First FreeNAS Build, some questions about PSU and tips whether doing right

[HoMS87]

Hello FreeNAS community. I already read through the Building guides and hardware recommendations. That's how I came to the following build:

• Case: Fractal Design Node 804
• Mainboard: SuperMicro X10SLH-F
• RAM: 32GB Micron MT18KSF1G72AZ-1G6E1ZF
• CPU: Intel i3-4330
• HDD's: 6x Western Digital 4GB WD40EFRX
• SSD: WD Green 120GB SSD M.2 2280 SATA for FreeNAS
• USB 3.0 to SSD Case: ICY BOX IB-1812-C31 SSD M.2 SATA Case
• PSU: Seasonic Focus Plus 550W Gold
• Cooling: 3x120mm fan in case. For the CPU Noctua NH-L9x65

The Forum already helped much with searching and finding the right parts. In the beginning I wanted to start with consumer Hardware, but while reading you already changed my mind and I switched to used Server grad Hardware. That's no so much more expensive but much more reliable.

I will order the parts in the next months piece by piece, starting with the components that i need to only install FreeNas, so everything except the HDD's.

I plan to use the system as media server for my movie collection and backup-server for my pictures and documents. Only 1 user.
In the future I Maybe want to add GitLab for a private Software Project.
Do you think for this the build is OK? Are there any suggestions for optimization or where to buy good and cheap used hardware (shop has to deliver to germany^^)?

I appreciate your comments and I wish you a good Weekend ;)

 

[Ericloewe]

PSU: thats my current big questionmark. I read that you recommend PSUs from Seasonic, e.g. the g450. That's not very cheap with around 100€. Is there a cheaper alternatice e.g. LC-Power? The other question: The board has a 8-pin cpu power connector and most PSUs only have 4pin. Is that enough for the planned i3 or do i have to buy one with 8pin cpu power?

The cheapest units you should consider are Seasonic Focus and Corsair RM. As for CPU power, any vaguely-decent PSU has either an eight-pin connector or two four-pin connectors that can be combined to make the larger one.

 

[Stevie_1der]

The Seasonic G-450 is outdated and not built anymore, that could be the reason for the high price.

Instead, have a look at the Seasonic Focus Plus Gold 550W ATX 2.4 (SSR-550FX), available for around 80€ at Amazon Germany.
This has very good reviews

 

[Yorick]

I’m in that Node 804, take a look at my .sig for the PSU. Modular will help you if you have drives that use 3.3V for power down. You can just pop the 3.3V pin out on the connector towards the PSU, wrap it in electrical tape. Also, having fewer cables “fly about” in a small chassis makes it easier to work in there.

 

[artlessknave]

upgrade of RAID volume is not possible

zfs doesn't use "RAID volumes", and "upgrade" doesn't exactly apply (you can upgrade the zfs version of a pool). the terminology for zfs is different, and it's usually less confusing to use the correct ones. you cannot (currently) attach drives to expand a raidz vdev, but you can attach more raidz vdev's to expand a pool, or replace all the drives with bigger drives to expand the vdev capacity.
if 6 drives is possible you should get 6 drives. a 6x3TB raidz2 gives you more space than a 4x4TB raidz2
the nod304 has 8 3.5" drive bays. you could get an HBA for fairly cheap and go for 8 drives instead of finding out in a year that you want 8 drives instead of 6 and flounder about trying to figure out how to change your raidz.

SSD: 120GB HP EX900 M.2 2280 PCIe for FreeNAS

a full pcie nvme SSD is kind of overkill for freenas system drive; if you got an HBA for your data drives, you could put one or 2 sata boot drives in the chassis instead.

ICY BOX PCIe Card for SSD

many of these things are of...questionable quality.

should i better start with the full 32gb on the board

more RAM will always be better; if it fits into your budget max it out.

