First NAS System

[SearchEngine27]

So I took a look at the PDF for "FreeNAS Community Hardware Guide" to get me started, and I came up with a list of things to buy, but I must admit I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to hardware (and in the case of NAS, software as well). And seeing as how expensive this whole endeavor is turning out to be, I was hoping anyone could give me a second opinion before I dive in, wallet first.

My usecase is mostly media servicing - I have a hard drive full of movies and TV shows right now that I've backed up onto a single drive, which comes in handy instead of swapping around DVDs all the time, and if a DVD gets scratched or I lose it then no big deal because I have it saved anyway. I'd like to host this on a NAS for two reasons. Firstly, the collection grows the longer I'm alive. And secondly, the system I host this on is a bit older, and I'd like some redundancy in case the single drive all this is on fails, so I don't have to spend a good month re-backing up all the data on it if it does.

I thought I could repurpose the media machine I'm currently using, with a few hardware upgrades (mostly drives), but the guide kind of indicates that's a terrible idea. But on that note, the Amazon shopping cart I've assembled has a hefty price tag now, and I'd like to avoid the hassle of negotiating a return just because I didn't buy the right hardware. Any help would be appreciated.

The only thing Ive absolutely settled on, is essentially the drives themselves:
- WD Red 4TB NAS Hard Drive - 5400 RPM Class, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache, 3.5" - WD40EFRX
- RELPER 6pcs SATA III 6.0 Gbps Cable with Locking Latch (blue)
And, to suit my purposes, I was thinking 6 drives in total - 4 for capacity and speed, and 2 for data redundancy.

For cases, this might sound trivial, but does anyone know a good case that's expansion-friendly? The guide even mentions it, but there aren't a lot of NAS friendly cases around. The core of this, is I just want to make sure I'm not buying a new case in 3 years when I learn something new I don't know now, and it requires extra space. I found:
- Silverstone Technology CS380B Silverstone DIY ATX NAS Storage Case with Hot Swap Cases
which has more drive capacity than I'm currently looking for (6), plus an extra 4 bays (if I'm counting correctly) if I decide to expand in the future.
Alternatively, I found
- Thermaltake Core V21 SPCC Micro ATX, Mini ITX Cube Gaming Computer Case Chassis, Small Form Factor Builds, 200mm Front Fan Pre-installed, CA-1D5-00S1WN-00
which is a gaming case (sure), but is appealing because you I can stack these up in a modular fashion for exactly how much space I need. Plus it's cheap for each case-expansion, versus buying a whole new case, or god forbid, server rack + server(s).

As far as I understand it, the motherboard is the most important thing for building a NAS. Which, admittedly, I read the guide and from the type that sounded most applicable to me, I kind of picked (almost at random) two boards that seemed appropriate. Between the two, I'm trying to trade off future drive expansions via SATA slots, versus lower SATA slots and higher RAM. So both boards have more SATA than I need for the 6 drives I want to buy (one MOBO has 8, the other 14), but I'm fuzzy on how much processing power and RAM I will need for video transcoding (or even what that really means and how it affects me streaming video off the NAS). I saw that 16GB is recommended for a media NAS, and both meet that with room to spare (one maxes out at 32GB, the other at 64GB). I'm focusing on this closely because of price (obviously), but more specifically price with regards to upgrading later - I understand that when picking hardware for a NAS it's very important to leave room for expansion later. I just am afraid of going too small on the amount of room I'm leaving for expansion, and then I'll end up either having to 'suffer' (in quotes because I don't know what future me knows) the smaller system I've built, or just outright spend another $2k+ on a brand new NAS because my old system just can't cut it.

So the two boards have different chipsets and pins for RAM, so it ends up being different everything else. The first is:
- Supermicro Micro ATX DDR4 LGA 1151 Motherboards X11SSM-F-O (maxes out at 64GB of RAM, 8 drive slots)
- 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4-2133MHz PC4-17000 ECC UDIMM 2Rx8 1.2V Unbuffered Memory for Server/Workstation
- Intel Core i5-9600K Desktop Processor 6 Cores up to 4.6 GHz Turbo Unlocked LGA1151 300 Series 95W
subtotal: $872.97

or the second is:
- SUPERMICRO X10SL7-F Server Motherboard - Intel C222 Chipset - Socket H3 LGA-1150 (maxes out at 32GB of RAM, and 14 drive slots)
- Intel BX80646E31220V3 Xeon E3-1220V3 Haswell 3.1GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1150 80W Quad-Core Server Processor
- 16GB kit (8GBx2) DDR3 PC3-14900 DESKTOP Memory Modules (240-pin DIMM, 1866MHz) Genuine A-Tech Brand (I guess this is the minimum amount for a media NAS)
subtotal: $633.79

