Freenas or not to Freenas

[Dochide]

I am looking for advice on whether I should make the plunge and start using freenas. I would of course have to buy the hardware and what not. But I want someone with hands on knowledge to tell me if it's what I want.

First off, what I need/want it for so you all can tell me if freenas will fill the slot. I need a place to store all my data that is safe, movies/songs/pictures/taxes/bills and so on, with at least 2 parities a.k.a. raid6 or raidz2 I believe. I need it to be able to transcode at least at 1080p 24-60fps for maybe two people. I need the transcoding to be done seamlessly with no technical expertise needed for the user on the client end, other than just loading an app or file. I need it to support as many formats audio and visually as possible. I want to be able to add drives or replace with larger drives without having to clear everything off first to do it, even if it's just one drive at a time, at get the extra space afforded by the addition. I want the system to be completely stable with little to no interference on my part. I may want to use it as an itunes server, personal cloud or backup. I would like it to be as simple as possible, but be able to grow as my knowledge grows.

I have built a few thousand windows pc's over the years and have run small business and personal file servers on the windows and novell platforms and experience with DOS 5 and up. I have ZERO linux experience. But I do have the time to learn the basics and troubleshoot as necessary and am comfortable with a command prompt. I also believe I have a good grip on pc hardware and it's compatibility.

The main reason for wanting to delve into Freenas is that I am disabled and I have a very short leash when it comes to cash. I can get a lot more bang for my buck with freenas, and am hoping that balances fairly against it's complexity.

So, knowing all that, should I go with Freenas, or spend more and buy a nas enclosure from Q-nap or Synology?

If the answer is the ease and stability of Q-nap or Synology, then which should i get? Most I have read can't handle 1080p transcoding, but the rest of what I want should be within their capabilities.

If the answer is Freenas, I was thinking of the ASRock C2750D4i with 4x Crucial 8gb ddr3 1600 102472BD160B ECC ram in the Silverstone DS380B or Fractal Design R4 Silent with some white label WD Red drives in either 4tb or 6tb, depending on what price I can get them at. I haven't decide on a power supply for the Silverstone as it's SFX, probably a seasonic 80plus 300w/350w or a silverstone 450w bronze or gold rated. I am looking at starting with 3-4 drives, then moving the data on 3 drives I have to the server and then adding 2 of those. Although if what i have read here about the marvell ports is true, I might need a different board, as I want to have 8-10 drives total when I get done. That or maybe some kind of expansion card?

Thanks for looking and any and all advice.

 

[Nick2253]

I think FreeNAS would work for you, but I don't think FreeNAS is necessarily the only thing that will work for you.

I don't know how well an Avoton is going to perform on transcoding. Hopefully someone who is using that can chime in, though I can't imagine it would work very well for more than one stream.

If you want 8-10 drives, I don't know that the DS380 is going to work for you. There's only 8 bays, and you'd struggle to fit two more 3.5" drives inside. Also, if you do go with the DS380, know that it has terrible airflow over the drives. However, if you drill some holes in the back of the drive cage, that helps tremendously with airflow. Doing so dropped my drive temps from 40+ to under 30. I can get you pictures if/when you need to do it.

If you plan on getting up to 8-10 drives, I would get at least a 450W PSU if not 500W.

Also, don't forget a UPS in your budget. That's an important part of a FreeNAS system.

FreeNAS is not the easiest to expand with more drives (though it is trivial to expand to larger drives). You can't just add more drives to an existing vdev. You have to create additional vdevs. However, it's not a terrible problem if you plan on 6 drives, and then decide to grow to 12, for example. But if you start with 4 drives, and then decide to add another 3, you'll be stuck using RAIDZ1 (RAID5, aka "not a good idea") or you'll lose a ton of space to parity.

Honestly, I don't know that a good FreeNAS system is going to be less than a Q-nap or Synology. You'll definitely get more for your buck with FreeNAS, but the barrier to entry on decent hardware will put you in the Q-nap range. Food for thought.

 

[danb35]

I want to be able to add drives or replace with larger drives without having to clear everything off first to do it, even if it's just one drive at a time, at get the extra space afforded by the addition.

This may be a problem. The rest of what you've asked is pretty straightforward with FreeNAS and the Plex plugin, and Plex clients wherever you want to view your media. @cyberjock has written up a pretty good PowerPoint presentation on the ZFS basics here: https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

In short, if you have a pool consisting of six identical disks in RAIDZ2, your net capacity will be about the capacity of four of them (minus filesystem overhead and such). If your pool consists of six disks of different capacities, your net capacity will be about the capacity of four of the smallest disk in the pool. That's 4 x (smallest disk size), not size of (the four smallest disks put together). Thus, replacing one disk with a larger one won't usually increase the available space in the pool.

