Hardware Selection for FreeNAS w/ PlexServer Plugin

[TheWoo]

I'm a FreeNAS NOOB, with virtually no PC knowledge (I'm on Macs since 1989), who’s currently running a Drobo 5N with Plex Server on it, but just learned that the reason why many videos won’t play on a Amazon Fire TV or Roku HD is that the ARM CPU inside the Drobo hasn’t enough power to do on-the-fly video transcoding.

So I decided to replace the Drobo with a custom-built FreeNAS. It should be noted that the system will NOT run 24/7, but will only be fired up when watching movies or when there’s a need to run a Timemachine backup of any of my Macs. Here’s the hardware I've ordered so far:

• Fractal Design Node 304 Enclosure
• Asus Z87i-Pro Mini-ITX-Motherboard
• Intel Core i5-4460 3.2 GHz Quad Core CPU
  
• 1 pc. Crucial Ballistix 8GB DDR3 PC3-12800 DIMM Unbuffered NON-ECC CL 8-8-8-24 1.5V 1024Meg x 64 (as the Motherboard accepts NON-ECC only according to the specs and as the system won’t run 24/7 I don’t see the need for ECC). Option to add another 8 GB DIMM to increase to a total of 16 GB.
• Corsair CS550M Power Supply
  
• Alpenfoehn Brocken Eco CPU Fan
• 5 pcs. Seagate ST4000DM000 4TB Desktop HDD (already in use in Drobo)

Several NOOB questions:

1. Hardware Selection OK?
   Can anyone tell me if this configuration has enough power to run FreeNAS with Plex Server smoothly while doing 1080p on-the-fly transcoding?
   
   
2. Boot device: SSD vs. USB Memory Stick
   Does it make sense to use let’s say a 120 GB SSD instead of a 16 GB USB Stick as Boot device? Can FreeNAS be easily configured to make any use of the extra space, e.g. for caching?
   
   
3. How to increase the RAID capacity once full?
   On the Drobo LEDs next to the HDD slots will tell me which disk to replace, once the RAID is full and extra space is needed. One then swaps that drive for a bigger one and Drobo will automatically format it and reorganize the existing data.
   
   How does this work under FreeNAS? Even if all drives are supposed to have the same size, can I swap the drives one after another, with waiting for rebuild/restructuring between each drive, and thus avoid backing up the complete data to a second NAS (with at least the same size)!?

 

[zambanini]

is it really so hard, to read the manual, the pinned posts and click through the forum for similar requests? even for a mac user , ) scnr

use ecc ram! really.

a system which is only online from time to time...get a good backup, disks nightmare.

slicing a ssd is a bad idea, if you have to ask.. dont do it. btw..not enough ram for a l2arc. we talk about 64gb here. if you mean slog: not smart idea to slice.


you can add more vdevs, but does not make sense with your small case. otherwise: bigger disk, resilver...and so on

 

[SweetAndLow]

You should also note that you can't reuse the drives in the drobo and also keep the data on them. The drives will have to be reformatted to be used with FreeNAS. You will need to find temporary storage.

You need to read the hardware sticky and follow the suggestions.

 

[marbus90]

Here's the recommended components for a Node 304:
ASRock E3C224D2I
Core i3 or Xeon E3
2x8GB ECC RAM from the QVL or Crucial
Boxed Cooler
Seasonic G-360 PSU

Max out all HDD bays/SATA ports, create a 6disk z2 volume on them, then you can just replace the disks with bigger ones and rebuild the pool. After all disks are replaced, the pool will grow automatically. There are no fancy LEDs for replacement etc., safest way is to stick to the serial numbers.

 

[zambanini]

I would use the SuperMicro Board, not that asrock blingbling

 

[marbus90]

Cool, @zambanini: found a way to shrink a Supermicro board to ITX while it still works?

Maybe I should also specify that the E3C224D2I belongs to the ASRock Rack divison - and today's ASRock has nothing to do with 10-year-ago-ASRock. I remember the 775Dual-VSTA and the K7S41GX too good.. still, they've changed.

 

[enemy85]

As owner of an Asrock E3C226D2I board, i can assure you it works great with freenas

 

[Ericloewe]

Cool, @zambanini: found a way to shrink a Supermicro board to ITX while it still works?

