BUILD Components I'm going with, suggestions and opinions welcome

[wisemonkey]

Hi,
I'll be building my first NAS (hopefully soon).
I'm thinking of going with following components (according to https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/), let me know if I missed something or if I should take anything else in consideration:

Chassis: http://www.ebay.com/itm/141918972284
Processor: Intel Xeon E5-1650 V3 (most probably: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&cm_re=xeon_e5-1650_v3-_-19-117-499-_-Product)
Motherboard: Supermicro X9 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...XV8987&cm_re=x9srh-_-9SIA6ZP3XV8987-_-Product)
SRAM: 2x16GB (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148855&cm_re=ecc_ram-_-20-148-855-_-Product)

Power supply : Chassis has dual 900W power supply (Do I need to check for others?)

I'll mostly be adding 8/10 (mix of 3TB/4TB) HDDs, Chassis mentions I should not populate back plane completely so I guess as long as I go up to 12 HDDs it should be ok and looks like motherboard has enough SATA ports to support 12 HDDs.

As for boot device, I'm thinking of using any SSD I can get my hands on around 128GB.

I'm planning to run 3 Virtualbox VMs on the NAS as well.
Does this all look good enough? Do you guys see any issue with the setup?

Thanks

 

[ChriZ]

The chassis I think won't support hdds larger than 2TB. Not 100% sure, though...

 

[wisemonkey]

Actually info about chassis mentions:
BPN-SAS-846EL1 SAS Expander (24x 3.5" SAS/SATA Hot-swappable Drive Bays)***3TB and 4TB Hard Drive may not be recognized by the backplane if fully populated.

So I'm guessing only problem if I populate all of 24 slots?

 

[cyberjock]

I don't think you can use drives bigger than 2.2TB without it being limited to 2.2TB, regardless of how many you have installed.

Edit: The bottom line is that you should not be buying anything that is 3Gb/sec SAS/SATA Supermicro backplanes. They're going to be more than 5 years old, more likely to fail, have the limited disk space accessible, etc.

Just don't do it unless you don't plan to ever use large disks and don't care about performance.

 

[wisemonkey]

I don't think you can use drives bigger than 2.2TB without it being limited to 2.2TB, regardless of how many you have installed.

Edit: The bottom line is that you should not be buying anything that is 3Gb/sec SAS/SATA Supermicro backplanes. They're going to be more than 5 years old, more likely to fail, have the limited disk space accessible, etc.

Just don't do it unless you don't plan to ever use large disks and don't care about performance.

Ah Thanks, I'm going to look for more then

 

[religiouslyconfused]

Hi,
I'll be building my first NAS (hopefully soon).
I'm thinking of going with following components (according to https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/), let me know if I missed something or if I should take anything else in consideration:

Chassis: http://www.ebay.com/itm/141918972284
Processor: Intel Xeon E5-1650 V3 (most probably: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&cm_re=xeon_e5-1650_v3-_-19-117-499-_-Product)
Motherboard: Supermicro X9 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...XV8987&cm_re=x9srh-_-9SIA6ZP3XV8987-_-Product)
SRAM: 2x16GB (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148855&cm_re=ecc_ram-_-20-148-855-_-Product)

Power supply : Chassis has dual 900W power supply (Do I need to check for others?)

I'll mostly be adding 8/10 (mix of 3TB/4TB) HDDs, Chassis mentions I should not populate back plane completely so I guess as long as I go up to 12 HDDs it should be ok and looks like motherboard has enough SATA ports to support 12 HDDs.

As for boot device, I'm thinking of using any SSD I can get my hands on around 128GB.

I'm planning to run 3 Virtualbox VMs on the NAS as well.
Does this all look good enough? Do you guys see any issue with the setup?

Thanks

You need a x10 board for that cpu as you have a board meant for a v2 cpu. X10srh-f is a good choice.

 

[wisemonkey]

Thanks guys. Looks like I need to learn some more about Server assemblies.
First I thought HDDs directly are connected to motherboard so doesn't matter how old chassis is.
Second I was thinking all I need to matching processor slot on motherboard.

I'll try to read some more info.

 

[religiouslyconfused]

Thanks guys. Looks like I need to learn some more about Server assemblies.
First I thought HDDs directly are connected to motherboard so doesn't matter how old chassis is.
Second I was thinking all I need to matching processor slot on motherboard.