Again, I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to hardware in general, even more when it comes to server hardware, and I have very little understanding of how a NAS needs to work to fulfill my needs, so any help at all would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Bozon]

Quick comment on the case
- Silverstone Technology CS380B Silverstone DIY ATX NAS Storage Case with Hot Swap Cases

Maybe you missed it but if you scroll down on the page it has a chart of all Silverstone NAS cases for comparison that says it has
0 2.5 bays
8 3.5 bays ( all hot swap )
2 5.25 bays

I believe your memory is wrong for this card X11SSM-F. It requires UDIMM’s not RDIMM. Which cost more.

Memory Capacity

• 64GB Unbuffered ECC UDIMM, DDR4-2400MHz, in 4 DIMM slots

Memory Type

• 2400/2133/1866/1600MHz ECC DDR4 SDRAM 72-bit, 288-pin (UDIMM) gold-plated DIMMs

the info is found here:
https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C236_C232/X11SSL-F.cfm

 

[SearchEngine27]

For the case, I just round up to 10 bays because I can just put a 5.25 -> 3.5 adapter to mount an additional 2 drives if I wanted to.

I updated my original post with a new two sticks of RAM with UDIMM for the LGA1151 combo, based on what you said. And you were right about the price - it is more expensive.

 

[microserf]

Are you planning on running a Plex jail?

https://www.ixsystems.com/documentation/freenas/11.2/plugins.html

If so, decide what you're going to be up to:

https://support.plex.tv/articles/201774043-what-kind-of-cpu-do-i-need-for-my-server/

Then keep the passmark score in mind when looking for a CPU that's compatible with the board you choose. The X11SSM-F-O is not compatible with desktop parts like the i5 (or i7s and i9s). Some i3, Celeron, and Pentium CPUs will work.

 

[Bozon]

What is typically done is that the 3.5 bays are used for the data drives and you use the other bays for the boot drive(s) SSD's

 

[SearchEngine27]

I have a regular desktop HDD (like 350GB or so) for the boot drive. I wasn't really concerned about the boot drive (should I be?).

I checked out the link microserf. That's a good laymen way to explain it. But are you suggesting the i5 I thought would work, won't? i checked out the microsystem site for the board, and it seemed to suggest an i7 would, but I guess it's true I didn't see i5. I think lower end would probably work for me, so I'll only be streaming over local network. I'll upgrade my CPU later if I want to do remote streaming.

 

[rvassar]

That i5 CPU does not support ECC memory. The i5's and i7's generally do not. Oddly enough many of the i3's do support ECC if they're paired with a chip set that supports it.

On Edit: The desktop chips dedicate a lot of transistor count to their onboard GPU's, which serve no purpose in FreeNAS. So people generally prefer Xeon's.

 

[Bozon]

I have a regular desktop HDD (like 350GB or so) for the boot drive. I wasn't really concerned about the boot drive (should I be?).

I checked out the link microserf. That's a good laymen way to explain it. But are you suggesting the i5 I thought would work, won't? i checked out the microsystem site for the board, and it seemed to suggest an i7 would, but I guess it's true I didn't see i5. I think lower end would probably work for me, so I'll only be streaming over local network. I'll upgrade my CPU later if I want to do remote streaming.

You will find that this group worries about everything, so you should think about mirroring it for safety. I bought used 80 gig Intel SSD's on ebay for 30. Some people just recommend using flash drives that are 16 gigs. You only need 16 gigs minimum for a boot drive. Since 30 is about what a good flash drive would cost, it seems like a good idea to use the better tech.

Also use RaidZ2 or RaidZ3 because RaidZ1 isn't good enough now because of the length of time to rebuild a drive.

Check the hardware guide again they recommend some processors with good, better, and best.

 

[microserf]

I have a regular desktop HDD (like 350GB or so) for the boot drive. I wasn't really concerned about the boot drive (should I be?).

