New Build and Intentions

[Hawkins]

Hey Guys. Hopefully my newbie question is well received :). I have been studying FreeNAS some time and the forums but this is first post. See below:

I bought a server for new home. Purpose of the server is primarily as a NAS but plan on expanding to a Plex Media Server. Max is probably 2 tv's for now but that is unlikely as we haven't cut the cord entirely. Really will just be used watch a movie here or there but my expand to house audio (I have a SONOS set up going). Also may run some security camera's in the future but we'll take it one step at a time. In additon, I'd like to run the Ad-Blocker on the server in a VM. I am new so don't expect much more in terms of VM but may experiment around. Here's what I got:

1) Bought a Dell Poweredge T130. Some specs worth noting:

• 8GB of RAM (I know I need to up this)
• Intel Xeon E3-1230 v6

2) I bought 4 - 6 TB HGST hard drives (7200 RPM)

3) I bought some battery backups (all Pure Sine Wave) to run it all.

WHat's your thoughts? Where did I mess up?

Thanks,

Hawkins

 

[kdragon75]

Do the drive connect to a RAID controller? If so, you need an HBA.

 

[Hawkins]

Do the drive connect to a RAID controller? If so, you need an HBA.

I don't have a RAID controller. I am not sure what you mean by HBA. Figured, with this being a Dell, I could just install the drives and it would just work

 

[Chris Moore]

Hey Guys. Hopefully my newbie question is well received :).

Welcome to the forum

1) Bought a Dell Poweredge T130. Some specs worth noting:
- 8GB of RAM (I know I need to up this)
- Intel Xeon E3-1230 v6

Sounds like a reasonable system. Except...

(sorry, I had to kill the bullets, they did strange things to my formatting.)

2) I bought 4 - 6 TB HGST hard drives (7200 RPM)

How are you planning to use those drives? I would usually suggest RAIDz2, but I would also usually suggest six drives.

3) I bought some battery backups (all Pure Sine Wave) to run it all.

Pure Sine Wave is not needed for computer gear, but it might make a difference to home audio / video gear. You might have paid to much, but what is done is done and it will work.

If you have not checked these resources yet, you probably should. Very good material to help you get up to speed with FreeNAS.

Updated Forum Rules 4/11/17
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/updated-forum-rules-4-11-17.45124/

Slideshow explaining VDev, zpool, ZIL and L2ARC
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

Terminology and Abbreviations Primer
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/terminology-and-abbreviations-primer.28174/

Why not to use RAID-5 or RAIDz1
https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-5-stops-working-in-2009/

Also, the manual is a wealth of information, please take a good look at it: http://doc.freenas.org/11/

 

[Hawkins]

Welcome to the forum
Sounds like a reasonable system. Except...

(sorry, I had to kill the bullets, they did strange things to my formatting.)
How are you planning to use those drives? I would usually suggest RAIDz2, but I would also usually suggest six drives.

Pure Sine Wave is not needed for computer gear, but it might make a difference to home audio / video gear. You might have paid to much, but what is done is done and it will work.

Thanks. The drives are primarily to be used for NAS. I want some redundancy but don't want to sacrifice performance. Not that I have unlimited storage with Spider Oak and I plan on trying to figure out a way to back up the entire NAS to spideroak (TBD). Therefore, I am looking for something that will allow for one drive failure. If I remember correctly, RAIDz2 provides for 2 drive failures. Without looking at the guides which I plan to do, on 24 TB of Hard Drive space (4-6 TB drives), how much space will I have under z1 vs z2?

As for the pure, I knew I wouldn't necessarily need this; however, in my basement, the server is going to run with modem, SONOS amps, routers, switches, etc. I figured Pure was the best way to go and also I got these on a really good deal. I paid less than $120 for these and they are either 1325 or 1500 VA systems (in some cases less than $100 for ways which I won't disclose :)) I wouldn't have bought them for $180+ price tag they were selling.

Thanks for the response!

