New from Vegas

[Newtofreenas]

I was in need of a NAS setup and after asking around at work and some friends I was told to go with UNRaid. I did some research and found out about FreeNAS. I think it seems to have a better system and setup for redundancy. So about a 6 weeks ago I took parts I had laying around the house and made a test server. Man FreeNAS is hard to setup. I watched hours of youtube and read these forums daily.

I am finally ready to build my real server and thus thought it also time to get on the boards. I will need lots of help in the near future with ideas of components and soon how to setup Jails and probably a Virtual windows 10.

I have already:
6x Seagate BarraCuda Pro ST6000DM004 6TB 7200 RPM 256MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drives
Rosewill RSV-L4500 - Server Case 4U, 15 x Internal Bays
AsRock Rack EP2C602-2L+/D16 motherboard (found the mobo and case combo and couldn't pass it up)

I am currently looking for:
64GB to 96GB of DDR3 1866 RAM (or 1600) (the board has 16 slots but I think I just want to use 4-6x 16GB chips)
DUAL LGA2011 V2 chips (probably something cheap and low watts off ebay, I doubt I will ever use the power this thing should have so I don't need big fast hot chips)
SSD for boot. I was considering using 2 or 3 mirrored USBs but 1 SSD is probably just as safe especially if I save the setup on a different computer.
Power supply calculator shows 550W would be more than enough so something in the 550-750W range

Probably all I can think of now.

Thanks in advance for any help you guys can offer.

 

[Chris Moore]

but 1 SSD is probably just as safe especially if I save the setup on a different computer.

You should still save the config on another computer, but I highly recommend using a pair of these drives for the boot pool. I have been using a similar setup for almost three years with zero problems and there is no need for the speed or capacity of a SSD.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Hitachi-Travelstar-40GB-Internal-5400-RPM-2-5-HTS541640J9SA00-SATA-Hard-Drive/264244921757
The ones I am using are Toshiba, but these Hitachi drives are probably even better. I bought six and used a mirrored pair in each of my two servers keeping the third pair for spares but I have had zero trouble with the ones I am using.

 

[Newtofreenas]

1 word.... WOW. I never knew I could get a drive for $4.50...... that's cheaper than a USB drive.

 

[Newtofreenas]

You should still save the config on another computer, but I highly recommend using a pair of these drives for the boot pool. I have been using a similar setup for almost three years with zero problems and there is no need for the speed or capacity of a SSD.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Hitachi-Travelstar-40GB-Internal-5400-RPM-2-5-HTS541640J9SA00-SATA-Hard-Drive/264244921757
The ones I am using are Toshiba, but these Hitachi drives are probably even better. I bought six and used a mirrored pair in each of my two servers keeping the third pair for spares but I have had zero trouble with the ones I am using.

I believe I understand correctly that the boot drive is only used once, when freeNAS boots up. That the program is loaded into the RAM and run from there, the boot drives are not read again until FreeNAS is shutdown and again booted up. My question is, would these boot drives power down, idle, or sleep? Or does freenas keep them spinning.

 

[Chris Moore]

I believe I understand correctly that the boot drive is only used once, when freeNAS boots up. That the program is loaded into the RAM and run from there, the boot drives are not read again until FreeNAS is shutdown and again booted up.

It worked that way years ago. The program is much larger and more sophisticated now. The boot drive is used like any other operating system except that the system swap is not stored on the boot drive.

My question is, would these boot drives power down, idle, or sleep? Or does freenas keep them spinning.

The laptop drives I suggested spin slow and use very little power, but they do not stop. Just as an example, this is the activity (right now) on my boot drives:

 

[Newtofreenas]

It worked that way years ago. The program is much larger and more sophisticated now. The boot drive is used like any other operating system except that the system swap is not stored on the boot

Ok I see why using the USB drives isn't recommended. Thanks for the help.