You can boot from USB flash drive, SSD/HDD, or SATADOM. USB flash drives have fallen out of favour because they generally suck at reliability. An SSD or HDD is fine as a boot drive and really only needs to be 30-60GB. A SATADOM is a small SSD that plugs directly into the motherboard. The yellow/gold SATA looking connectors on SuperMicro motherboards are what you'd plug it into. The power connection is integrated.

If your boot drive fails, you will feel your heart beat faster. This will be followed by sweating. If you have not backed up your configuration settings:

https://www.ixsystems.com/documentation/freenas/11.2/system.html#general

the sweating may be followed by deep sadness. You will then come to this forum asking for help and will be told about importing a pool:

https://www.ixsystems.com/documentation/freenas/11.2/storage.html#importing-a-pool

If you encrypted your pool, did not backup the key:

https://www.ixsystems.com/documentation/freenas/11.2/storage.html#managing-encrypted-pools

and reach this point, you will begin to cry/smoke/drink. Once recovered, you will come back to the forum to request more help. You will be told, "it's time to start fresh and restore from backups." If you do not have backups, we may not hear from you again.

In an effort to avoid all of this, many people mirror their boot device:

https://www.ixsystems.com/documentation/freenas/11.2/system.html#mirroring-the-boot-device

If one boot device fails, your system boots from the second device. The failed device can then be replaced. This does not mean that you do not back up your configuration.

I checked out the link microserf. That's a good laymen way to explain it. But are you suggesting the i5 I thought would work, won't? i checked out the microsystem site for the board, and it seemed to suggest an i7 would, but I guess it's true I didn't see i5. I think lower end would probably work for me, so I'll only be streaming over local network. I'll upgrade my CPU later if I want to do remote streaming.

As rvassar said, the i5 does not support ECC RAM. The motherboard requires a CPU that does. ECC RAM is recommended by most users.

When streaming locally with Plex, you can still end up transcoding. You're in for a world of hurt if you have 4K content. Otherwise, just keep in mind that wireless devices in the house will probably end up with the Plex app installed and they tend to trigger transcoding. There are various ways to address this and many here have much more familiarity with doing so than I.

Also keep in mind that the FreeNAS Mini is always an option:
https://freenas.org/freenas-mini/

EDIT to add:
The FreeNAS mini and mini XL are under-powered for transcoding but give you a supported package to put drives into.

but I'm fuzzy on how much processing power and RAM I will need for video transcoding (or even what that really means and how it affects me streaming video off the NAS).

If you're using FreeNAS as Network Attached Storage without bells and whistles, you're just serving files and not transcoding the video. For example, assuming you're running Windows, setting up the SMB service on FreeNAS to provide a Microsoft Windows share holding your video files lets you access them on the LAN in the same way sharing the HDD in your current PC would.

https://www.ixsystems.com/documentation/freenas/11.2/sharing.html#windows-smb-shares

The player - TV, software, media device, PC, etc. - would read the file and determine how to play it back. The player would perform any transcoding required, not FreeNAS.

 

[SearchEngine27]

OK, so I've refined my list a little bit further. It's sounding like this is what I'm getting (so far):

• - Kingston A400 SSD 120GB SATA 3 2.5” Solid State Drive SA400S37/120G - Increase Performance
  • x2 for boot drives
  • There was a smaller SSD on Amazon but roughly half the reviews are that it's incredibly unreliable, and this is only $10/per more
  • I only very briefly read about the SATADOM, but from what I read, it's smaller and cheaper because it's less reliable, which is why I went with SSD
• Intel Xeon E3-1270 Processors BX80677E31270V6
  • Honestly, just found a cheaper Xeon processor that supported ECC, didn't have any graphics, and was in the 1200 series of Xeon, so I'm not overly preferential to CPU if anyone thinks there is something better
  • Also supports the max RAM of the MOBO
• 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4-2133MHz PC4-17000 ECC UDIMM 2Rx8 1.2V Unbuffered Memory for Server/Workstation
• Supermicro Micro ATX DDR4 LGA 1151 Motherboards X11SSM-F-O
• Silverstone Technology CS380B Silverstone DIY ATX NAS Storage Case with Hot Swap Cases
• WD Red 4TB NAS Hard Drive - 5400 RPM Class, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache, 3.5" - WD40EFRX (x6)
• RELPER 6pcs SATA III 6.0 Gbps Cable with Locking Latch (blue) (x6)

