Hi again,
I've finally (mostly) made up my mind about my first FreeNAS build. I have ordered the mainboard and the memory, but would like some final input on the rest before I go ahead and place the order.
Objectives:
The main objective is to ensure that my data is safe, so top level performance is not a requirement. Energy efficiency is, however, important. I would also like to keep the build as small as and silent possible, but not if it affects reliability/longevity due to increased temperatures. A secondary objective is use the FreeNAS as a datastore for my vmWare ESXi server (mostly to make backups of my VMs a little easier). Again, performance does not need to be stellar as my VMs are not used for anything that requires high speed I/O.
The build:
Thanks!
I've finally (mostly) made up my mind about my first FreeNAS build. I have ordered the mainboard and the memory, but would like some final input on the rest before I go ahead and place the order.
Objectives:
The main objective is to ensure that my data is safe, so top level performance is not a requirement. Energy efficiency is, however, important. I would also like to keep the build as small as and silent possible, but not if it affects reliability/longevity due to increased temperatures. A secondary objective is use the FreeNAS as a datastore for my vmWare ESXi server (mostly to make backups of my VMs a little easier). Again, performance does not need to be stellar as my VMs are not used for anything that requires high speed I/O.
The build:
- SuperMicro A2SDi-8C-HLN4F (Atom C3758 8-core 25W 12xSATA 4xDDR4 4xGbE mini-ITX) (already ordered)
- 1x Samsung 16GB DDR4 REG ECC 2666MHz x4 SR (already ordered)
- Fractal Design Node 304
- Seasonic FOCUS+ 550W Gold
- 2x WD Red 6TB (storage, ZFS, mirrored, to be upgraded to 3x at a later stage)
- Kingston UV500 120GB M.2 SSD (SUV500M8/120G) (boot disk)
- Lenovo (IBM) N2125 SAS/SATA HBA (for backup to an external SAS cabinet, possibly to be rotated off site)
- PSU Sizing - Using jgreco's calculation model, I end up at approximately 335 W for the build (calculating on 6 drives and 2 fans) which would suggest a 335 * 1.25 = 420 W PSU. I would like to use a high quality PSU like Seasonic, but Seasonic does not make FOCUS+ models less than 550W. Would you go with the 550W PSU or select a smaller PSU from some other brand? In the latter case, from which brand?
- Boot drive - Is the Kingston UV500 a decent boot device? The case only has 6 slots for drives, so I would really like to use an M.2 device and save the slots for data drives. An option could be a SATA DOM, but I find SuperDOM drives ridiculously expensive compared to their capacity.
- Anything else I should consider?
Thanks!