Home BackUp Nas Build, ~10TB

[Daytona]

Hello, I have been following the FreeNas project for a while, and now I'm decided to stop looking and others builds and build my own Nas:D

The pour pose of this machine will be to store backups of Photos, Videos… Of 2-3 Macs (Probably Time Machine) in a Gigabit Network.
Since it will be storing a lot of data i will need some redundancy, I'm thinking on the equivalent of Raid 6 or 5 in Software (Raid-Z1/Raid-Z2?).

I have been checking a lot of builds, hardware compatibility guide, reviews… For the past two months and I have came up with this configuration:

Motherboard: ASUS M5A97 EVO 87,2€
CPU: Amd Athlon Ii 260 X2 Dual Core 3.2ghz 47€
Ram: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB 1333Mhz 45€
Case: Cooler Master K350 35€
PSU: Gigabyte Superb 460W Power Supply 35€
NIC: I think the Built in Realtek works.
HDD: 6-8 Seagate Barracuda 2 TB SATA3 2TB 96€ Each

Please suggest any change if needed.
I hope everything is compatible, if not please let me now, I really need this build to work nearly OOB.

Thanks

 

[StephenFry]

It seems to me like you're doing a good job of picking well-priced items.

You need something to run FreeNAS from, which can basically be anything. USB sticks are popular, but if you have an unused small ssd lying around, that's fine too, or a SD card, CF card etc.

My recommendations would be:
-Since your minimum build seems to use 6 2TB drives, go for RAIDZ2. It's really worth it.
-Seriously consider a small UPS. It only needs to have enough juice to power down the system properly.
-Try out the built-in LAN, of course. But make sure your budget allows for a different NIC.
-I'm a cool-freak, so for each 3 or 4 drives (depending on the case layout) I like to have two 12cm fans: one pushing, one pulling.

 

[Daytona]

It seems to me like you're doing a good job of picking well-priced items.

You need something to run FreeNAS from, which can basically be anything. USB sticks are popular, but if you have an unused small ssd lying around, that's fine too, or a SD card, CF card etc.

My recommendations would be:
-Since your minimum build seems to use 6 2TB drives, go for RAIDZ2. It's really worth it.
-Seriously consider a small UPS. It only needs to have enough juice to power down the system properly.
-Try out the built-in LAN, of course. But make sure your budget allows for a different NIC.
-I'm a cool-freak, so for each 3 or 4 drives (depending on the case layout) I like to have two 12cm fans: one pushing, one pulling.

Thanks for your reply, ill use RAIDZ2!
The UPS, do you have any recommendation for me? Although power cuts are not very common where I live, its better to be prepared :D.

The cooling part: I Will use 3 12CM fans and change the Stock CPU cooler with a Arctic-Cooling Freezer 7 PRO REV2 For 18€.

 

[StephenFry]

Sounds good!

I've also not had a power cut for years, but these things tend to come at the most inopportune moments. ZFS is super resilient, but if your NAS is executing a write command and the power goes out ...who knows what the result will be.
A UPS will also always supply "clean" power, protecting against surges etc. It's well worth the relatively small investment, IMO.

I'm not sure where you're from; I'm from .nl but will assume you're from the US: do a search on Newegg for APC UPS - you'll see a lot of <$100 UPS devices. You only need enough wattage to power down the machine, which can be a 30-second affair. APC will have a graph on their site for each model where you can see if it's right for your power load. I haven't seen them recently, but the very smallest models are basically extension-cords with a battery attached to it. Very convenient.

Good luck on your build, be sure to report back in case of success as well as when you need help - the more information this forum contains on what works and what doesn't, the better!

edit: I keep going on about APC, because after a lot of research, it's the brand I chose years ago to use professionally (back then they were called MGE). I'm sure there are other good alternatives.

 

[Daytona]

Sounds good!

I've also not had a power cut for years, but these things tend to come at the most inopportune moments. ZFS is super resilient, but if your NAS is executing a write command and the power goes out ...who knows what the result will be.
A UPS will also always supply "clean" power, protecting against surges etc. It's well worth the relatively small investment, IMO.

I'm not sure where you're from; I'm from .nl but will assume you're from the US: do a search on Newegg for APC UPS - you'll see a lot of <$100 UPS devices. You only need enough wattage to power down the machine, which can be a 30-second affair. APC will have a graph on their site for each model where you can see if it's right for your power load. I haven't seen them recently, but the very smallest models are basically extension-cords with a battery attached to it. Very convenient.

Good luck on your build, be sure to report back in case of success as well as when you need help - the more information this forum contains on what works and what doesn't, the better!

edit: I keep going on about APC, because after a lot of research, it's the brand I chose years ago to use professionally (back then they were called MGE). I'm sure there are other good alternatives.

Not US, SPain thats why prices are in €, ill take a look to UPS.
So if the UPS detects a power cut the NAS will power of automatically?

I will post my build here, of course!

 

[StephenFry]

So if the UPS detects a power cut the NAS will power of automatically?

Yes, it can do a proper shut down of the system.

There is a compatibility list somewhere with all the UPS units that are supported by the UPS driver in FreeNAS/FreeBSD. If the UPS is supported (and many common models are, there is also a generic driver), you can configure FreeNAS what to do in case of a power outage. For example: power down immediately when the UPS is activated, or wait five seconds (useful, since most power outages are just a few miliseconds), or power down once the UPS is becoming depleted and has, say, 10% power left.

 

[Stephens]

I'll skip my standard disclaimers and just post a link:
https://www.dougv.com/2010/03/01/active-pfc-enabled-psus-are-not-compatable-with-most-low-end-ups/

 

[StephenFry]

It's a very good point, but my personal response has always been "Meh."

I've been running active PFC enabled PSUs off non-pure sine wave units for a long time, with no issues.

edit: Here is APC's own explanation of the issue and what you can do to prevent it

 

[Stephens]

As long as he's aware of the issue. In my case, my computer wouldn't even turn on when plugged into my standard UPS. Then I plugged it into my power strip and it fired right up. Did a bit of reading and determined my active PFC power supply wasn't really compatible with my standard UPS and I needed a active PFC-compatible ("sine") UPS. Got that, plugged in my NAS, and it was off to the races. It's quite probable different locales (as well as different products) are different. But the issue isn't made up from smoke. The warnings are there because people have experienced the issues.

 

[toddos]

So here's the interesting thing. I have this power supply (supposedly with active PFC) and this UPS (supposedly without support for active PFC power supplies). In theory, these two devices should not work together. And yet they do. I verified this by pulling the power plug of my UPS from the wall, forcing it onto battery power. for ~10s (the amount of time it takes my generator to recognize a power outage on the mains, spin up, and switch to generator power). My FreeNAS box did not shut down or die, and in fact continued to run just fine.

I'm not saying you won't have a problem, and I'm only saying I have a data set of 1 UPS and 1 power supply, but at least in my case it doesn't seem that I need to have a "smart" UPS to work with my active PFC power supply.