Looking for recommendations for DIY fileserver for home storage

[smartyarts]

Hi there,
I'm having the following hardware:
Asus N3150M-E
8GB RAM (non ECC)
3x WD RED 4 TB
1x SSD for the OS (FreeNAS planned)

I want to have a local file server in my house for backing up my photographs, movies, music, docs etc. I know that RAID is not a backup solution - so I have my precious data stored on my workstation and additionally I want to keep copies on the file server.
It should be accessible by all devices (MACs, PC and media player raspberry pi) in the household over Gigabit. For that I'm using a GbE Switch.
I'm having several problems: 1. The motherboard has only 2 SATA ports.
I was thinking of buying a SAS 2008 based HBA and connect the WD REDs to it.
I planned to set the drives as software RAID5 up. However I'm unsure about it as I read many arguments against it. Also my current Mainboard does not support ECC RAM, so my plan will fail anyway?
Shall I get a another WD RED drive (in order to total 4)?
Does it make sense at all, what I would like to do with FreeNAS?
What would you recommend me to do? I'm sorry but I'm so puzzled and I just try to avoid any heavy investments.
I used Windows 10 as a file server before but I would not get higher data rates than 40MB/s when copying from Mac to the Windows 10 file server over the GbE. It seems that Samba on Windows is not the same like on FreeBSD or FreeNAS.
Would you mind telling me what would be a good backup plan in my case?

kind regards
Marcin

 

[toyebox]

Hello Marcin,

As you have already noted, yes your system is not ECC. There are plenty of members who don't run ECC (I'm not one of them though). The big thing to remember is this:
As long as you know you still need backups of your precious data, you will be fine. The other thing is, I would stick with backing up to the freeNAS but not the other way around. Reason for this is, if data does get corrupt, it's possible you wouldn't know until you have already replicated that data to your known good source. So long story short, backup your stuff, and keep it somewhere safe.

You can use a RAIDZ1 and it will work fine. RAIDZ2 would be recommended, but no need to go running out spending more money unless you want to. When you do get a 4th drive, just know you will need to destroy the pool and start over, so have a plan for copying all your data off.

As for your SATA port problem--an m1015 HBA can be had for 50 - 100 US dollars. They really are the "go to" card. Be sure to flash it to IT mode(tutorials are all over).

Good luck with your build!

 

[Evertb1]

To be blunt: your hardware is not really OK for running FreeNAS. If my information is correct 8 GB is the max memory the motherboard can handle. And the CPU/SOC is not very powerfull. You can run FreeNAS nicely with a Pentium but this integrated Celeron with it's low passmark has not much room for extra's. And of course there is no support for ECC.

Afterburner: The LAN chip on your motherboard (realtek RTL811H) has been subject to some discussions. See:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/freenas-and-realtek®-rtl8111h.57506/

Choosing for FreeNAS is choosing for ZFS and ZFS comes with it's own demands for hardware. I can highly recommend that you do some reading:
FreeNAS Hardware Minimum Requirements
Ericloewe's FreeNAS Hardware Guide
And of course the ZFS primer in the user guide (see link at the top of the forum). That will give some insights that are useful.

 

[smartyarts]

Thanks for your comments and recommendations. I have decided to build a new system with the following hardware:
Mainboard: SuperMicro X11SSM-F
CPU: Intel Pentium G4600
RAM: 1x 16GB RAM ECC
Storage: 4x 4TB RED NAS HDDs

I'm a little unsure about the CPU, if I need a lot of punch on one core or if I'm going to buy an Intel Pentium G4400 or even Celeron would not be sufficient for my needs?
I know this will be able to be powered on for 24/7, but what if I only power it on when needed? Does this hurt the hardware in the long run?
Thanks for any help!
Kind regards
Marcin

 

[Evertb1]

I'm a little unsure about the CPU, if I need a lot of punch on one core or if I'm going to buy an Intel Pentium G4400 or even Celeron would not be sufficient for my needs?

It all depends on your current and future needs. It is always good to have some room for growth. If you want your FreeNAS server purely as a filer then yes, even a CPU like a Celeron G3930 would have sufficient power. And it is cheap so it should not cause you to much of a headache if you would replace it later. The current generation Pentiums are pretty decent CPU's and are a very cost efficient solution (a lot of bang for your buck). As long as you don't go overboard with a lot of plugins that is. There are forum members that own systems with Pentium CPU's (even from the previous generation) and are happy with them.

I know this will be able to be powered on for 24/7, but what if I only power it on when needed? Does this hurt the hardware in the long run?

The general consensus is that harddisks suffer more wear and tear if they are started and stopped frequently.

 

[Chris Moore]

You should let the system run so that it has time to do the maintenance tasks like pool scrubs and SMART testing of the drives.
It is the background checks and testing that really helps to keep your system healthy.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[smartyarts]

What about the RAM? I decided to go for one UDIMM ECC with 16GB, but now I read in the mainboard's manual that I should put them in pairs to activate interleave, does that matter?

 

[Chris Moore]

What about the RAM? I decided to go for one UDIMM ECC with 16GB, but now I read in the mainboard's manual that I should put them in pairs to activate interleave, does that matter?

Having the memory in pairs might improve performance (speed) but it is not critically important in FreeNAS.

 

[smartyarts]

Thanks for you help. Now that I have 4 4TB REDs it leads me to another question: what's the best way to go: RaidZ2 or mirrored vdevs? As I will be working on a Gigabit Network I guess, data safety will be more important to me than speed as one drive will very likely saturate the Gigabit LAN, so what would you recommend? The mirrored vdevs would be the most expensive solution, as I would have to replace 2 drives when it fails, am I correct with this assumption?

