Entry-level server or reuse old parts.

[NJMorf]

I want a server to replace my current Synology DS216j NAS. I can't decide on whether it's worth buying a new entry-level server or use my existing hardware, so I'm hoping for advice. It will be used as a Plex server (maximum 3 simultaneous streams, possibly transcoded to include subtitles but not to resize the video), network file storage and backup.

Reuse: Asus P8-H77I mobo, Core i3-3225, 2x WD Red HDDs from the Synology NAS. Will need a new case, PSU, more RAM, total cost about £250

New: Dell PowerEdge T30 (Xeon E3-1225 v5, 8GB DDR4 ECC RAM). Will probably want to add another 8GB RAM. Total cost about £750-850

Additional requirements in either case: two more HDDs, possibly 1-2 2.5" SSDs to hold Plex server itself (i.e. to get a performance boost over spinning disks). Total number of drives will be at least 4, perhaps 6.

Pros and cons that I've thought of:

Reusing the old hardware is cheaper, but it's not server-grade. Spending money on it may be wasted if it's not really capable of doing the job long-term. I've confirmed that FreeNAS and Plex do run on it already. It has 6 SATA ports, enough for my expected setup.

The Dell is probably overkill. It's much more expensive and only has 4 SATA ports as standard. It can take 4x 3.5" drives, but adding a couple of 2.5" will require an add-in card to provide the ports. It's (entry-level) server hardware, though, so should be more reliable when running 24/7.


So: are there any strong arguments one way or the other? Thanks in advance.

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

If you haven't checked out the hardware guide in the resources, that would probably answer most of your questions. That said, I suspect your results for building a FreeNAS server will be substantially better using server grade components. Use the guide to determine how much ECC ram you need. It isn't particularly processor intensive, but good disks and good NIC's are key for this function. My current FreeNAS is a Cisco UCS C240 M3 SFF. Those can be had fairly inexpensively on ebay, and have 24 2.5" SAS/SATA bays. I have ~= 12TB storage, and 128GB ECC RAM. This performs very well for me.

 

[Chris Moore]

I suggest server gear, even if it is used from eBay, it is usually better than older desktop / gaming PC hardware.
Supermicro makes some really good hardware.
If you are on a tight budget, you might be able to make do with the hardware you have and upgrade later.
FreeNAS is pretty hardware agnostic, which allows you to easily replace the system board without needing to reinstall, but there's certain hardware that either has no driver or the driver is not very good.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[joeschmuck]

Just a little perspective for you... If you are just looking to create a simple NAS to replace your Synology NAS and you only plan to run PLEX then you may want to give your motherboard a try, ensure you have 8GB RAM minimum, 12GB to 16GB recommended. Your CPU may be fine to support your PLEX needs. This system would also support backing up files and such.

Additional requirements in either case: two more HDDs, possibly 1-2 2.5" SSDs to hold Plex server itself (i.e. to get a performance boost over spinning disks). Total number of drives will be at least 4, perhaps 6.

That is a waste of hardware, I would recommend a single SSD (10GB to 64GB or whatever is most cost effective) as a boot device. Spinning rust drives are more than fast enough and SSD's cannot make up for low RAM or slow CPU's.

You never mentioned capacity other than you wanted to add a few more drives. Know what you need for capacity before you purchase drives. With the ZFS file system you can't just add to the pool unless you know what you are doing and you can risk all data if you have no clue what you are doing. So figure out capacity you need then add 20% more. I'd think about what you need over a 3 year period minimum, 5 years life typical is what I use.

If you plan to use FreeNAS for more than just Plex and simple storage then I'd recommend a server grade system. Also, play with FreeNAS before committing on the final configuration for the hard drive arrangement, you may find that you want to change it.

Lastly, ensure you are using an Intel LAN/NIC connection, if your motherboard does not have Intel built in then plan to buy an add-on card. While you can try RealTek, I can speak from experience that the connection will be slower and possibly unreliable.

Also, read through the forums, see what problems others are having so you can see what you could expect. My system is rock solid and I never have issues with it, unless they are self induced of course.

Last thoughts: If you can, run FreeNAS on your main computer in a Virtual Machine such as VMWare Workstation Player or Virtual Box and test it out, see if it's what you want. If you are using a laptop then performance will likely suffer of course.

Good Luck!

 

[Chris Moore]

Intel Core i3-3225 @ 3.30GHz

CPU Mark score for the CPU is 4339. Plex suggests that a 2000 score is required for each 1080p transcoded stream and a 4000 score is required for each 4k transcoded stream.
Ref: https://support.plex.tv/articles/201774043-what-kind-of-cpu-do-i-need-for-my-server/
Ref: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i3-3225+@+3.30GHz&id=1474

Intel Xeon E3-1225 v5 @ 3.30GHz

Has a CPU Mark score of 7819, so it depends on how many transcoded streams you want to be able to deal with.
Ref: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E3-1225+v5+@+3.30GHz&id=2707

It might not be as 'overkill' as you thought. Still, if you are buying gear, I would suggest getting a used server as you will get more for your money than buying new.

