FreeNAS build: case options

[ctor]

I plan to build a small, >= 8TB, low power/quiet, easy drive access NAS with device failure lights if possible, and have a few questions:

First of all, is this feasible for under $1k?
Second, have you heard of any good case options to accommodate this?

I'm going with a RAID z2 and want to use 2.5' drives because I've heard they have lower power consumption.. I still need to quantify this. Additionally, until I can set up a better option I will be making frequent read/writes to the NAS, but want to set up a wake on LAN solution to further conserve power in the near future. Will either of these situations affect the NAS negatively?

Cheers

EDIT:
Just saw this thread:
http://forums.freenas.org/threads/so-you-want-some-hardware-suggestions.12276/
I was thinking such a thing would be stickied. Will revise this post as appropriate.

 

[cyberjock]

You shouldn't blindly look at 2.5" drives because they are lower power. They also store less data. What you need to do is compare the number of disks you will need, the size of those disks, and the wattage for both 2.5" and 3.5" disks to figure out which is better.

AFAIK Wake-On-LAN doesn't work with FreeNAS at this time. I will tell you that power cycling the hard drives alot shortens their life more than leaving them on 24x7. Nobody seems to know why, just that this has been observed by a lot of people.

Under 1k is feasible if you want to go cheap. But you get what you pay for. If you want ECC RAM, good performance, Intel NIC, you may blow by that $1k budget quickly. My FreeNAS machine was $700 just for the motherboard($165), CPU($250ish) and RAM($300ish). But I have a system that will work for me for years to come, has ECC, etc. Going cheap may lead to tears later, so make sure if you choose to not go with recommended components like are mentioned in the hardware section stickies that you may be very sorry.

Many people try to go cheap, then find that their NIC isn't compatible, then their hard drives are too hot, etc. So be open to the prospect that something won't necessarily work out on your first build.

 

[ctor]

As a background, I currently use a 6TB RAID5 that rides on an integrated MOBO controller.

I built this thing in 2008 and the PC utilizing that MOBO (UD4P) is huge, power-hungry (750W PSU), and nearing end-of-life usefulness as a primary PC. It also operated as a web server, but I have migrated that duty to a raspberry pi. I have no use for upgrading the machine now, and I have migrated to doing all of my useful work on a laptop.
My hope is to migrate to a FreeNAS solution that will use much less power, much less physical space, and will provide the potential to expand to much more capacity without breaking the bank.

Is there a more direct path to achieving what I want? As the post title states, accessibility to the drives is also a big nice-to-have. I have not excluded the possibility of migrating the RAID to a new smaller and quieter machine if possible.

 

[cyberjock]

That motherboard is the same one my FreeNAS machine used until last month.

Your NICs ARE compatible. Adding an Intel NIC may help networks speeds if you want more than 90MB/sec. I couldn't get triple digit speeds with the onboard, but the Intel NIC I added quickly went over 110MB/sec.
Here's what I did..

1. Upgraded to the E5606 from my 920(for ECC support)
2. Dropped in the 3x4GB sticks of ECC RAM I had*

* - I did need to add more RAM when I had a 36TB RAIDZ3 pool, so I added an 8GB stick to the 12GB I had and performance was back up where I wanted it.

Poof, instant amazing server. It does draw more power than some ultra-efficient system, but it did an amazing job for me while saving me $800 in buying all new hardware. I upgraded not because of performance or power usage, but because I needed to go to ESXi.

In your shoes I'd setup the server with FreeNAS. It'll work as a great machine for now. Do NOT drop any money into it right now.

Later, get the cheapest CPU you can buy(from ebay perhaps) that supports ECC and put in 2x8GB ECC sticks of RAM. Any 1366 CPU you can buy will make ZFS rocket fast if you give it enough RAM. The fact that ZFS eats memory for breakfast makes the 6-RAM-slot 1366 boards an amazing choice for FreeNAS. 8GB sticks work well because you can, in theory, drop 48GB of RAM into that board. I didn't try using non-ECC memory with my Xeon CPU. So you might be able to buy the CPU one month and switch to ECC later.

Remember, 1366 is almost obsolete from a "technology" standpoint, so buying some of the old stuff is dirt cheap. It will eat about 30w more than a newer system, but to me its not a big deal considering how much you save by reusing old parts. I think my CPU was an e5606.

If you really feel the need to go Intel, the cards can be bought for $20-30 on ebay, newegg, amazon, etc. If you don't want to go ECC RAM(which I highly recommend for long term servers) then just reuse what you already have. :P

 

[titan_rw]

48 gigs of ram is hit and miss for support on 1366 boards. Some support it, some don't. I have a 1366 board (latest bios) running an i7-920 that doesn't work with 8 gig sticks. 24 gigs (4 gig sticks) is the most I can get into this. As I already have 6 sticks of 2 gig, it's not worth it to swap out all the ram.

If you have some 8 gig sticks you can test with first, then you can at least prove if your board will accept 48 gig in the end.

 

[cyberjock]

920 - http://ark.intel.com/products/37147/Intel-Core-i7-920-Processor-8M-Cache-2_66-GHz-4_80-GTs-Intel-QPI (notice the 24GB of RAM limit from Intel's docs)

e5606 - http://ark.intel.com/products/52583...Cache-2_13-GHz-4_80-GTs-Intel-QPI?wapkw=e5606 (notice the 288GB of RAM limit from Intel's docs).

I know I can put more than 32GB of RAM on my board.. I've done it. I had 44GB of RAM in my machine at one point. I'm just not sure what the upper limit is though. :)

I will say that if you need more than 48GB of RAM, you are probably looking a very very large zpool and wanting a dual processor with lots more RAM slots. Very few people need more than 32GB. But having the option if you want to do crazy/fun stuff with your zpool is still an option.

 

[titan_rw]

I know there's still a potential limitations of the board somewhere. I know some 1366 boards with a 920 cpu will run 48 gigs of ram. It was specific to the board.

 

[cyberjock]

Oh absolutely. I didn't mean for it to sound like I was telling you that you were wrong. If I gave the impression I was calling you out for being wrong I apologize. You may be wrong regarding my board, but I can hardly fault you because my board(one among many) works fine. I'm sure there are plenty of boards that won't let you do large quantities of RAM.

I'd guess that for the average moral, buying more than 8GB sticks of RAM is cost-prohibitive. If I remember correctly, once you hit 16GB sticks of DDR3 RAM you are forced to use Registered RAM(registered RAM deals with the capacitance of high RAM densities). Since Registered RAM isn't supported on my board, I assume that the de-facto limit is 48GB of RAM.