-use. It will save you a lot of money on the RAM. DDR4 RAM is super expensive currently. This would necessitate changing the processor as well, but that would also save money buying older hardware.

Are you ok buying used? That will save you some money too.

Thanks, but surprisingly, I was unable to find much cheaper (per GB) DDR3 RAM or X9/X10 boards. There is a ~60€ cheaper X9 board available, but it has only 2 memory slots, and the best I can find is 4GB DDR3 sticks, limiting me to 8GB - the bare minimum, which makes me nervous. No better luck in the used market either. I did update my location, if anyone happens to know of good parts nearby.

You might save money by using Desktop drives instead of NAS (Red or Ironwolf) drives. I am going to go with 6 or 8 Desktop drives for my new build as well.

Again there was barely any price difference, so I'll go with the cooler/less power hungry NAS ones.

120GB is way overkill for FreeNAS install. Try to find a 16GB or 32GB SSD.

I did, but they were barely any cheaper (~10€), so I might as well have a 120GB one for load-leveling or whatever.

Who told you that a desktop UPS would catch fire? Cite your source.

Pure speculation on my part.

If you want the hardware healthy, you need a UPS.

Is there anything wrong with the Apollo brand of UPSs?

One more question - if I don't want to keep my NAS running all the time (e.g. turn it off when I leave, turn it back on when I return home, similar to a desktop PC) - is there anything inadvisable about this? Is it healthier to just leave it running? The idle power load should be what... 40W-ish?

 

[Inxsible]

Is there anything wrong with the Apollo brand of UPSs?

NUT says the brand is compatible. You might have to look up the specific model that you plan to buy.

One more question - if I don't want to keep my NAS running all the time (e.g. turn it off when I leave, turn it back on when I return home, similar to a desktop PC) - is there anything inadvisable about this? Is it healthier to just leave it running?

This will increase the Power Cycle Count/Load Cycle Count on the drives, but I don't think there would be any other issue.

 

[Arwen]

...
Every UPS that I've seen uses a lead-acid battery, and I've never heard of battery fires with those. Li-Ion, yes, but nobody's using those in a UPS--they're just too expensive.

APC makes a Li-Ion UPS, Backup-UPS Pro 500. (Okay they bought another company, Schneider Electric, that made it.) I bought one because it had a built in Ethernet port, and the battery may last up to 8 years. But, it appears to be a unique product in the market. Don't remember seeing any other UPSes with Li-Ion batteries.

While this UPS is comptible with FreeNAS, their was a minor GUI bug that made it seem like it would not work. The current stable 11.x should have that fixed.

 

[danb35]

APC makes a Li-Ion UPS, Backup-UPS Pro 500.

Interesting; I (obviously) hadn't known about that. I wonder why they bother--Li-Ion batteries are much more expensive than SLA, and it doesn't seem that their advantages (lower weight, faster recharge) would be all that beneficial for a UPS. Battery life? I guess--is the battery user-replacable?

 

[Arwen]

Interesting; I (obviously) hadn't known about that. I wonder why they bother--Li-Ion batteries are much more expensive than SLA, and it doesn't seem that their advantages (lower weight, faster recharge) would be all that beneficial for a UPS. Battery life? I guess--is the battery user-replacable?

Yes, the battery is user replacable. But, probably only through them. I've bought multiple SLA replacement battery sets from local sources before, and I doubt that I could get one of these Li-Ion locally.

I wish they made a higher capacity model with the same general features. Maybe using 2 x of the same battery.

 

[Jailer]

if I don't want to keep my NAS running all the time (e.g. turn it off when I leave, turn it back on when I return home, similar to a desktop PC) - is there anything inadvisable about this?

You run the risk of scheduled SMART tests and scrubs not taking place or being interrupted by a power down.

 

[danb35]

Yes, the battery is user replacable. But, probably only through them.

Yeah, I didn't think they were in standardized form factors like SLA are--which is one of the benefits of that design. But anyway, good to know.