My first DIY FreeNAS build

[Cook4Life]

Hi

Did some reading at muliple locations on multiple forums but still hoping to hear from to guru's for verification i'm doing the right thing.

On eBay i found the config mentioned below
Motherboard : SuperMicro X10SRi-F
CPU : Intel Xeon E5 1620v3
Memory : 4x Micron 8GB 1RX4 PC4-2133P-RC0-10
Storage : ZFS Z2 8x 4Tb Toshiba

Config and apps

1. Latest final freenas build
2. Service CIFS to windows clients
3. Service NFS or iSCSI to vmware
4. Crashplan
5. Couchpotato or Radarr or Sonarr
6. Virtual machines (server 2016 nano and core)

Didn't find any negative issues with the motherboard (google search)
Software config and installation isn't finalized yet in my mind.

Hoping for suggestions / remarks / hints and tips.

Thank you very much!

 

[Chris Moore]

I am not a fan of the Toshiba hard drives. I have seven of them in my Irene-NAS but I don't like the way they report SMART data. If I were buying, I would go with Seagate Barracuda drives. Here is a link: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...e_st4000dm005_barracuda_4tb_3_5_internal.html

I have 12 of the Barracuda 2TB drives in my Emily-NAS and have had no problem with them in almost two years.
To be fair, I have had no problem with the Toshiba drives, but the stats they give on the SMART report are incomplete compared to the Seagate drive so I am not sure I would know if I was having trouble with them and that is what I don't like. I have only had them installed for a little more than a month. I bought them because I found a really good deal and I needed to replace some very old (five years +) drives that just needed proactive replacement. Mechanically, the Toshiba drives are supposed to be very similar to the HGST drives.

Other than that, the parts you list look good. The system board has port to control the drives and slots to add more controllers if you want more drives later. That is more than enough horsepower to do the things you are talking about doing but you might want more RAM. It is enough, you just might want more for the virtual machines, depending on what you do with them. I went with a pair of 16GB sticks in a recent build so I could add a second set later if I needed more for the VMs I was planning.
Because of the quad channel memory architecture, you loose a little performance by only using a pair of memory modules instead of populating all four channels, but it gives you flexibility for expanding later. It is best to keep all the memory modules the same.

 

[Arwen]

@Cook4Life
Read up on ZFS before you go into production. Even play with it before hand. I did, even though I had 8 years of ZFS experience from being a Solaris System Admin. (Your use of ZFS Z2 indicates you don't yet know ZFS terminology well. It sounds like you want a RAID-Z2.)

And I agree with @Chris Moore that 2 x 16GB can be a better choice than 4 x 8GB, if you can get similar prices. Of course, if you get it from E-Bay with the 4 x 8GB memory, then don't worry about it.


Last, you don't mention you boot devices. In case you don't know, FreeNAS uses dedicated, (and small), boot devices which are independant of your data disks.

In the past 8GB or 16GB USB flash devices were recommended, (and potentially mirrored). Many people ran across poor quality USB flash devices, causing annoyances. (Backup your FreeNAS configuration regularly!)

I personally like SATA SSDs, and use 2 x SATA DOMs, (Disk On a Module). Your system board comes with 2 SATA slots that are pre-wired for SATA DOM power. You CAN use them as normal SATA slots. And use just one boot device, (regardless of type), since SATA SSDs tend to be more reliable that USB Flash devices. In some cases SATA DOMs are more expensive than a small, simple SATA SSDs. It all depends on your chassis if you will have extra room for a 2.5" SATA SSD. If not, and you don't want to use USB device(s), you can use SATA DOMs.

Today, I would recommend at least 16GB sized boot devices. Unless you simply have an 8GB flash drive leftover and still working. And if using a USB as the boot device, I recommend using 2 of them in a mirror.

 

[Stux]

It's a good motherboard. Is the included memory ECC?


See my Primary system ;)

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...24-supermicro-x10-sri-f-xeon-e5-1650v4.46262/

 

[Cook4Life]

Yes, ECC is included 32GB. Some say i need to upgrade the memory, the more the better and use mirrored pools for my VM's
So i have some reading to do :)

 

[Chris Moore]

Yes, ECC is included 32GB. Some say i need to upgrade the memory, the more the better and use mirrored pools for my VM's
So i have some reading to do :)

Making a pool of mirrors (multiple vdevs that are mirrors) provides the highest iops. If you're not doing it for a business where the speed is critical, it is unlikely to be worth the money. I have run as many as six VMs on my system and the performance is fine. I have only two people using it at any time.
It's a cost factor. Mirror vdevs are not as safe for your data, so you only want to use it for the running VMs. At work, we use a lot of little 1500rpm disks to store the running VMs and then a second stage storage of larger, slower disks for the mass storage. It is a massive, multi rack system with things like infiniband. It is faster, but it is not worth trying to do something like that in a home use scenario.

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