Greetings and seeking recommendation

[grbharati]

Hello everybody, my greetings,


First of all, Please forgive me for my English. I am sure there will be many structural/ grammatical errors in this and later posts. I will try my best to convey my thoughts.


I have been following freeNAS community for more than 4 months. I am very eager to build a NAS. I have good collection of pictures, videos and books; good in the sense of years and size both. I am a DIY fan, but this field, which requires good knowledge of CLI is not my zone of expertise. I cannot debug a system on my own; you can consider me beginner and will be expecting your advice and guidance frequently.


So far I know, I have been through all the documents and manuals prepared to understand freeNAS. I have watched videos and explored forums regularly for the issues that I might encounter in my initial setup. Forum support is really great and I like the concept of freeNAS, hence I am ready to build one for myself. I am planning to build one in the end of June. Though I have gone through requirements specified by many users, I want to verify and want your opinion regarding my selection of hardware.


I am thinking of getting this hardware:


1. CPU: E3 1230 V3 : $ 252

2. Mother Board: Supermicro X10SLH-F-O: $ 202

3. Crucial 16 GB (2x8) CT2KIT102472BD160B $ 144

4. Power Supply: Silver Stone 450 SFX Gold $ 90

5. UPS: CyberPower BRG1000AVRLCD: $ 114

6. Case: FD Node 804 $ 109


Total W/O Disks: $ 911

7. 6 x 3 TB WD RED : $ 708


Total : $1619


System will be in RAIDZ2 so available disk space is: 12 TB, Which is adequate for me for 4 years. I am planning to rip my Blu ray movie collection and will use PLEX in my freeNAS.



My concern so far: Will freeNAS meet my objective?


I have searched forum and seems like many people have done what I wanted, but am not sure. Therefore, I want to put forward my objective.


1. File Share with in Local(Home) as well as Remote (University) clients.

2. OwnColud: I want to set up owncloud for my 5 family members, who are in different States. Therefore, I need to access it remotely.

3. Media server in my Home. ( This can be done for sure)

4. And Data safety ofcourse. (That is why freeNAS is there)


These are my only requirements so far. When I searched in the forum, I see many people have concern on security while sharing it open to Internet. Many people recommended VPN, but I cannot access VPN from my university, my bad luck. I want to sync (upload) my University work to freeNAS and vice-vera, this is my main objective.


I will really appreciate your feedback,


Thank you

-grb

 

[DifferentStrokes]

Hello everybody, my greetings,

Hello and welcome to the forum.

1. CPU: E3 1230 V3 : $ 252

Take a look at the E3 1231 v3. It is 100 MHz faster and can usually be found for $10-$15 cheaper. It is a newer version of the 1230.

I can tell you've read up. The list likes pretty good.

 

[DifferentStrokes]

Oh one more thing. Grab yourself 2 boot devices and mirror them.

 

[grbharati]

Thank you for the remainder. I will put those in my list. Also what do you say about my concerns for remote access to my server. Will I be able to do that securely?
I will look in to E3 1231 v3. I heard few users did not get updated bios in their mobo and hence was not compatible with this new processor. That is why i was skeptical in selecting that.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Please forgive me for my English.

Your use of written English is excellent, better than many native speakers.

1. File Share with in Local(Home) as well as Remote (University) clients.
...
These are my only requirements so far. When I searched in the forum, I see many people have concern on security while sharing it open to Internet. Many people recommended VPN, but I cannot access VPN from my university, my bad luck. I want to sync (upload) my University work to freeNAS and vice-vera, this is my main objective.

If VPN isn't an option, then I can think of a few alternatives:

1. Set up SSH access restricted to public/private key login, then use an SFTP client, e.g. FileZilla.
2. Use ownCloud as planned, perhaps in a VM (virtual machine), and make sure you secure it properly.
3. Use a peer-to-peer sync app such as BTSync or SyncThing, perhaps in a VM.

 

[grbharati]

Thank you for your feedback. Does VM, you mentioned here is equivalent to jail? I am not aware of running VM in freeNAS, I need to check that area.
Also, I am planning to build a pfsense router. Hopefully, i can get it work with freeNAS.

Thanks,
-grb

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Thank you for your feedback. Does VM, you mentioned here is equivalent to jail?

Jails are a feature of FreeBSD that has similarities with VMs, but significant differences too. One big difference is that every FreeBSD jail runs FreeBSD, whereas a VirtualBox VM can run any OS supported by VirtualBox on the host platform.

There is a VirtualBox jail available in FreeNAS, so you can run any OS you like in that.

FreeNAS plugins run in jails, and there are plugins available for ownCloud, BTSync and SyncThing, but you can also choose to run them in VMs if you prefer. One benefit of this is that you don't have to rely on the plugin for updates.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Perhaps I should also mention that from what I can gather here on the forums, plugins and virtualization are getting a major overhaul in FreeNAS 10.

 

[grbharati]

Thank You guys, I will start ordering my components. I will update on my build.

-grb

 

[grbharati]

Guys, I was planning to order UPS: CyberPower BRG1000AVRLCD. I went to my test VM and didn't see this UPS listed for the available driver. Can anybody suggest UPS for me? I went through the driver list and found CP850AVRLCD might be compatible. Can anybody recommend something better but cheap. I don't want to spend more than 120.

-grb