totaling: $1876.44

But with that in mind, I'm kind of just 'flipping a coin', so to speak, between the 32GB MOBO combo with more SATA expansion capacity, versus this 64GB X11SSM-F-O MOBO with 8 SATA. Both are more SATA than I need, for sure. But what is more likely: I'll want to upgrade memory? or capacity/redundancy/retrieval speed with more drives? The above I chose for memory because I figured 6 drives is probably sufficient for a long time (but then, first NAS, so who knows), but the other X10SL7-F would give me more room to add drives later without buying a whole new MOBO+CPU combo.
EDIT: on that point, actually, now I'm noticing with the two boot SSDs, that now my mobo will be at max capacity from the getgo - with 6 HDDs for the NAS, 2 for the boot, 8 max for the mobo. I am running a single 2TB drive for my media now, so clearly 6x4TB (data distributed among them obviously) will be a huge amount more. But the caveat is that historically I've always degraded quality of videos to 80 percent (max) or lower of the original content to save space. The point with the NAS is now I should be able to pull content off of DVDs at full quality (4k included), so I'm not 100 percent sure how much space I will use changing my content storage scheme.

Also keep in mind that the FreeNAS Mini is always an option:
https://freenas.org/freenas-mini/

EDIT to add:
The FreeNAS mini and mini XL are under-powered for transcoding but give you a supported package to put drives into.

I did originally look at the 'pre-packaged' solutions, but it seemed as they weren't given overwhelmingly positive reviews. Not bad reviews, just not good enough for me to want to spend the exact same amount of money for something that probably won't be 100 percent what I want. Which I realize probably sounds ironic because I don't 100 percent even know what I'm looking for (welcome to my mind).

If you're using FreeNAS as Network Attached Storage without bells and whistles, you're just serving files and not transcoding the video. For example, assuming you're running Windows, setting up the SMB service on FreeNAS to provide a Microsoft Windows share holding your video files lets you access them on the LAN in the same way sharing the HDD in your current PC would.

https://www.ixsystems.com/documentation/freenas/11.2/sharing.html#windows-smb-shares

The player - TV, software, media device, PC, etc. - would read the file and determine how to play it back. The player would perform any transcoding required, not FreeNAS.

Well now I'm a bit more confused. I do get that FreeNAS (the OS) doesn't do the transcoding, but I was under the impression the system running FreeNAS would need to perform that operation (hence the CPU/Memory that needs to be able to perform the task). Wouldn't Plex (for example) be the software that ends up doing the transcoding on the system that is hosted by FreeNAS?

 

[Apollo]

OK, so I've refined my list a little bit further. It's sounding like this is what I'm getting (so far):

• - Kingston A400 SSD 120GB SATA 3 2.5” Solid State Drive SA400S37/120G - Increase Performance
  • x2 for boot drives
  • There was a smaller SSD on Amazon but roughly half the reviews are that it's incredibly unreliable, and this is only $10/per more
  • I only very briefly read about the SATADOM, but from what I read, it's smaller and cheaper because it's less reliable, which is why I went with SSD
• Intel Xeon E3-1270 Processors BX80677E31270V6
  • 
    

    [*]Honestly, just found a cheaper Xeon processor that supported ECC, didn't have any graphics, and was in the 1200 series of Xeon, so I'm not overly preferential to CPU if anyone thinks there is something better

  • No need for Video support on CPU die. Supermicro takes care of that throught he IPMI interface ( Video is only used when you need to access the shell during first install or to check the status of the network assignements. Only useful during initial install and when Web GUI fails to open. Other than that

• • it is not necessary.
    
    
    
  • Also supports the max RAM of the MOBO
• 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4-2133MHz PC4-17000 ECC UDIMM 2Rx8 1.2V Unbuffered Memory for Server/Workstation
• Supermicro Micro ATX DDR4 LGA 1151 Motherboards X11SSM-F-O
• Silverstone Technology CS380B Silverstone DIY ATX NAS Storage Case with Hot Swap Cases
• WD Red 4TB NAS Hard Drive - 5400 RPM Class, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache, 3.5" - WD40EFRX (x6)
• RELPER 6pcs SATA III 6.0 Gbps Cable with Locking Latch (blue) (x6)

totaling: $1876.44

WD RED 4TB aren't bad. If you want to store 4K video, some can easyly reach 50GB, you have to ask yourself how many of them will you require.