Maybe I should also specify that the E3C224D2I belongs to the ASRock Rack divison - and today's ASRock has nothing to do with 10-year-ago-ASRock. I remember the 775Dual-VSTA and the K7S41GX too good.. still, they've changed.

Well, ASRock did that to the X10SL7-F, but their voodoo priest only got it to extended miniITX. :D

 

[zambanini]

A1SRi-2758F


it works well , )

the atom 27xx is fast, supports ecc and...see yourself

 

[Ericloewe]

The C2758 is not tuned for general server duties. It's aimed at routers, firewalls and the like.

The C2750 is the appropriate choice for a fileserver.

 

[TheWoo]

Thanks to all for the replies. It is hard when neither english (I'm german) nor IT is your native language, thus you don’t know where and what to look for and where to start here with those thousands of threads.

@SweetAndLow: I'm fully aware that the Drobo uses its own proprietary FS, thus the HDDs will need to be reformatted.

I meanwhile came across Cyberjock’s NOOB guide and am in the process of reading it. I understood that ECC is mandatory, which is why I searched and found the ASRock E3C226D2I Server Board, which has been mentioned here above in my absence as well. I’ll combine it with an Intel i3-4360T which I hope to have sufficient steam to run FreeNAS and transcode two concurrent 1080p AV streams using the Plex Server plugin. (The Plex Developers speak of a 2,000 CPU Passmark for each 1080p stream, the i3-4360T has 4,950).

4. 1 GB RAM per 1 TB Storage?
What I don’t understand yet is the memory consumption/recommendation. I read somewhere 1 GB RAM per 1 TB Storage. The problem is that this E3C226D2I Motherboard is limited to 16GB RAM, but I'm starting with 5x 4GB disks. Perhaps someone can shed some light on this.

5. 6 vs. 5 HDDs?
If I understood correctly my 5 HDDs form a VDEV which go into a ZPOOL, whereas the # of HDDs in a VDEV can't be expanded. The server won’t run 24/7, but more like 6 to 48 hrs per week. The event that two HDDs will die at the same time is very unlikely to me, which means 1 HDD for parity should be enough. I'm at the beginning of reading the said NOOB guide, so perhaps someone could explain if 6 disks would actually provide more capacity to me, based on the said parity requirement.

When bigger HDD capacities become available at a reasonable price, I usually get the bigger ones, migrate and then sell the smaller ones. The simple, logistical advantage with sticking with 5 disks is that there is one less disk to buy and sell (less expense, less loss).

6. Seagate ST4000DM000 4TB Desktop HDD such a bad choice?
As written in my opening message, I'm using those low-cost drives already in my Drobo 5N with zero flaws so far. Temperature doesn’t seem to be an issue. And again: the system doesn’t run 24/7. Opinions?
​

Thanks again for sharing your knowledge!

 

[Ericloewe]

Comments:

You don't want low-power CPUs, they're only useful for thermally limited systems and won't actually save any power. This means no T and no L at the end.

If you're ok with a slightly larger system, microATX gives you quite a few more options.
Note that the 1GB per TB rule is just a guideline. 16GB will go a long way (not forever), especially in home use.

RAIDZ1 is not a good idea if you value the data. The problem isn't an outright failure, it's that every bit on the remaining drives must be correct, or data will be lost. RAIDZ2 avoids that scenario.
You're correct that it's not possible to change the vdev after it's added.

Finally, FreeNAS is meant to run 24/7. With care, it's possible to do otherwise, but it's an unpopular, untested scenario.

 

[marbus90]

Here, this list should fit your bill nicely, with most of the recommended components in there:
https://geizhals.de/?cat=WL-503405
You can let the page calculate the best combinations of sellers, just switch the availability to "whenever" and the price difference to ... but less than 20EUR. Sona and Jacob Electronic are good sellers.

 

[TheWoo]

@Ericloewe: 4360T: This is what happens if a Mac guy looks at TDP and thinks it tells you the power consumption :). So which one out of these 34 different 4th gen i3s do you recommend instead? Which one gives me the biggest bang at the lowest buck AND the lowest power consumption?

A larger system is overkill for my needs I think, just like this one already is. My NAS only holds 10+ TB of HD movies, backups of my various Macs (of which I have extra backups on other HDDs off-site), and a couple of Installer Disk Images. The Node 304 and MiniITX are kind of sexy and appear to me just right as a Home Server.

