Hi, My name is Salman, I need your help, first build

[Salman]

Hello FreeNAS,
I'm new to FreeNAS and I'm planning to build my home NAS server.

Why?
1- Store a lot of media files (movies, music, pictures).
2- Streaming 4k and HD contents to 5 to 10 devices. (Kodi, Plex)
3- Store sensitive work documents.
4- VirtualBox VMs. (maybe)
5- Private cloud space for some lite files. (not sure if its possible).

What's important?
1- Availability.
2- Security.
3-Performance.
4- Future Expansion.
4- High transfer speed between my main PC and NAS.
5- Most important of course, NOT LOSING MY DATA.

The Server:
I went through cyberjock's thread (Hardware recommendations) and plan the following:
CPU : Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor
Motherboard : Supermicro X10SLL-F Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Memory : Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Storage : 4x Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive
Case : Fractal Design Node 804 MicroATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply :Corsair RMx 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply
Total: $1283.95
build link http://pcpartpicker.com/p/9BYQkL

Help!?
1- Is the build OK, Does it serve my needs? if not, How can I enhance it?
2- Do you recommend this over $670 QNAP TS-651 or $760 Synology DS1515+, both diskless.
3- What RAID configuration should I go with.
4- Is it possible to reduce the cost.

I hope I did explain my situation clearly.
Thank you.

 

[hervon]

3 - RAIDZ2 is the only thing you should consider since 'not losing your data' matters to you. ;-)

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

1. You will probably need more RAM if you want to run Plex and VirtualBox VMs at the same time.
2. Yes.
4. Probably not significantly.
5. You will need a backup strategy.

 

[Mirfster]

Storage : 4x Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive

Wondering if the RPMs would be a point of issue? Perhaps someone else may chime in on this.

If you don't mind a 2U system; take a look on eBay at the Dell PowerEdge C2100/FS12-TY (example: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerE...596944?hash=item3aaed99010:g:S9wAAOSw~gRVr9yF). Something like that with a H200 {preferably the Mezzanine model} that is (Flashed to 9211-8I IT Mode) and some hard drives will get you started for less. Of course you will still need to purchase the hard drives; but you will have 12 bays instead of 8. Of course this is just my opinion and I am bias to that particular make/model. :D

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Wondering if the RPMs would be a point of issue?

Can you be more specific?

 

[Mirfster]

Can you be more specific?

Just about the hard drives only being 5900 RPM as opposed to 7200 or higher.

 

[danb35]

There's usually no reason for 7200 rpm drives in a NAS. They just burn more watts and make more heat.

 

[Mirfster]

There's usually no reason for 7200 rpm drives in a NAS. They just burn more watts and make more heat.

Ahh, okay. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Salman]

Thank you everyone for your response,
I'll start build this server during December.

 

[nightshade00013]

3 - RAIDZ2 is the only thing you should consider since 'not losing your data' matters to you. ;-)

Or RaidZ3 if you want to make sure it can survive a three drive failure vs a two.

If you want more future expansion options for storage you may want to look for a SAS HBA now or a board with a SAS controller on board.

Four 4TB Drives in a RaidZ2 will give you about 6TB of storage (rough guesstimate so let's not get too technical on that) since you will lose two drives to redundancy along with overhead. The file size is also going to be rather large for 4K video's and on top of that you will need a lot of speed to stream to even one client. At h264 compression a 60 second video is around 2GB and 33.6MBps http://toolstud.io/video/filesize.p...merate=29.97&timeduration=60&timeunit=seconds

https://calomel.org/zfs_raid_speed_capacity.html does show some information to base off of,
using 4x 2TB 7200 rpm drives in a raidz2 : write=268MB/s , read/write=117MB/s , read=249MB/s the WD RED drives will be a bit slower than this.


If I was planning to do 4K video to multiple clients I would do a couple vDev's probably raidZ3 with 7 drives each. Maybe I am thinking too high but it really depends on the compression levels you plan to use and how many streams at the same time, but if you are compressing down to the point where it looks bad you may as well just run 1080p instead.

 

[RemyZ]

interesting convo and sorry for the late post
Looks like 4K will be using the h265 compression which is the successor to h264 which allows for lower filesizes and more efficient use. Still alot of processor power is needed to transcode this at the moment. Intel has support for GPU decoding on integrated graphics cards. Be careful on the media players like Chromestick, Firestick etc which dont have the ability to play 4K @ 60 which means the processor will take the hit doing transcoding if the streaming player doesn't support the native content. Rule of thumb is a 2000 PCPassmark score to transcode a 1080p then I am only guessing at least 4000 to transcode a 4K signal. I also listed a comparison of the current streaming players. This list does show some of the players supporting 4K but the devil is in the details. They support it at only 30fps and might not support HDR or 10bit color gamut. The latest version of Handbrake has the option to encode your existing collection in h265 which is a more efficient compression and the successor to h264. Skylake line of processors has h265 support but other devices are still coming into their own with this such as iPhone 6 etc so be sure and research accordingly


http://www.digitaltrends.com/comput...iasts-gift-h-265-vp9-hardware-decode-support/
http://www.komando.com/charts/238342/streaming-video-gadgets
https://ericolon.wordpress.com/2015/02/28/stop-using-h264-right-now/