 

[HoMS87]

Thx for your comments :)
I think I will take the Seasonic Focus 450 Watt (SSR-450FM). I can get this for 60€. It only has 4 SATA Connectors but I can use adaptors for the molex connectors. Or is that a bad idea? Until now it went fine for every normal PC I built ^^

zfs doesn't use "RAID volumes", and "upgrade" doesn't exactly apply (you can upgrade the zfs version of a pool). the terminology for zfs is different, and it's usually less confusing to use the correct ones. you cannot (currently) attach drives to expand a raidz vdev, but you can attach more raidz vdev's to expand a pool, or replace all the drives with bigger drives to expand the vdev capacity.
if 6 drives is possible you should get 6 drives. a 6x3TB raidz2 gives you more space than a 4x4TB raidz2
the nod304 has 8 3.5" drive bays. you could get an HBA for fairly cheap and go for 8 drives instead of finding out in a year that you want 8 drives instead of 6 and flounder about trying to figure out how to change your raidz.

Yes sry for the wrong terminology. I was planning to use raidz1. The 3tb drives are not much cheaper than the 4tb ones. That's why I want to use the 4tb. Maybe 6x4tb instead of 4x4tb. Therefor i have to save Money a Little bit longer. But then I have enough space for the next years.
As I already bought the board the node 304 is out of Question because it only supports miniITX and the board is microATX.

a full pcie nvme SSD is kind of overkill for freenas system drive; if you got an HBA for your data drives, you could put one or 2 sata boot drives in the chassis instead.

I have chosen this ssd because ist not so expensive (ca 30€) and i don't want to waste another SATA port for an SATA M.2. The board itself has no M.2 connector. The icy box PCIe Card seems to be not sooo bad according to Reviews. I will give it a try :D

For the RAM I will look how much Money I've got after everything else. For first playing around with one test hdd and FreeNAS 16GB is enough I think.

 

[Ericloewe]

many of these things are of...questionable quality.

Should be fine. They're fairly reputable and the product is hard to get wrong. Any professional PCB designer should be capable of designing one in under an hour.

 

[artlessknave]

raidz1

it's extremely inadvisable to use raidz1 for data you care about unless you know what you are doing, understand all it's risks, and have at least one backup solution (RAID and raidz are not backups). for most people raidz2 is the go to choice.

SATA port for an SATA M.2

SATA ports and m.2 are different things.

 

[jgreco]

SATA ports and m.2 are different things.

You do need a SATA port if you get a SATA M.2 SSD. Whether that is something the mainboard mfr has pilfered from the PCH and wired direct to an M.2 socket, or an add-on adapter like an Addonics M.2 AD3M2SPX4, you do need to have the SATA controller available for it.

 

[artlessknave]

You do need a SATA port if you get a SATA M.2 SSD

eh, well, I meant physical sata port, which wouldn't be the same as the electrical controller sata port when using m.2. what I was getting at is that in this context a sata port and m.2 port are mutually redundant for actually connecting a drive. the statement I was trying to clarify seemed to be merging them together and didn't make sense to me, because it was talking about "wasting" a SATA port to connect a SATA m.2, of which this board only has 6.

 

[Yorick]

That IB-PCI209 does support one NVME passthrough. The other M.2 is for SATA and it’s true, there’s nothing gained in using that. In that case something like an Intel 340 would be a better choice.

Can the motherboard boot from NVME? I didn’t get a clear answer on that reading the manual and searching Google. I’d say “probably if on the latest BIOS version”, but to be sure, ask SM. Their support is pretty good about these things.

If you can’t boot from NVME then you’ll need to choose a USB 2 stick to boot from (mirrored, plan on failure once a year or so) or use a SATA port for an SSD boot device.

The advice to go raidz2 should be heeded, unless of course you are okay with the risk of losing your data, maybe because this is only the backup copy anyway.

While you cannot extend a raidz2 today, it’s expected you will be able to do so in future: Late 2020 into 2021, maybe. Which means you can do some capacity planning.

4 or 5 drives in raidz2, kept no more than 80% full because ZFS really struggles with performance once the file system fills up. Will 4.3 TiB be enough for today and the next two years? That’s a 4-drive raidz2 with 3TB drives, 80% full.
If you make it 5-drive, that’d be 6.5 TiB. 5-drive and 4TB drives, 8.7 TiB.

