Long back in 2006-2009 I had a WHS setup put together by assembling consumer desktop parts I had collected over the years. I don't quite recall what was its capacity then but it had 4-6 hard drives and it served me well while it existed. However, my financial condition deteriorated and when things started getting bad with the hardware, I had to take it all apart and sell whatever I could. In the process, I lost a lot of data which i could never replace.
I am moving to a new place and with the future looking promising, I am planning to put together an over the top FreeNAS server with server grade components.
In the new place, I may have 3-4 bedrooms and each will have its own 4K television. There will be a 4K television in the living room and a dedicated home theatre room. Each of these televisions will get their own media streamer and I am looking at the Nvidia Android Shield for this purpose. I plan to use the FreeNAS server to stream bluray images to these televisions and also run plex for the mobile devices. Currently I have about 7TB of data on many drives and computers and I want to consolidate all these into this FreeNAS server. I am planning to initially start off with 10x4TB WD Reds in a RAIDZ2 array. I will add drives (in lots of 10) as and when I feel the need.
In my country, server grade components are not easily available and we have to rely on authorised distributors and resellers for our parts. I managed to get hold of one such distributor dealing in Supermicro and came up with the following configuration.
Supermicro Server Motherboard X10SRI-F
Intel Xeon E5-1620V3 with Supermicro Heat Sink (I may get the E5-1650 V3 instead)
4 x 16 GB DDR4 ECC RDIMM 2133 MHz (Samsung)
10 x 4 TB WD RED
LSI 9211-8i HBA
4U Supermicro Chassis CSE847E16-R1400LPB with Slide Rails
I already have the necessary power backup equipment and this is not of concern.
My questions are:
1. Are the redundant 1400W power supplies enough for this build considering the fact that I am starting with 10 4TB drives but may end up with 30-36 drives in the future?
2. Should I opt for a SSD boot drive or should I get a USB pendrive for the purpose? If a USB drive is recommended, should I get a USB 2 or USB 3 drive? Are redundant boot drives recommended and can we do redundancy with USB pendrives?
3. Is the E5 1620 v3 CPU capable of encoding 3-4 1080p or 4K streams simultaneously or should I get the 1650 instead?
4. Should I really get the 64GB RAM or will 32GB be suffice?
I have been spending time on the forums and trying to read as much as I could at this stage of planning. I will test out the features of FreeNAS once I am able to build this server before I put it into production.
You advice will be highly appreciated.
I am moving to a new place and with the future looking promising, I am planning to put together an over the top FreeNAS server with server grade components.
In the new place, I may have 3-4 bedrooms and each will have its own 4K television. There will be a 4K television in the living room and a dedicated home theatre room. Each of these televisions will get their own media streamer and I am looking at the Nvidia Android Shield for this purpose. I plan to use the FreeNAS server to stream bluray images to these televisions and also run plex for the mobile devices. Currently I have about 7TB of data on many drives and computers and I want to consolidate all these into this FreeNAS server. I am planning to initially start off with 10x4TB WD Reds in a RAIDZ2 array. I will add drives (in lots of 10) as and when I feel the need.
In my country, server grade components are not easily available and we have to rely on authorised distributors and resellers for our parts. I managed to get hold of one such distributor dealing in Supermicro and came up with the following configuration.
Supermicro Server Motherboard X10SRI-F
Intel Xeon E5-1620V3 with Supermicro Heat Sink (I may get the E5-1650 V3 instead)
4 x 16 GB DDR4 ECC RDIMM 2133 MHz (Samsung)
10 x 4 TB WD RED
LSI 9211-8i HBA
4U Supermicro Chassis CSE847E16-R1400LPB with Slide Rails
I already have the necessary power backup equipment and this is not of concern.
My questions are:
1. Are the redundant 1400W power supplies enough for this build considering the fact that I am starting with 10 4TB drives but may end up with 30-36 drives in the future?
2. Should I opt for a SSD boot drive or should I get a USB pendrive for the purpose? If a USB drive is recommended, should I get a USB 2 or USB 3 drive? Are redundant boot drives recommended and can we do redundancy with USB pendrives?
3. Is the E5 1620 v3 CPU capable of encoding 3-4 1080p or 4K streams simultaneously or should I get the 1650 instead?
4. Should I really get the 64GB RAM or will 32GB be suffice?
I have been spending time on the forums and trying to read as much as I could at this stage of planning. I will test out the features of FreeNAS once I am able to build this server before I put it into production.
You advice will be highly appreciated.
