BUILD First NAS - Still a few questions left

[Cyberratchet]

Greetings everyone!

During the last few days, I was looking into different solutions to store a lot of data. I was thinking of using a RAID enclosure connected to my Netgear R7000 router, but in the end I need a standalone NAS solution.

My first thought was the ASRock Q1900-ITX , which by itself would have enough power for my need. However, there seem to be a few problems with this board, especially with its Realtek RTL8111GR Ethernet controller. The other “problem” is the lack of ECC RAM support.

The "best" SoC for my needs seems to be the ASRock C2550D4I, which supports ECC-RAM, a TDP of about 14 watt, but its a bit pricey.

My goals for this build:

• Low power consumption and noise
• Fast transfer rate over Ethernet
• Share 6 TB of available storage in my network (preferred RAID5), most likely with 3x3TB HDDs
• Run leightweight services like transmission, flexget or pishare
• Owncloud
• Maybe some light virtualization in the future

A have a few general questions about the potential build:

1. Is there a reason to still use WD Reds after tweaking WD Greens with WDIDLE3.exe, beside the warranty obviously? 3x3TB Greens save about 60€, which is almost the amount required for 8GB ECC RAM.
2. There would be times where I wouldn’t use the server at all. Is there a good method to save some power during these hours?
3. USB-sticks seem to be the preferred devices to install FreeNAS on. Small mSATA SSDs (32GB) are very cheap atm. Are there any benefits in using these instead? I read about L2ARC (tbh. I still have to read more about that feature), would I be able to use the same drive for the installation and L2ARC?
4. I thought a lot about PicoPSU (120 or 150 Watt Version). Does anyone have experience with these in a NAS with 3-6 HDDs (if I should extend the storage in the feature). This would eliminate the noise of a PSU and could potentially save a few Watts in comparison of a 300Watt ATX PSU.
5. This might sound a bit gimmicky, but does anyone have experience with a 3.5” slot card reader? I use my SD cards quite frequently and it would be nice to be able to save them directly from the NAS on its storage. Does FreeNAS support these devices?

I don’t have a complete build in mind right now, but the key components would be:

• ASRock C2550D4I
• 8 GB ECC RAM (Kingston KVR16E11/8 or an equivalent)
• 3x3TB HDD (WD Greens)
• 120/150 Watt PicoPSU (or 300Watt ATX)
• Fractal Design Node 304 (cheaper options) or SilverStone DS380

I probably have many new questions in the next days, so please be patient with me. Any advice for a (Free)NAS beginner? I am looking forward to your feedback :).

 

[SweetAndLow]

Motherboard is OK

Don't use raidz, you should use raidz2 with 4 disks and they should be 4TB each. This will give you ~7.2TiB and remember not to use more than 80% of that 7.2TiB.

Get a real power supply not that crappy one. Something like a seasonic 360 watt.

 

[marbus90]

Lenovo TS140 or Dell T20. Drop in another 8GB DIMM and done is your system for up to 4 HDDs. Costs usually less than the C2550D4I - the T20 with Xeon is maybe more on par with the C2750D4I but worth the euros.

SSD for boot media is preferable, but usually not feasible if you plan to upgrade to 6 HDDs later on.

 

[Bidule0hm]

1. Yes, TLER and lifespan rating.

2. It's not recommended to spin-down the drives or to shutdown the server regarding to the drives lifespan. Personally I set the limit to once a day, if you need to wake-up the server more than that it's better to let it on.

3. Yes, SSD are better than USB sticks (for the lifespan especially) but they are more expensive and use a SATA on the MB, this is why the USB sticks are generally prefered.

4. No, never, ever use these PSUs. You don't want noise (and fried drives...)? then use a good quality PSU (personally I recommend SeaSonic; note that on many of them the fan doesn't even spin a low load so they are effectively fanless...) ;)

5. I have no idea for this one, sorry.

As an aside I don't recommend RAID-Z1, see the link in my signature for more details.

 

[Ericloewe]

I'm sure that generic card readers will work, but you'd need CLI-fu to actually use them.

 

[Cyberratchet]

Thanks for all your replies!

At the moment I'm considering the Supermicro A1SAi-2550F , it seems like the AsRocks Marvel SATA controller uses a lot of power (AsRocks Idle 26W vs 17W), and I dont need more than 6 SATA ports. I have to further investigate the power consumption issue with the AsRock, I only found a German thread about that problem so far.

Lenovo TS140 or Dell T20. Drop in another 8GB DIMM and done is your system for up to 4 HDDs. Costs usually less than the C2550D4I - the T20 with Xeon is maybe more on par with the C2750D4I but worth the euros.

These 2 options sound quite promising, I'll keep them in mind.

I'm sure that generic card readers will work, but you'd need CLI-fu to actually use them.

Doesn't sound so nice, I'll probably buy a USB-adapter for my PC and transfer the media via the network.

3. Yes, SSD are better than USB sticks (for the lifespan especially) but they are more expensive and use a SATA on the MB, this is why the USB sticks are generally prefered.

I keep that in mind. I guess you can use 2 USB sticks and mirror them?

As an aside I don't recommend RAID-Z1, see the link in my signature for more details.

Don't use raidz, you should use raidz2 ...

I was under the impression that Raid-5 is a popular Raid mode. I read the article linked in Bidule0hms signature, but to be honest, I don't get the described problems. Yeah I'm aware of the fact that only a single drive can fail at one time to preserve data. But that’s the point of the whole system, use the least amount of drives to obtain some kind of failure safety.

 

[Ericloewe]

I was under the impression that Raid-5 is a popular Raid mode. I read the article linked in Bidule0hms signature, but to be honest, I don't get the described problems. Yeah I'm aware of the fact that only a single drive can fail at one time to preserve data. But that’s the point of the whole system, use the least amount of drives to obtain some kind of failure safety.

Popular != Safe

Basically, the problem is that any error that happens when a single drive is offline is uncorrectable - and the probability of this happening is rather high.

 

[Bidule0hm]

"I guess you can use 2 USB sticks and mirror them?" Yes, no problem ;)

Concerning the RAID5/RAID-Z1 thing the problem is like Ericloewe described it. If you have one drive fail then you replace it, then the RAID needs to resilver, well, if you don't have a second parity drive and a read error happens guess what the result is? corrupted data and it's not correctable because you don't have any parity to correct it. If it's just some error in a mp3 file, no big deal, but if it's in the ZFS metadata you can lose the whole pool... it's not very likely but I think the chances are high enough to be considered and use RAID-Z2 (or 3).