I'll try to read some more info.

Intel changed the socket with E5 v3 (despite being having 2011 pins) and the E5 X10 boards are actually cheaper than the X9 board that you posted above.

 

[wisemonkey]

Intel changed the socket with E5 v3 (despite being having 2011 pins) and the E5 X10 boards are actually cheaper than the X9 board that you posted above.

I saw that but went back to search thinking it must have been some mistake :(

 

[religiouslyconfused]

Good news is that the ram you have is compatible with E5 v3 so just need a different board. Though E5 v2 uses DDR3, as Intel went to DDR4 for Haswell-E/P. It is ok, as we all make mistakes, as good thing I mentioned that before you bought that board.

 

[wisemonkey]

At this rate I feel like I'm never going to finish building a system. Moreover I think I'll spend a lot of cash on it.
Instead I'm thinking of going with https://www.ixsystems.com/freenas-mini/ (mini XL).
I just wanted to know is that a good choice and is 32GB RAM limit bad? Can I upgrade it in future?

Thanks

 

[maglin]

The one thing that is really appealing of the mini is it's small footprint and very light power consumption. 80 watts with 8 red drives at full load. The rig in my signature is currently at 290 watts with 15 drives. The savings in power over 5 years would probably be more than the price difference of building your own setup and less frustration as it's fairly turn key.

 

[wisemonkey]

The one thing that is really appealing of the mini is it's small footprint and very light power consumption. 80 watts with 8 red drives at full load. The rig in my signature is currently at 290 watts with 15 drives. The savings in power over 5 years would probably be more than the price difference of building your own setup and less frustration as it's fairly turn key.

Thanks I'll go ahead with mini XL then :)

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I'm planning to run 3 Virtualbox VMs on the NAS as well.

is 32GB RAM limit bad?

Not for normal use, so probably depends on what kind of resources you plan to allocate to the VMs.

Can I upgrade it in future?

No.

 

[wisemonkey]

Not for normal use, so probably depends on what kind of resources you plan to allocate to the VMs.

No.

Mostly I/O heavy VMs. I'm going to run Owncloud, Kolab and Piwigo (maybe mumble server)
I hope I wouldn't need any more Memory than 32GB these are all running on normal desktop right now, at 16GB.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Owncloud, Kolab and Piwigo

ownCloud can run in a jail, which is less resource intensive. Not sure about the others.

 

[wisemonkey]

ownCloud can run in a jail, which is less resource intensive. Not sure about the others.

Didn't even think about running them locally :(. Now that I am not running on host OS (and won't be dual booting / changing OS) I can actually run these services locally I guess.
This is the first time I've heard about jails but I'll read about it and see if I can get everything running in jails. (How does jails work when I reinstall FreeNAS -- if I ever need to reinstall)

Thanks

 

[maglin]

You should be able to run all of them in Jails with no problem. OwnCloud is not resource heavy. Actually just checked and all of those look not very intensive. I have a ton of stuff running on my FreeNAS server in my signature and looking back through my logs and the max CPU load I've ever seen is 44%. I'm not to sure where that atom compares to the E3, but I would guess it's at least 50% as powerful or more. So You probably don't have to much to worry about. Technically you can upgrade the RAM to 64GB but it's so expensive that it's not worth considering.

 

[wisemonkey]

You should be able to run all of them in Jails with no problem. OwnCloud is not resource heavy. Actually just checked and all of those look not very intensive. I have a ton of stuff running on my FreeNAS server in my signature and looking back through my logs and the max CPU load I've ever seen is 44%. I'm not to sure where that atom compares to the E3, but I would guess it's at least 50% as powerful or more. So You probably don't have to much to worry about. Technically you can upgrade the RAM to 64GB but it's so expensive that it's not worth considering.

Thanks, I need to learn about jails.
Should I consider read cache and write cache? Does it change access time dramatically?
And How often people generally re-install freeNAS? I'm guessing I need to go through installing all my server apps and jails setup. Can I try to reproduce this setup in a VM on my desktop before actually doing it.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Should I consider read cache and write cache?

Not until you've tested without and identified bottlenecks.

Can I try to reproduce this setup in a VM on my desktop before actually doing it.

Playing with FreeNAS in a VM to educate yourself is a great idea.