But with that in mind, I'm kind of just 'flipping a coin', so to speak, between the 32GB MOBO combo with more SATA expansion capacity, versus this 64GB X11SSM-F-O MOBO with 8 SATA. Both are more SATA than I need, for sure. But what is more likely: I'll want to upgrade memory? or capacity/redundancy/retrieval speed with more drives? The above I chose for memory because I figured 6 drives is probably sufficient for a long time (but then, first NAS, so who knows), but the other X10SL7-F would give me more room to add drives later without buying a whole new MOBO+CPU combo.

I would rather go with 64GB memory support. With early stage of Freenas 12.2 Beta, my Xeon system having only 32GB was shutting down on it's own due to the swap being exhausted. I have upgraded to a AMD Threadripper 1900x with 80GB memory and have the ability of extending it to 128GB.
The swap being used and exhausted no longer happen on Freenas 12.2 Release and that might be all there is to fix mix XEON issue.
You need to keep in mind the more VM you have, the more CPU and RAM you will need. Jails aren't too bad through.
You might find a better solution getting an HBA to increase your drive count capability.

EDIT: on that point, actually, now I'm noticing with the two boot SSDs, that now my mobo will be at max capacity from the getgo - with 6 HDDs for the NAS, 2 for the boot, 8 max for the mobo. I am running a single 2TB drive for my media now, so clearly 6x4TB (data distributed among them obviously) will be a huge amount more. But the caveat is that historically I've always degraded quality of videos to 80 percent (max) or lower of the original content to save space. The point with the NAS is now I should be able to pull content off of DVDs at full quality (4k included), so I'm not 100 percent sure how much space I will use changing my content storage scheme.

The second SSD for boot drive redundancy shouldn't be really needed. Nice though but with the Kingston I haven't had bad surprises.

Well now I'm a bit more confused. I do get that FreeNAS (the OS) doesn't do the transcoding, but I was under the impression the system running FreeNAS would need to perform that operation (hence the CPU/Memory that needs to be able to perform the task). Wouldn't Plex (for example) be the software that ends up doing the transcoding on the system that is hosted by FreeNAS?

They are only talking about Freenas as a file server.
On top of that Freenas is designed to support Jails and VM which will allow you to expand its capability beyond the simplest file server
Plex as a plugin or a jail will take care of that.

 

[microserf]

Let's start here:

Well now I'm a bit more confused. I do get that FreeNAS (the OS) doesn't do the transcoding, but I was under the impression the system running FreeNAS would need to perform that operation (hence the CPU/Memory that needs to be able to perform the task). Wouldn't Plex (for example) be the software that ends up doing the transcoding on the system that is hosted by FreeNAS?

I'm going to gloss over a few things. FreeNAS is Network Attached Storage using one particular file system - ZFS.

It has a web interface to configure your basic system settings, networking, storage, and file services. None of the file services particularly care about the type of files you have. They're files. Blocks of data. While the storage system (ZFS) very much cares about each and every block it's holding, that's all it cares about. Reading from and writing to that storage over the network on a day-to-day basis is where your file services come in.

File services, like SMB, send and receive. They retrieve files from storage and send them to a network client or they receive files from a client and write them to storage. Generally speaking, you're going to set up at least one of these. File services do not transcode video.

Many people stop here and happily use their NAS.

However, FreeNAS has a few additional features that let you extend the basic functionality of a NAS - jails, plugins, and Virtual Machines. Jails attempt to provide an isolated environment within FreeBSD/FreeNAS to run an application. Plugins are pre-configured jails that have a popular application installed. Plex is available as a plugin but it is also possible to install it into an empty jail or Virtual Machine on your own. Plugins are easy to install.

If you install Plex on the FreeNAS machine and use it to stream video to network Plex clients, the machine running FreeNAS will perform any transcoding tasks required. I originally asked if you intended to install Plex because many people using FreeNAS to store media collections do. If they're unaware of it and the heftier performance requirements, they discover them after buying a machine that is capable of NAS duties but not able to perform well as a media server.