 

[diedrichg]

Thus, replacing one disk with a larger one won't usually increase the available space in the pool

...until all drives are replaced with same-size larger drives.

For @Dochide ex:
Replace 1 drive: 4+4+4+6=16 (not 18)
Replace 2 drives: 4+4+6+6=16 (not 20, smallest drive wins)
Replace 3 drives: 4+6+6+6=16 (not 22)
Replace 4th drive: 6+6+6+6=24!

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I want the system to be completely stable with little to no interference on my part.

A properly configured FreeNAS doesn't have to be babied, but you do have to pay attention when it calls for it.

The main reason for wanting to delve into Freenas is that I am disabled and I have a very short leash when it comes to cash.

A modest FreeNAS box can be had for modest cost (less than $500 plus disks), but costs rise if you want high capacity and/or high performance.

A big chunk of your requirements can be fulfilled by Plex, which runs on many platforms, including FreeNAS.

By the way, the underlying system is FreeBSD, which is superficially similar to Linux but pretty different under the hood.

 

[Dochide]

I appreciate all the responses I've gotten and thanks for taking the time to leave them!

I understand now more about how the pool works. I also forgot to mention that I have a APC SmartUPS 1400, I don't have the monitoring capabilities on it, but as for features, it has about all I could want except for dual topology. And if I got FreeNAS I guess I'll have to go with a larger case for airflow and power options, as I don't see it as worthwhile price wise for an SFX 80+ bronze/gold/platinum power supply when I can get an ATX one cheaper with the same features and will need more space or airflow for my needs anyway.

Anyone with an Avoton c2550 or c2750 that can comment on transcoding? I was looking more in depth on the plex site and they say it takes about a passmark score of 2000 for a single 1080p transcode and the c2750 comes in at almost 4000. But that's assuming it's not doing anything else. If an Avoton won't work for my needs, what is the next best thing? I'm looking for as low a power as I can get to fill out my needs. Maybe a used server on E-bay, like a Dell or HP? But from what I have seen, the xeons eat alot more power.

 

[danb35]

The Avoton chips are certainly energy-efficient. I'd expect you could transcode one stream on one, but I won't bet on two or more. The Socket 1155 and 1150 i3s and Xeons are pretty energy-efficient too, though--when you look at power consumption figures, remember that that's a maximum. At idle, they consume far less.

 

[Nick2253]

The Avoton chips are certainly energy-efficient. I'd expect you could transcode one stream on one, but I won't bet on two or more. The Socket 1155 and 1150 i3s and Xeons are pretty energy-efficient too, though--when you look at power consumption figures, remember that that's a maximum. At idle, they consume far less.

^This

A Pentium or i3 or even a Xeon is only going to use a few more watts at idle than an Avoton. However, they have the oomph for when you need it.

If you're being power conscious, I wouldn't recommend an old server from eBay. For the purposes of comparison, our main hypervisors at my work have dual Xeon E5-2420s with 6 sticks of registered memory, and they run at about 120W. My home hypervisor, which was an inexpensive workstation on eBay, has a single Xeon X5660 and 6 sticks of unbuffered memory uses at least that much power, for significantly less performance.

 

[Dochide]

So, from your experience, if the server is just reading/writing and not transcoding it's cpu should be in idle and only the drives are eating power?

From what I've been pricing, it would cost me somewhere around $1100 to have a 12bay server with at least a 650w platinum/gold power supply, 32gb of ECC ram and an E3-1226 on a board with at least 6 intel sata ports. I would still need to buy another sata card and all the drives. I figure if I can get something like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/2U-Supermic...C826TQ-R800-/131584112967?hash=item1ea3063947 or this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/2U-Supermic...8GB-HW-Raid-/131584753688?hash=item1ea3100018 Then the cash savings will offset the running costs for at least 5 years+ at my current rate. And either should have enough horsepower to do whatever I should want Plex/Torrent/File server wise. Would this make a better choice? Escpecially considering hardware compatibility?

 

[Nick2253]

Ultimately, it's up to you if that's the right choice for your money.

Don't forget that old servers aren't just less energy efficient, but they are aren't new, so their failure rate will be higher, and you have no warranty. Also, the controllers may not be compatible with large drives (2TB+).

You likely don't need a Xeon processor. An i3 would probably be enough for you. And Plex transcoding is the only thing that really needs any horsepower. File serving/torrenting is pretty low intensity.

I think $1100 is a little high. As I figure it:

• $200 case.
• $250 mobo (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182821)
• $120 CPU
• $240 memory.
• $100 PSU.

That's ~$900 and no SATA card needed.

Like I said though, it's up to you. Best of luck!