Building first NAS this this weekend.

[Hugo Ochoa]

Hello!

I'm completely new to FreeNAS. Just registered and wanted to introduce myself. I hope to follow the rules of the forum and read all the docs. I'm getting delivery of the hardware for my first FreeNAS build this weekend. I ordered the hardware based on recommendations from this forum.

I intend to use the NAS for my home. I do take a lot of pictures and videos of my kids with my Canon 5D III which makes very big files. Also have some DVDs and Blue Ray disks that I plan on ripping for streaming to my PS3 over Wi-Fi. In addition, I’d like to make backups of my PC, PS3, DVRs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

A bonus would be to also be able to access the videos and pictures stored in the NAS though all my handheld devices over the internet and locally. We'll see if I can figure out how to do that.

Here's what I ordered from Newegg:

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Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 Ivy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 69W Quad-Core Server Processor BX80637E31230V2​

$229.99​

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SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCM-F-O LGA 1155 Intel C204 Micro ATX Intel Xeon E3 Server Motherboard​

$179.99​

6​

WD Red WD40EFRX 4TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" NAS Internal Hard Drive -Bulk​

$1,109.94
($184.99 ea)​

1​

Kingston 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 ECC Unbuffered Server Memory w/TS Model KVR16E11K4/32​

$380.99​

1​

NETGEAR Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band Wireless Gigabit Router (R7000)​

$199.99​

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Rosewill RSV-L4411 Black Metal/ Steel, 1.0 mm thickness, 4U Rackmount Server Chassis, 12 SATA Hot-swap Drives, 5 Included ...​

$199.99​

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Verbatim Store 'n' Stay 4GB Netbook USB Drive Model 97462​

$11.22​

 

[Yatti420]

Nice.. Their is a plugin I believe.. Subsonic that will allow mobile access to media.. I'm not sure on it's requirements however.. Let us know how you like the Rosewill chassis.. Make sure you run wdidle in the red drives just in case.. CPU is probably a little overkill ;) - It is required for the 1600mhz ram though..

 

[ser_rhaegar]

Don't forget a UPS and backup solution.

For remotely accessing the photos, you could use the OwnCloud plugin and remote in via VPN to your router (appears to support VPN).

 

[Hugo Ochoa]

Nice.. Their is a plugin I believe.. Subsonic that will allow mobile access to media.. I'm not sure on it's requirements however.. Let us know how you like the Rosewill chassis.. Make sure you run wdidle in the red drives just in case.. CPU is probably a little overkill ;) - It is required for the 1600mhz ram though..

Thank you for responding fast to my post! Also, for the tips! I'll be sure to check them out and post about the case I got. Thanks again!

 

[Hugo Ochoa]

So the Rosewill chassis was a complete fiasco. I returned that for a refund but had to pay $65 for shipping which really sucked. Anyhow, I've figured out some of these questions on my own now. I went the SuperMicro way (see sig) and also got a Eaton S5 1500VA USB UPS because I found driver's for FreeBSD. Also, got a pretty good deal ($225) on a new Supermicro CSE-826E1-R800LPB in JBOD configuration with 12 Hitachi 1TB NAS drives already in it! I'm attaching it to my main box through one of 2 IBM M1115 in IT mode via a PCI SFF-8087 to 8088 adapter. I'm waiting on the SFF-8088 cable to be delivered next week. I plan on using the JBOD box as my backup.

I've been testing my main box for the past 2 weeks using Hiren's BootCD Tools for testing the CPU and RAM and SMART commands to test the hard drives. Hopefully, this weekend I'll be able to setup my volumes. Both boxes (12 drives each) will each be setup with a pool made of 2 vdevs of 6 disk in raidz2. Here is an interesting read on raidz2. BTW I'm running FreeNAS 9.2.15

 

[Yatti420]

Make sure you test the hard drives aswell.. Use hdat2 should be on hirens.. If not boot it off dos usb..

 

[solarisguy]

I would move to testing with FreeNAS 9.2.1.5 or FreeNAS 9.2.1.6-BETA installed.

With your FreeNAS setup and your environment, you might be interested in checking whether and how S.M.A.R.T. tests influence performance.

Also 48GB of swap sounds excessive for 32 GB of RAM. I would not deploy more than 24GB of swap.

 

[Hugo Ochoa]

I haven't thought about swap yet but I'll keep that in mind.

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