 

[Chris Moore]

For reliability, RAID-z2 is better and the available space would be about the same.

The mirrored vdevs would be the most expensive solution, as I would have to replace 2 drives when it fails, am I correct with this assumption?

No, that isn't really true. Any time a drive fails in a pool, it would need to be replaced with an equivalent drive.

 

[loch_nas]

I'll try my best to explain in my own words (please correct me if I'm wrong, but don't throw stones at me guys):

The problem with 4-drive mirrors is that, if 2 drives fail and the wrong 2 drives fail, the whole zpool (not only the vdev) will fail. With RAIDZ2 any 2 drives of the 4 can fail without loosing the whole zpool.
So RAIDZ2 would be safer. Because the performance of a 4 drive RAIDZ2 won't be great, most people would try to create a RAIDZ2 vdev with at least 6 drives.

The mirrored vdevs would be the most expensive solution, as I would have to replace 2 drives when it fails, am I correct with this assumption?

You only have to replace the failed drives. So if one drive is broken then that's the only drive to replace.

Here some basics:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

Edit:
What's really weird:
I just refreshed the window shortly before I posted this. But your post, Chris Moore, didn't show. After I posted this it shows that your post was written 27 min ago. What's going on here on the forum?

smartyards, forget my poor try of explanation. I wouldn't trust it myself as Chris has posted the right explanation

 

[Nick2253]

The problem with 4-drive mirrors is that, if 2 drives fail and the wrong 2 drives fail, the whole zpool (not only the vdev) will fail. With RAIDZ2 any 2 drives of the 4 can fail without loosing the whole zpool.
So RAIDZ2 would be safer. Because the performance of a 4 drive RAIDZ2 won't be great, most people would try to create a RAIDZ2 vdev with at least 6 drives.

The one extra factor you're not including is rebuild/resilver time. It is very quick to resilver a mirror. However, resilvering a parity array take a lot longer. So, to be thorough, you can't just factor in simultaneous drive failures, but simultaneous drive failures within the rebuild window. And, don't forget, that rebuild window includes whatever time it takes the user to provide the system a replacement hard drive.

I'm not saying that one is necessarily better than the other, just that the two options are not as different with respect to reliability as you might imagine at first glance.

 

[loch_nas]

Thnx for the clarification!

Yes, I thought about resilvering, but I didn't want to make my post longer then necessary. I have a certain tendency to write too much sometimes ...

 

[smartyarts]

You guys have me puzzled now :/
I guess I'll go with RAIDZ2 then...

 

[Chris Moore]

forget my poor try of explanation. I wouldn't trust it myself as Chris hast posted the right explanation

You did fine. Contributions are all welcome. We all can learn from each other.

 

[Chris Moore]

resilvering a parity array take a lot longer.

That depends on the amount of data on the drives and the stripe width. For example, in my server at home, I have vdevs that are six drives wide and they resilver in about two hours, but I have a server at work that has vdevs that are 15 drives wide and that system takes 3 days to resilver a drive. The vdev width makes a difference but the fact that those 6TB drives at work are 40% full also plays a part.

 

[Chris Moore]

You guys have me puzzled now :/
I guess I'll go with RAIDZ2 then...

I am not sure why you are puzzled. If you only have 4 drives, configuring them in two mirrors or configuring them as RAID-z2 would give you about the same usable space. The difference would be that in RAID-z2 any two of the drives could fail without any loss of data. In mirrors, if the wrong two drives fail, you could loose all your data. This is looking at the reliability of the array.
Personally, I would get two more drives and establish the array as a 6 drive RAID-z2 pool, but that is just personal preference.
It is true that replacing a drive in a mirror happens faster because the system does not need to scan the other drives in the vdev to compute the parity and checksum data to be placed on the new drive. This is an inconsequential concern. The stress applied to the pool during a resilver is identical to the stress applied to a pool during the periodic scrub which should happen (based on your preference) at least once a month. I have my systems do a scrub every second week on a specified day so that no two pools on the same server are being scrubbed at the same time and also not during peak hours or when backups are scheduled. Charts are good for figuring out these schedules so things don't colide.
The resilver of a drive in your pool (if the disks are healthy) should not be a concern.

If I have created questions, please ask and we can try to get them answered for you.

 

[danb35]

The stress applied to the pool during a resilver is identical to the stress applied to a pool during the periodic scrub which should happen (based on your preference) at least once a month.

...so the "OMG resilvering your RAIDZ will wear out your disks", as some have argued, is bogus. There are good arguments for mirrors in small installations. This isn't one of them.

 

[smartyarts]

Hey Chris, I don't want and need so much storage space as this would also require more additional backup storage solutions. RAIDZ2 will prevent a fail against 2 drives failing and this is what I was thinking in the first place. Any 2 drives can fail but I will still keep my data, also 8TB of storage won't be such a hassle to backup either as compared to 16TB. Thanks for your help!

 

[Chris Moore]

Hey Chris, I don't want and need so much storage space as this would also require more additional backup storage solutions. RAIDZ2 will prevent a fail against 2 drives failing and this is what I was thinking in the first place. Any 2 drives can fail but I will still keep my data, also 8TB of storage won't be such a hassle to backup either as compared to 16TB. Thanks for your help!

You won't actually have 8TB of usable storage. This configuration will only give you around 6.8TB of storage and with the 80% rule, you should not fill it beyond 5.4TB. This is the reason I suggested adding more drives. Even if you just add one more drive, it will increase your total capacity to 10.4TB with a usable capacity of 8.2TB.
If your goal is to have a certain amount of storage, you must take into account the overhead of ZFS.