 

[Chris Moore]

Without looking at the guides which I plan to do, on 24 TB of Hard Drive space (4-6 TB drives), how much space will I have under z1 vs z2?

Here is a link to a good capacity calculator: https://wintelguy.com/zfs-calc.pl
Just be mindful that with ZFS you need to keep about 20% free space because of the copy-on-write nature of the file system.

 

[Hawkins]

Here is a link to a good capacity calculator: https://wintelguy.com/zfs-calc.pl
Just be mindful that with ZFS you need to keep about 20% free space because of the copy-on-write nature of the file system.

Thanks for this. Very helpful. Are you aware about the HBA that the previous poster referred to?

 

[Chris Moore]

Are you aware about the HBA that the previous poster referred to?

HBA = Host Bus Adapter. Usually a SAS controller like this:

Drive Controller: SAS PCI-E 3.0 HBA LSI 9207-8i P20 IT Mode for ZFS FreeNAS unRAID - - US $69.55
https://www.ebay.com/itm/162862201664

Drive Cables: Mini SAS to 4-SATA SFF-8087 Multi-Lane Forward Breakout Internal Cable - - US $12.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/371681252206

I usually recommend having a SAS controller to run the data drives from and use the integrated SATA controller to run the boot drive.

 

[Hawkins]

HBA = Host Bus Adapter. Usually a SAS controller like this:

Drive Controller: SAS PCI-E 3.0 HBA LSI 9207-8i P20 IT Mode for ZFS FreeNAS unRAID - - US $69.55
https://www.ebay.com/itm/162862201664

Drive Cables: Mini SAS to 4-SATA SFF-8087 Multi-Lane Forward Breakout Internal Cable - - US $12.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/371681252206

I usually recommend having a SAS controller to run the data drives from and use the integrated SATA controller to run the boot drive.

Thanks for the info. I am somewhat proficient in computers but don't understand the purpose of the HBA. My motherboard has 4 - SATA spots and I planned on just plugging each in to the MoBo. What does the HBA do where I should get one separate from the MoBo? I guess I just don't understand what the Drive Controller does exactly.

Thanks,

 

[Chris Moore]

What does the HBA do where I should get one separate from the MoBo?

In your small build with only four drives, it probably is overkill, but the role of the HBA is to interface between the drives and the system board. A SAS HBA like the one I linked, is able to control up to 256 drives by way of SAS expanders and it is (my opinion) more reliable.
If you are going to use only four drives, and boot from a USB device, you probably don't need any more than what you have. In a few years, you may want to expand the capacity of the system and having more ports available to add more drives might be a good thing. When people come asking what to buy, I usually suggest used gear that has some room to grow.

I am copying this here from one of my other posts, I have shared it, or very similar all over the forum, but I update it frequently. This build of used gear is only about $650 ish, not counting drives, which I would still get new

You might want to look, just for kicks:

Some assembly required...

CASE: Fractal-Design-Define-R5-FD-CA-DEF-R5-BK-Black-Silent-ATX-Midtower-Computer-Case - - US $104.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/253026336681

These are older components, but still very powerful.
I use similar components in both my 48 bay primary NAS and in my 24 bay backup NAS that runs ESXi with FreeNAS in a VM.

This one comes with a CPU and fan and 32GB of memory, but it is really slow CPU, so probably want to replace that:

System Board: SuperMicro X9SRL-F AXT Motherboard w/ I/O, 32GB RAM Intel Xeon E5-2603 1.80GHz - - US $179.99 plus shipping $28.32
https://www.ebay.com/itm/401606434468

Nothing included with this one, so the price is lower, but an option:

Supermicro X9SRL-F Motherboard Socket LGA2011 System Board w/ I/O Shield - - US $189.98
https://www.ebay.com/itm/113216257183

If you want more memory, this board can take 128 GB of these 16GB sticks, if I recall correctly:

Memory: SAMSUNG 16GB PC3L-12800R DDR3-1600 ECC Registered 1.35V RDIMM - - US $44.95
https://www.ebay.com/itm/302606459277

Note: You could go for the 32GB memory modules, but they are more than twice the price.

