New to Freenas - Bottleneck question

[notadouche]

Hi folks,

I'm going to be building my first freenas in a few weeks. I decided to post here because this question touches a few categories. Basically I wanted to know, with the setup I want, if it will be possible to stream 14GB MKV movies to 1-2 devices simultaneously with WIFI without having any lag. Here is my setup (roughly since I haven't bought anything yet)


FreeNas:

- A motherboard with 4x 3GBsata and 2X 6GBsata ports and Giga-Lan
- C2D processor or better
- 4 x 3TB drives (WD RED if there is a great special within a few weeks or GREEN)
- 12-16g DDR3 RAM
- Basic chassis
- Basic 450W PS
- 8GB USB Stick with OS


Router EA6400

802.11ac, backward-compatible with a/b/g/n Devices
• Linksys Smart Wi-Fi
• Data rates up to 300 Mbps (2.4 GHz) and 1.3 Gbps (5 GHz)
• Four 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet Ports
• One (1) USB 3.0 Port


Connected devices:

iPad (not streaming movies)
2 laptops (2.4ghz but not streaming movies)
1 desktop (2.4ghz but can upgrade to 5.0ghz adapter. Will be watching movies from time to time)
3 TVs with WDTV LIVE with DWA-182 wireless USB (upto 867Mbps with 5.0GHz but bottlenecked by USB 2.0 at 450Mbps)


So that's the equipement. Basically, I will have a the freenas sitting right next to the router and will be plugged directly with CAT6 cable. Do you think I will be able to stream to 1-2 TVs without having the dreaded lags and pauses? If not, any suggestions as I'm not too keen to cutting tons of holes in my walls.

Thanks!
Pat

 

[jgreco]

If you're going to spend a fair amount of money on hardware that might-or-might-not be okay, why spend it on five year old technology like C2D?

If you haven't bought anything yet, now's a great time to pay attention to the sticky in the hardware forum about picking server-grade components. Picking a nice mainboard with Intel ethernets and ECC memory isn't really all that much more expensive, and you can avoid the $150 price premium for a Xeon CPU by picking something like a G2020.

You are MUCH more likely to have good options with modern hardware. That LGA 775 board? Probably limited to 8GB. A modern 1155? 32GB. A G2020 not fast enough? With the 1155, you have LOTS of options.

I can't really promise you any given speed over wifi, but I can tell you that ZFS is a little piggy, and throwing more resources at it makes it substantially faster - sometimes without obvious reason.

 

[notadouche]

Thanks for the reply jgreco!

Actually, I did read that thread but thought it may be overkill for what my needs. I absolutely haven't bought anything except for my router and a few WDTV live devices so I will make a server-grade one then.

I just looked up the G2020 and it's only 65$?! That's a great start lol. Assuming the HDDs are about 100$ each, I was hoping that I could get the whole setup under 750$.. 400$ for the disks and 350$ for the parts.

Thanks,
Pat

 

[jgreco]

Well, the truth of the matter is that you can get a $45 socket 1155 board and think of yourself as being $100 ahead. But then when your Realtek ethernet doesn't work, you end up shelling out another $35 for an Intel CT controller, and that only gives you a single Intel ethernet, so now you're $65 ahead and one ethernet short. But then the $45 board doesn't do ECC, and ECC is part of the ZFS protection strategy, so if you run into bad RAM, you can waste hours trying to find the trouble. Also, if there is anything else marginal about the board, you again waste hours and maybe lose data too. So from my point of view, paying $65 extra to bridge the gap between crap and quality, when you're already expecting to spend ten times that, is a small incremental cost, and the $45 board doesn't support 32GB or other things you might want someday anyways.

 

[notadouche]

Well, the truth of the matter is that you can get a $45 socket 1155 board and think of yourself as being $100 ahead. But then when your Realtek ethernet doesn't work, you end up shelling out another $35 for an Intel CT controller, and that only gives you a single Intel ethernet, so now you're $65 ahead and one ethernet short. But then the $45 board doesn't do ECC, and ECC is part of the ZFS protection strategy, so if you run into bad RAM, you can waste hours trying to find the trouble. Also, if there is anything else marginal about the board, you again waste hours and maybe lose data too. So from my point of view, paying $65 extra to bridge the gap between crap and quality, when you're already expecting to spend ten times that, is a small incremental cost, and the $45 board doesn't support 32GB or other things you might want someday anyways.

I agree with you jgreco.

So far, this is the setup costs (Canada):

Chassis: 0$ (I have an old one)
Motherboard: 205$ (Supermicro X9SCM at NewEgg)
CPU: 65$ (G2020 at NewEgg)
RAM: 180$ (16 GB of Kingston KVR16E11/8I at NCIX)
PSU: 60$ ( Corsair CX Series CX500M 500W ATX 12V 80 Plus Bronze )

Total: 510$
Aimed budget: 350$

I see to be 160$ over budget, which is fine if this is the key to eternal stability lol. Are there any changes that could be done to reduce the price a tad, while still keeping the performance for my needs: Streaming movies at home?

Thanks,
Pat

 

[jgreco]

NewEgg is not the best place to buy Supermicro at retail. Check around to see if you can find a different retailer.

Unfortunately doing it right is usually more expensive than just doing it halfway, but it just turns into a matter of how much you value your data and time.

 

[notadouche]

NewEgg is not the best place to buy Supermicro at retail. Check around to see if you can find a different retailer.

Unfortunately doing it right is usually more expensive than just doing it halfway, but it just turns into a matter of how much you value your data and time.

Alright, I'll shop around a cough up the money. Thanks for your time Jgreco.