That's the long-winded explanation preceding the original question: Do you intend to install Plex?

Perhaps it would have been better to ask: How do you intend to watch your videos? With what? How are you doing it now?

 

[SearchEngine27]

WD RED 4TB aren't bad. If you want to store 4K video, some can easyly reach 50GB, you have to ask yourself how many of them will you require.

It's hard to say. I only just got a 4k TV and 4k player last year, so my 4k DVD collection is only in like the 14-20 DVDs range. Plus, not all movies are released in 4K in the first place. Even at that, I just learned this week that most 4k DVDs are actually ripoffs that are 2k quality that are upscaled (and sadly, probably around half of my current collection are of the fake-4k variety already). So it's hard to say what the trend will be for movie formats going forward into 2019 and beyond, but right now my 4k usage is a little lower. For TV shows, I don't think they sell in 4k, but I think its safe to say most I would buy in regular DVD format even if they did.

That's the long-winded explanation preceding the original question: Do you intend to install Plex?

Perhaps it would have been better to ask: How do you intend to watch your videos? With what? How are you doing it now?

I've heard Plex a few times, so I think I will be using Plex because I haven't heard anyone really mention that there could be something better, so it sounds good to me to try out.

Right now I'm using a small 'media machine'. A few years ago, I took an old Windows machine I wasn't using anymore, bought a small Nvidia graphics card with HDMI output and a 2TB WD Green hard drive in it. I have the HDMI cable from the old machine plugged straight into the TV from the NVidia graphics card. Then the stuff on the drive is content I pull off DVDs, and as I mentioned because of the limited drive space, I take it off the DVDs at max quality of 80 percent the original, or lower if it's a larger movie (or I don't think graphical quality is important for it, such as TV shows that are about the comedy rather than the graphical intensity). The 2TB drive still isn't full, but I attribute that to me not taking content off of all my DVDs if I don't want to or I'm too lazy to (especially not the 4k ones, because why bother if I'm just going to degrade the quality), and because the quality downgrade saves space as well even when I do pull content off the DVDs. The main reason I'm doing the NAS now, is because the machine recently blue-screened on me a few times, and I'd be really upset if I had to rescan all that content on a new drive if the existing drive died since it's a single point of failure (and in some cases where I lost the DVD or the DVDs were destroyed, I just wouldn't have the movie/TV show anymore). It's kind of a side-effect of getting a NAS, is that now I can put my 4K content on the NAS as well and start putting movies on there at 100 percent quality (or so I hope).

The TV on the other hand (the one I just recently got this past year) is a Samsung UN82MU8000FXZA 82" 4K UHD HDR Extreme Smart TV. I haven't gotten around to looking whether or not there is an app on the TV to connect to Plex, but I was already anticipating getting an Android-TV device to plug into my TV just in case because of hearing some other streaming apps not being support on Samsung (can't remember which ones, but it may be Plex, in which case I'll need to get the Android-TV).

I think the connection to the NAS will be over WIFI. Unfortunately the TV is a little big so moving it is non-trivial, and while I did have CAT-6A cable run around my house to a few places, when I did that I didn't have my TV at the time so my TV is in a ethernet-cableless spot. So it's either I figure out how to run cable to the spot my TV is in, move my TV to a cable-drop, or stream over WIFI (so I suspect this is where all the talk about video transcoding comes in).

 

[sremick]

While you might be ok with wifi to the TV (or whatever media box is connected to the TV, such as an Android TV device or Roku), I highly advise figuring out how to get network cable to the TV. There are just too many variables that can mess with wifi. I paid to have cables pulled to my TV wall, where I then rigged up a network switch to provide wired RJ45 connections to everything in my AV stack.

Plex is great. Be sure to over-engineer CPU and RAM to compensate for this if you plan to run Plex on the FreeNAS box itself as it's simpler to allow for transcoding. I advise running it in a custom jail vs. using the plugin. Upgrades and maintenance are easier, for the cost of learning a little bit of FreeBSD CLI.

 

[Apollo]

I have played content over Wifi from my main PC acting as a server to my laptop at max through put of 200Mbs on the Wifi side. No problem there. Mind you the laptop is about 10 m away.
Why don't you keep your Windows PC to run your TV over HDMI? If you have Plex client installed on it and Plex plugin or jail on Freenas, you are good to go.
Maybe you can use Android, but PC app is available free, which is not the case of Android.