 

[Chris Moore]

Asus P8-H77I

System board is sporting a Realtek® 8111F, 1 x Gigabit LAN Controller... That is not a good controller for FreeNAS and there is only one PCIe expansion slot so if you add a card to fix it, you are done expanding the system, ever. That alone would take this board completely out of contention for me. I would say, sell it on eBay and get out from under it.

 

[Inxsible]

If you plan to use FreeNAS for more than just Plex and simple storage then I'd recommend a server grade system. Also, play with FreeNAS before committing on the final configuration for the hard drive arrangement, you may find that you want to change it.

QFT

That really is the gist of it. I would suggest to try your current board and see if you even like FreeNAS. Currently your needs are basic and as you have mentioned, your Asus P8 board can handle those needs. So why spend 3 times as much money now?

The money that you put in for the PSU, case and RAM -- make sure you buy components that you can reuse later once you find that you like FreeNAS. Feel free to ask questions on those. But you might want to look for cases which support at least 6 or more HDDs. Cases that have additional space for 2.5" drives is an advantage, so you can put in a boot drive. Look for cases that can accommodate at least m-ATX - as server grade hardware in mini-ITX is few and far between and mini-ITX servers tend to be expensive and don't provide much in terms of expansion later. Look out for things of that nature.

And if you do like FreeNAS, I am sure you will find more uses and you'd want to do more with the box.

On second thought, your RAM for Asus P8 might not be compatible with server grade boards/RAM -- so if you have at least 8GB on the Asus board already, do NOT buy more RAM now. If you don't have 8GB, then buy it, but be prepared to let it go with the Asus board if and when you do upgrade to server grade hardware. Make sure you buy an Intel i340-t2 card to use as NICs instead of the onboard Realtek.

 

[NJMorf]

Thanks for all the feedback.

That Cisco machine is way outside of my budget, even if I had somewhere to adequately store it. I'd like to have a rack, server room and decent wired network, but that's not feasible right now.

Storage capacity: I don't foresee needing significantly more space in the near term, hence only looking to add a couple more drives to double the space I currently have. That'll likely physically fill whichever case I end up with, but I'm willing to deal with that later (I'm looking for a smaller, less obtrusive box rather than high capacity. That said, I do like my Fractal Design Define R5 and its large number of bays, so maybe I'll repurpose that someday). I'm not particularly worried about losing the data: there isn't much that's irreplaceable, and I have multiple backups of that which is.

I've had a little play with FreeNAS on the existing mobo and so far haven't had any issues. In terms of performance in Plex, I had five streams running, two of which were transcoding from 1080 down to 480ish and the others burning subtitles. CPU usage was about 80%, though RAM was pretty much used up, so it looks like the i3's more than up to snuff (I don't expect more than three streams at once, and that rarely).

NIC: I wasn't thinking about that, but now that you mention it, I remember reading all the warnings. I'm not sure how much difference a decent NIC would make, though: I'm stuck using a powerline network that's a little flaky at the best of times and is probably going to continue to be more of a problem in the long term than any issues with the mobo. That said, I appreciate that it'd be better to remove it from the equation.

As for buying server-grade hardware and building my own: I've priced it out, and there's no way I can come close to the cost of the Dell, even taking into account all the gear I can reuse (the Supermicro boards in the recommended hardware lists seem to be going for about £200+, as is the Xeon right now). Ebay prices for the Dell are not particularly attractive, and I have a general preference to buy new rather than second-hand anyway, so if I go for the server hardware, it'll be new.

Thanks again for the advice. I'll have a think and a play.

 

[warllo]

I recently built a very low cost Freenas server to replace a Qnap ts-251. Other than being based on some very old hardware it performs well enough to consistently saturate a 1Gig connection. It does have some concession like not having dual power supplies, and the lack of hotswap. Here are the parts I used, you should be able to build this for around $200, perhaps less if you use a desktop style case and it does utilize server grade components.