Consider WD Elements as well. The drive inside is HGST for the 8TB model, and that’s seriously good value. It does require you to disconnect the 3.3V pin so the drive spins up.

 

[jgreco]

eh, well, I meant physical sata port, which wouldn't be the same as the electrical controller sata port when using m.2. what I was getting at is that in this context a sata port and m.2 port are mutually redundant for actually connecting a drive. the statement I was trying to clarify seemed to be merging them together and didn't make sense to me, because it was talking about "wasting" a SATA port to connect a SATA m.2, of which this board only has 6.

You actually do use a physical SATA port when using an adapter. If the board does not have any on-board SATA M.2 slots, then the only way to use an M.2 SATA SSD would be using an adapter, and, therefore, a physical SATA port.

 

[artlessknave]

You actually do use a physical SATA port when using an adapter. If the board does not have any on-board SATA M.2 slots, then the only way to use an M.2 SATA SSD would be using an adapter, and, therefore, a physical SATA port.

granted, but using an adapter to kind of hack your m.2 into being connectable to SATA seems...silly, especially when part of my point was recommending using the SATA ports for boot and an HBA for data, since that board is really limited storage wise. I don't see the advantage to buying a PCIe adapter for m.2 instead of just buying say the well recomended m1015's and getting a sata or 2 for boot.
I, personally, would recommend different hardware, but I tend to just p2w my way through things cuz I like buying and building hardware but absolutely loathe crap that doesnt work or is incompatible because it's older and/or cheap (I prefer the most recent generation when possible).
ultimately, it is the builders choice, so all I try to do is point out things they might have trouble with, or seem to not give useful contributions.

 

[HoMS87]

Thank you very much for all your advise.
Why is it wrong to use the 6 SATA ports on the board for data? The PCIe Card m1015 you recommend is not very cheap. So buying a PCIe Card for m.2 ssd is much cheaper and if booting from it works, for me it's a good solution. The Card and ssd are less than 50€ together. So if it isn't completely wrong I will go with it :) As the board has more than only one PCIe Slot I can add an additional SATA controller later when it will be needed. But for my Needs now and for the next ears 6x4tb in a raidz2 should be enough.
It's not my first PC to build, but the first one for such a Special OS with Server Hardware. So general Building is completely clear :)
Another reason for choosing this PCIe ssd was because most cheap SATA SSDs below 120GB use MLC Memory which is not as durable as TLC ;)

 

[Ericloewe]

Why is it wrong to use the 6 SATA ports on the board for data?

It isn't, generally.

So buying a PCIe Card for m.2 ssd is much cheaper and if booting from it works, for me it's a good solution.

Make sure the M.2 SSD is PCIe and not SATA.

 

[HoMS87]

Make sure the M.2 SSD is PCIe and not SATA.

It is ;)

 

[artlessknave]

Why is it wrong to use the 6 SATA ports on the board for data?

it's not wrong, it's just not what I would recommend. ultimately it's your build and budget, so it's your choice, I was just trying to convey the reasons I don't think it's as good an option so you can decide if you still like the path you've chosen.

 

[HoMS87]

Ok, but at the moment I don't understand what would be the benefit of using a PCIe controller instead of the on board controller. Better data throughput? Or better reliability?

 

[Evertb1]

Ok, but at the moment I don't understand what would be the benefit of using a PCIe controller instead of the on board controller. Better data throughput? Or better reliability?

As long as the motherboard is of a reputable brand (and yours is) you should not have to worry about the onboard Sata controller. Only when you run short of Sata connections you would be better of with a good HBA flashed to IT mode and use that for your storage drives. There are plenty of decent HBA's to find on ebay etc. for fairly modest prices. New as well as used. Past year I found some brand new Dell Perc H310's for 35 euro's each. So you do have options without breaking the bank.

 

[HoMS87]

OK, thx for clarification
So I'm going to order most of the parts this week. But instead of the seasonic focus gold 450w I will use the one with 550w because of the 6 SATA connectors instead of 4.
If I want to add more drives in the future I can use the 3 molex connectors with adaptors.