Hello everyone. I have a small home lab/home server environment in my house. I am kind of new to FreeNAS. I have it running on a microserver right now but as a backup server. Here are some images of what I am currently running. Basically, I am running out of space on the FreeNAS box so I decided since I am going to have to spend money anyway that I will do it right this time and migrate my DAS storage to a new FreeNAS storage server.
I am planning on purchasing a Dell R510 Gen II. Specs will be:
CPU: 2x Xeon X5675 3.06Ghz or 2x Xeon 5560 2.80Ghz (Not sure if the extra money for the 12-core is worth it/necessary)
RAM: 32 or 64GB DDR3 RAM 10600R
CONTROLLER CARD: H200 and I will have to watch a guide on how to flash it
HDDs: Going to use NAS drives. Was looking at WD Reds 3 or 4TB. Think I am going to need 10 but that’s part of one of my questions.
So this server will be my main storage array. It will be serving media for Plex and direct playback through shares. It will be hosting home folders for AD users (less than 10 users). It will also just be storing general data (application installs, drivers, music, etc. etc.) I have a few questions:
1. How does this build look? Should I spring for the higher core and RAM setup or am I overkilling it? Also, the R510 has two onboard Gbit NICS. Will that suffice or should I put in a Quad NIC card?
2. I read some of the material on this forum and went through the PowerPoint. I believe I understand everything (vdevs, zpools, etc.). I am still confused as to what would be the best setup for my use case. What would you guys recommend? Should I just run one large raid z2 or z3 array or do striped mirrored z2/z3 vdevs? Is raid z2 sufficient or should I be aiming for z3. Also, it seems like doing an SSD for ZIL might be unnecessary for what I am doing? Would you agree? Big thing here is my SA120 DAS RAID 6 array has 14.5 TB usable capacity so I need to at least have that same amount of higher.
3. With the NAS drives should I be spending the extra money to make sure they are 7200 rpm or will the 5400 rpm drives work for what I am doing?
4. I might move plex to a jail in FreeNAS. I am curious if there are others here who do this if they think it runs better from the NAS directly or from a separate machine. Currently I have a Windows Server 2016 VM running plex and other utilities (deluge, sickrage, etc.). I am wondering if I will see a performance difference if I have Plex running from the NAS directly compared to how I am doing it now?
Sorry for the long post just trying to get as much information as go into this upgrade. I appreciate your time and help.
I am planning on purchasing a Dell R510 Gen II. Specs will be:
CPU: 2x Xeon X5675 3.06Ghz or 2x Xeon 5560 2.80Ghz (Not sure if the extra money for the 12-core is worth it/necessary)
RAM: 32 or 64GB DDR3 RAM 10600R
CONTROLLER CARD: H200 and I will have to watch a guide on how to flash it
HDDs: Going to use NAS drives. Was looking at WD Reds 3 or 4TB. Think I am going to need 10 but that’s part of one of my questions.
So this server will be my main storage array. It will be serving media for Plex and direct playback through shares. It will be hosting home folders for AD users (less than 10 users). It will also just be storing general data (application installs, drivers, music, etc. etc.) I have a few questions:
1. How does this build look? Should I spring for the higher core and RAM setup or am I overkilling it? Also, the R510 has two onboard Gbit NICS. Will that suffice or should I put in a Quad NIC card?
2. I read some of the material on this forum and went through the PowerPoint. I believe I understand everything (vdevs, zpools, etc.). I am still confused as to what would be the best setup for my use case. What would you guys recommend? Should I just run one large raid z2 or z3 array or do striped mirrored z2/z3 vdevs? Is raid z2 sufficient or should I be aiming for z3. Also, it seems like doing an SSD for ZIL might be unnecessary for what I am doing? Would you agree? Big thing here is my SA120 DAS RAID 6 array has 14.5 TB usable capacity so I need to at least have that same amount of higher.
3. With the NAS drives should I be spending the extra money to make sure they are 7200 rpm or will the 5400 rpm drives work for what I am doing?
4. I might move plex to a jail in FreeNAS. I am curious if there are others here who do this if they think it runs better from the NAS directly or from a separate machine. Currently I have a Windows Server 2016 VM running plex and other utilities (deluge, sickrage, etc.). I am wondering if I will see a performance difference if I have Plex running from the NAS directly compared to how I am doing it now?
Sorry for the long post just trying to get as much information as go into this upgrade. I appreciate your time and help.