If the board above doesn't come with a cooler, or you want a better one, I use this model on two of my systems.
It is only slightly louder than the Noctua cooler I have on my wife's desktop PC.

CPU Fan: Dynatron R27 Side Fan CPU Cooler 3U for Intel Socket LGA2011 (Narrow ILM) - - US $39.59
https://www.ebay.com/itm/401284811045

The CPU that comes in the board above is pretty low speed, so you might find that you need a better one.
You have a lot of options for CPUs to go in this board, but I recently bought one of these for myself:

PassMark score of 13073... If you are wondering... This is the model I use for the NAS I run Plex in.

CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2650 V2 2.6GHz 8 Core 20MB 8GT/s SR1A8 LGA2011 ( Ivy Bridge ) Processor - - US $89.97
https://www.ebay.com/itm/142937685210

Only it was $30 more when I bought it... It works great. Plenty of resources for all the things I am doing.

If you want more, you can get a 10 core model like this:

Intel Xeon E5-2680 v2 Ten Core 2.8GHz 25MB CPU PROCESSOR LGA2011 SR1A6 - - Price: US $113.95
PassMark score of 15796... If you are wondering...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/142954574638

For the drive controller, I would suggest a SAS controller, just to get all the drives on a single controller. It works better that way. One SAS controller like this can run up to 256 drives by use of expander controllers. We can talk more about that when you need more drives but this will get you to eight drives to start.

Drive Controller: SAS PCI-E 3.0 HBA LSI 9207-8i P20 IT Mode for ZFS FreeNAS unRAID - - US $69.55
https://www.ebay.com/itm/162862201664

Drive Cables: Mini SAS to 4-SATA SFF-8087 Multi-Lane Forward Breakout Internal Cable - - US $12.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/371681252206

I would suggest one of these SSDs for the boot drive.
These are used data-center drives, but as a boot drive in FreeNAS, it should last as long as the server, if not longer:

Boot drive: 120GB Intel SSD DC S3500 Series HP Model: TK0120GDJXT SSDSC2BB120G4B SATA 6Gb/s - - Approximately US $38.68
https://www.ebay.com/itm/323462963823

Thermal Compound: Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Paste Grease Conductive Compound for CPU/GPU - US $6.95
https://www.ebay.com/itm/302624513215

Just rough math in my head, I think that is all around $650.... Still, you might need some odd bits, and hard drives, but it should be simple to get there from here and this should save you a buck or two vs buying new and still do the job for years to come.

 

[Hawkins]

In your small build with only four drives, it probably is overkill, but the role of the HBA is to interface between the drives and the system board. A SAS HBA like the one I linked, is able to control up to 256 drives by way of SAS expanders and it is (my opinion) more reliable.
If you are going to use only four drives, and boot from a USB device, you probably don't need any more than what you have. In a few years, you may want to expand the capacity of the system and having more ports available to add more drives might be a good thing. When people come asking what to buy, I usually suggest used gear that has some room to grow.

Thanks for the reply. I understand what you are saying now. The 4-6TB drives should last me a long time but if I ever need to exceed that in the future, will def. keep this in mind. Appreciate the knowledge!

 

[rmccullough]

@Hawkins you will find this post useful for getting SpiderOak running: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?posts/478001

 

[Hawkins]

@Hawkins you will find this post useful for getting SpiderOak running: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?posts/478001

Thanks for this. So I am new to all of this of course (NAS, servers, etc.) but I was going to just set up a network drive which reflects the entire server contents and sync that network drive with Spideroak. That sounds really easy and I wasn't sure if it will actually work. However, that being said, what you sent is awesome and I may be able to circumvent that. Spideroak doesn't have restrictions around backing up servers so I don't want to abuse but if I can back up the entire server, I am def. going to go that route.