24/7: The Node 304 has a conveniently placed tactile power switch on the front panel. Can it (the hardware through the BIOS and/or FreeNAS) be configured in such a way that the NAS can be turned safely on/off using that switch without any harm to the data?

@marbus90: That wishlist from geizhals.de is empty. Seems to be Cookie- or Login-based.

 

[Ericloewe]

Power consumption is roughly the same for all, with minor variations between individual CPUs (regardless of model), at idle. For workloads that don't the processors too much, they'll use the same power. For heavy workloads, there are two possibilities, based on the fact that mor eperformance will need more power:

1. Fast processor finishes more quickly and goes to sleep faster, saving power
2. Fast processor doesn't finish quickly enough to offset extra power usage

The only way to tell which one will happen is to benchmark them both. It may also vary between samples (one might use slightly less power than the other at load).

Typical choices are the i3 4130, i3 4150 and i3 4330. Typically, the next step up is a Xeon E3 1220 v3, for around 200 bucks. The regular i3 4370 is also an interesting choice, but it requires the 2.0 BIOS.

I'm not sure how it is with ASRock boards, but Supermicro's IPMI requires a code to update the BIOS from IPMI, which means you have to either buy the code or a Celereon G1820 (cheapest LGA 1150 CPU) to flash from IPMI/from an OS (respectively). Of course, if the board comes with the 2.0 BIOS, this isn't an issue.

 

[TheWoo]

@Ericloewe: Boy, this CPU thing is confusing. i3-4370 is powerful but a bit too expensive. What about the standard i3-4360 (w/o "T")? It has 4MB Cache like the i3-4370, but is a bit cheaper and has a higher benchmark value (although slightly slower on Single thread). Also see here for feature comparison.

Also: Can you explain me why the T-version won’t save any power?

 

[Ericloewe]

The "low-power" versions aren't low-power. They're capped at a lower TDP, which means they'll "stop working" (in simplistic terms) sooner than a non "low-power" - the objective is not to save power (the processor is absolutely identical to its regular version!), it's to limit heat in thermally constrained scenarios. Of course, it uses less power to accomplish this, but it also works proportionately less. At idle, both versions will use the same amount of power.

 

[cyberjock]

Here's an analogy.

Your i3-4360 can do 85MPH on the freeway.

Your i3-4360T is identical to the i3-4360 and could do 85MPH on the freeway, but Intel has put a governor on it at 55MPH. So when you sit at a stoplight (aka the box is idle) your power usage is identical in both cases. But when you need more power from your CPU you'll hit this artificial cap (that you've paid for) and you'll get slower performance.

In essence, you should buy the i3-4360. If you're in a situation where you want to go faster, you *do* want the system to have it available. If you're going to argue that you want some artificially limited CPU, just buy a slower CPU (that will also be cheaper).

The T versions are only for situations where engineering designs demand a particular limitation on heat generation. For example, at my last job we had a server that was inside a desk. There was a fan that would push air through the desk, but engineering calculations said that the computer would only stay cool if total system heat output was less than 129w. This computer was important as it monitored key systems at a nuclear power plant. So they opted for a system that was artificially limited to be safe (a T version). That is an example of what a T version of a CPU would be good for.

A NAS (and for a home at that) the needs are completely invalid and inappropriate.

 

[TheWoo]

Thanks Cyberjock & Ericloewe! Great explanation, got it. (I initially thought that the T-series would be some sort of architectural power optimization, similar to that between Ivy Bridge and Haswell).

What about i3-4360 (non-T) vs. i3-4370 (see my post #17). It confuses the hell out of me (is that proper english?) that Intel offers the chip in so many flavors, whereas many are almost identical in performance & features (e.g. 4600 graphics) and vary just by 0.1 GHz.

 

[cyberjock]

That is proper english. If english is a second language you are doing very well. :)

The options are mind boggling, I totally agree. Personally I recommend a Pentium G3220 or a Xeon E3-1230v3. Generally you're either the guy that wants basic workload (and a Pentium is more than capable) or you're the guy that's gonna see what 100% CPU usage really means (and you'll probably want a Xeon). It turns into a situation where there's dozens of CPUs to choose from and I just do the lazy approach. Go big or go small. Don't bother going in-between.