 

[SearchEngine27]

While you might be ok with wifi to the TV (or whatever media box is connected to the TV, such as an Android TV device or Roku), I highly advise figuring out how to get network cable to the TV. There are just too many variables that can mess with wifi. I paid to have cables pulled to my TV wall, where I then rigged up a network switch to provide wired RJ45 connections to everything in my AV stack.

Plex is great. Be sure to over-engineer CPU and RAM to compensate for this if you plan to run Plex on the FreeNAS box itself as it's simpler to allow for transcoding. I advise running it in a custom jail vs. using the plugin. Upgrades and maintenance are easier, for the cost of learning a little bit of FreeBSD CLI.

Yea I'm still trying to work out my cable situation, whether or not I want to move the TV or run cables. I'm not in a huge rush to do it, because as I said before, most of my content is still 80 percent quality as a result of my current setup being extremely subpar, so over WIFI won't start to kill me until I start recopy content from my DVDs in full quality. I'll probably try out one of my 4K DVDs just to see how bad it is before I really make any decisions about the TV accesses the NAS over the network.

 

[SearchEngine27]

On a bit of a sidenote, I'm thinking about Raid-Z2 for the NAS. I just want to make sure I understand what that means.

If I understand it correctly, that means out of the 6x4TB drives, I will have (1-2/6)DriveEffiency*4TB = 16TB total NAS capacity, with 2 drive failure allowance, no read penalty but an increased write penalty because of parity calculation (which is all pretty much from wikipedia).

My question about the 'no read penalty', is what does that mean? Does that mean it reads off the NAS as fast as if I was reading the data off a remote hard drive? or read off the NAS as fast as if it was data on my own local hard drive? or read off the NAS at a faster rate than a local hard drive (but not faster than the network allows)? I read somewhere else that Raid 6 (which is similar to Raid-Z2?) has a read speed of N-2 of an individual dirve, or specifically in my case, 6-4=x4 the speed of an individual drive (which gets significantly slower if one drive were to fail and need replacement/rebuild). Is that correct?

 

[Apollo]

You want to read on ZFS. Especially this post:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

 

[sremick]

I wouldn't worry too much about HDD speeds. Your bottleneck by far will be your network. It'll easily be able to saturate gigabit ethernet, and your wifi will be a factor slower than that. With media streaming, random access and caching aren't things you need to be concerned about.

RAIDZ2 is definitely the way to go. I only have 6 drives as well, and it has kept me safe through some recent bumps. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Random idea to maybe toy with: go with the DS380B case instead, so you can have 8x RAIDZ2, with your SSDs tucked away inside, and get a SAS HBA card to get you your extra drive connectors. Then you're not limited by motherboards with 8 built-in SATA connectors and are free to get with with more RAM expandability or whatever else is important to you.

 

[SearchEngine27]

Good call on DS308B. I didn't even notice that it had extra drive space because I didn't even look at it since it was a mini-tower case. I just assumed "big case == big storage".

I also didn't know you could expand your SATA capacity with PCI-E with that SAS HBA suggestions, so that's really sweet! That eases my mind since the MOBO that I'm thinking about (the Supermicro Micro ATX DDR4 LGA 1151 Motherboards X11SSM-F-O) since it would be at max SATA capacity from the getgo with my 6 HDD and 2 SDD. Later on if I want to expand, it's nice to know my MOBO won't limit me.

I might end up getting more HDDs, since now I'm wondering if a global 16TB NAS capacity is enough for a media servicing NAS since I'm going to start hosting full quality content (ironic since I've been well under 2TB for years now on lower quality). I was reading that you want to start your NAS setup with the max number of drives you expect to use even if with a smaller disk size, since adding extra disks later is bad. So now I'm thinking 8x4TB drives to start out with, and I'll replace them with larger drives down the line if I need more space.

Other than that, I think the shopping list you've all helped me narrow down (https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/first-nas-system.72614/post-503211) is the way I'm going to go! Any last minute suggestions?

Otherwise, I appreciate all the help gentleman! I'm really glad I came here first since the original list I picked out wasn't what I needed, which would have been a big headache I'm sure.