Code:

Super Micro X8sil-f Motherboard $34.95 *has 6 sata ports, supports ecc, dual intel nics, and has a decent amount of pci lanes for expansion
Intel x3430 CPU $9.99
Hynix HMT151R7BFR8C-G7 Ram $7.50 *these are 4gb modules
Hynix HMT151R7BFR8C-G7 Ram $7.50
Hynix HMT151R7BFR8C-G7 Ram $7.50
Hynix HMT151R7BFR8C-G7 Ram $7.50
Sandisk SDCZ43-016G-GAM46 Boot Drive $10.59
Sandisk SDCZ43-016G-GAM46 Boot Drive $10.59
Rosewill RSV-Z2700 Case $69.99
Icydock MB344SP Drive Bay Adapter $9.99 *used to house a slog device and the eventually upgrade to ssd's for boot devices.

*Note the cpu will more than likely struggle with the trans coding you could upgrade to x3470 for about $20 extra.

Just pick any case and power supply that fit together, of course make sure the power supply is a quality one. I chose the Rosewill listed because I needed something with a very short depth as it's mounted on a 6u shelf in the utility room.

 

[NJMorf]

Your prices don't hold up on this side of the Atlantic. The best price I can find for that motherboard is £85/$115 and the RAM is £15/$20 per stick, all second-hand. I think that if I go for second-hand stuff, I'll probably just stick with what I have, then upgrade later as needed.

 

[rvassar]

Your prices don't hold up on this side of the Atlantic. The best price I can find for that motherboard is £85/$115 and the RAM is £15/$20 per stick, all second-hand. I think that if I go for second-hand stuff, I'll probably just stick with what I have, then upgrade later as needed.

What's the exchange rate?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro...621990&hash=item466e13f9fc:g:97gAAOSwdnZZ-~zc

 

[NJMorf]

About $1.33:£1. That ebay link also has a lot of shipping costs ($75) to the UK.

 

[KrisBee]

Anyone UK based will look at the availability and prices of s/hand server grade kit in the US with envy. To my mind, shipping and customs charges do not make importing US bought kit a viable option.

The cheapest s/hand m/board I can find is X9SCI-LN4F at roughly £50, not perhaps ideal, but has all important IPMI. Only one pci-e slot but has both 4 SATA2 & 2 SATA3 ports. There's no internal usb, but you may want to use a SSD for a boot drive.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Supermic...533659?hash=item1ed0d3649b:g:wsgAAOSwvutaz05B

It's easier to find s/hand 1155 xeons at reasonable price than say a haswell xeon cpu. EEC UDIMM RAM, even s/hand, is not cheap, circa £40-50 per 8GB. You're more likely to find 4GB modules than 8GB.

 

[Chris Moore]

Anyone UK based will look at the availability and prices of s/hand server grade kit in the US with envy. To my mind, shipping and customs charges do not make importing US bought kit a viable option.

Have you looked at the shipping options available from this company?
https://www.shipito.com/

There have been others that used them successfully and the cost saved on the hardware made it worth paying for the shipping.

 

[KrisBee]

Shipping is just the start. Custom duties, Import VAT and fee for collection of Import VAT means you need to get your spreadsheet out .... The wonders of living in the so-called free trade EU.

 

[anmnz]

Anyone UK based will look at the availability and prices of s/hand server grade kit in the US with envy.

Absolutely true, not going to argue with that!

To my mind, shipping and customs charges do not make importing US bought kit a viable option.

Not quite so true IMHO. In the UK, I've recently bought a few parts from US Ebay sellers, both directly and via Shipito. They were not bargains, but they were no more expensive in the end than they would have been from a UK/EU seller, and had the advantage of being available right away rather than me having to wait for months for the right thing to appear.

So I too am very sad that US-sourced kit is so much more expensive for us, but I don't think it's never a good option.

 

[KrisBee]

@anmnz Out of interest what rate of customs duty did you pay? You do need to ensure goods are marked correctly to avoid paying the wrong customs rate and of course 20% VAT is calculated on goods + shipping + duty.

So, as you say, they are not the bargains they might have been if your were US based. But if "availability" is the reason for the purchase then it's an option if your prepared for the possible customs hassle.

 

[anmnz]

A good rule of thumb for me has been 1USD list price on eBay costs me 1GBP all-in, delivered. So something like 30% for taxes and shipping. A bit more for bulky items.

Obviously that's a lot, and is probably ridiculous for stuff that's freely available in the UK/EU. And YMMV anyway.

 

[NJMorf]

Also whenever I've seen someone on here say "X is selling server Y super cheap right now", it's never been anything like as cheap in the UK, even for big multinationals like Dell, HP, Lenovo. The best deals don't seem to come to the UK (and leaving the EU will probably make it worse).

 

[Inxsible]

Also whenever I've seen someone on here say "X is selling server Y super cheap right now", it's never been anything like as cheap in the UK, even for big multinationals like Dell, HP, Lenovo. The best deals don't seem to come to the UK (and leaving the EU will probably make it worse).

BREXIT !!! Yeaaaaa !