Newbie here (please help to decide guys!)

[670739]

Hello guys,

I have a lot of content that I want it to be safe (had 1 hdd crash recently:(), so I decided to make a home NAS, read a lot of article's, but the more I read, the less I understand what I need:)
Can you guys please help me decide what hardware to use, this is what I already plan to buy:

6 * 6 tb wd red 5400 RAIDZ2 configuration

ASRock Z270M-ITX/ac LGA 1151 Intel Z270 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Mini ITX Motherboards - Intel - not sure about it

2 * SanDisk Ultra Fit 16GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive - mirrored forr booting - not sure about it

Node 304

32 GB EEC RAM - please advice what is better to use?

+ what other hardware do I need?


Thanks in advance to all the help:)
Merry Christmas:)

 

[CraigD]

Welcome

The Hardware Recommendations Guide is a good place to start

Slideshow explaining VDev, zpool, ZIL and L2ARC for noobs! also helps

What do need from your NAS? Expected growth? desired speed? desired redundancy?

When you have read the above links, search for answers to your questions

Finally list your revised build list before buying

If you do it right freeNAS will keep your data safe

Have Fun

 

[670739]

Hi Craig,

Thank you for your help:) What I need from my home NAS is reliability, 1 GB LAN speed is more than enough for me, planning to grow in a future, but no near future. Gonna store my music dvd collection, planning to burn some discs for backup from NAS through LAN, also some lossless music and HD movies to watch on my home tv using PLEX.

The main concern for me is Motherboard and CPU, I need some middle class one, not very cheap and not very expensive, as I wrote above, it's not gonna be many tasks at once, maybe you can advice from your experience? Also can I use some pre owned Motherboard and CPU?

 

[IQless]

That motherboard might support the ECC memory, but it will not run it in ECC-mode.
It's also a consumer grade board with a lot of stuff that FreeNAS won't use. Like onboard sound etc.

Do you have a budget for the build?
Do you have to go for the Node 304. Going with something bigger will give you a lot more room to expand, and you will have a lot suitable motherboards to choose from.

 

[670739]

That motherboard might support the ECC memory, but it will not run it in ECC-mode.
It's also a consumer grade board with a lot of stuff that FreeNAS won't use. Like onboard sound etc.

Do you have a budget for the build?
Do you have to go for the Node 304. Going with something bigger will give you a lot more room to expand, and you will have a lot suitable motherboards to choose from.

Hi, Node 304 is not mandotory, can you advice some other one that would be better? I don't have exact budget, most of the price I'll plan to spend on HDD's, just want to build it for my needs I explain in a previous message. Can you please advice about motherboard and CPU?

Thank you:)

 

[IQless]

There is so many options, look in the Will It FreeNAS Build Discussion :)
Would you consider used server grade gear? I know @Chris Moore is the residential guru when it comes to used server gear on ebay! :D

 

[CraigD]

Hi Craig,

Thank you for your help:) What I need from my home NAS is reliability, 1 GB LAN speed is more than enough for me, planning to grow in a future, but no near future. Gonna store my music dvd collection, planning to burn some discs for backup from NAS through LAN, also some lossless music and HD movies to watch on my home tv using PLEX.

The main concern for me is Motherboard and CPU, I need some middle class one, not very cheap and not very expensive, as I wrote above, it's not gonna be many tasks at once, maybe you can advice from your experience? Also can I use some pre owned Motherboard and CPU?

FreeNAS is reliable, all of the recommended boards use Intel 1Gb LAN, storing DVDs is trival, as is backing up

PLEX will not play an ISO, because of this you will need to convert them to a playable format, PLEX will then stream to any device you desire and if necessary transcode or change it to make this possible. Transcoding is hard work look at the PLEX CPU passmark recommendations, PLEX is able to play lossless audio, but may also be transcoded

If you get the right motherboard, CPU, and RAM it will work for many years. Pre-owned components if suitable are a great way to build a freeNAS server, but remember older equipment use a little more power, and surprisingly maybe even faster than newer CPUs. Posters list the servers they own in signatures this can be helpful, you can buy the same motherboard, 2 lesser CPUs, and 48GB of RAM that @IQless has for almost nothing

How many TB of data do you need to store? a used server is an easy solution

Have Fun

 

[Chris Moore]

I am driving to work at the moment, but I put a parts list together on Tuesday that includes everything besides the case and drives for around $450. If you are willing to go with a ATX case instead of the ultra tiny format?

 

[670739]

FreeNAS is reliable, all of the recommended boards use Intel 1Gb LAN, storing DVDs is trival, as is backing up

PLEX will not play an ISO, because of this you will need to convert them to a playable format, PLEX will then stream to any device you desire and if necessary transcode or change it to make this possible. Transcoding is hard work look at the PLEX CPU passmark recommendations, PLEX is able to play lossless audio, but may also be transcoded

If you get the right motherboard, CPU, and RAM it will work for many years. Pre-owned components if suitable are a great way to build a freeNAS server, but remember older equipment use a little more power, and surprisingly maybe even faster than newer CPUs. Posters list the servers they own in signatures this can be helpful, you can buy the same motherboard, 2 lesser CPUs, and 48GB of RAM that @IQless has for almost nothing

How many TB of data do you need to store? a used server is an easy solution

Have Fun

Thanks again for your reply:)
So you recommend this config:

Supermicro X8DTL-iF
2x Intel Xeon E5645 @2.4GHz
3x16GB (48GB) Samsung Registered ECC 1.35V
?

I'm planning to store about 15TB for now, more in the future

Also can you advice on the case?

 

[670739]

I am driving to work at the moment, but I put a parts list together on Tuesday that includes everything besides the case and drives for around $450. If you are willing to go with a ATX case instead of the ultra tiny format?

Awesome, of course I can go with ATX case, waiting for your reply with a configuration :)

 

[CraigD]

Thanks again for your reply:)
So you recommend this config:

Supermicro X8DTL-iF
2x Intel Xeon E5645 @2.4GHz
3x16GB (48GB) Samsung Registered ECC 1.35V
?

I'm planning to store about 15TB for now, more in the future

Also can you advice on the case?

I would buy whatever @Chris Moore recommends

Have Fun

 

[670739]

I would buy whatever @Chris Moore recommends

Have Fun

Thank you!

 

[IQless]

I would not go for the X8 generation. It uses "a lot" more power than the newer ones. I bought my system mainly because I got it cheap, and here in Norway the market for used Supermicro gear is slim to none :\

But like @CraigD said. Buy whatever @Chris Moore recommends ;)

 

[Chris Moore]

an you advice on the case?

Do you want hot-swap drive bays? It is a nice feature, but not required.

 

[670739]

Do you want hot-swap drive bays? It is a nice feature, but not required.

Whatever you recommend :)

 

[Chris Moore]

Whatever you recommend :)

Sorry for the delay getting back to this. I had to look for some replacement items because the ones I pointed out before had sold and I wanted to give you actionable information. I just checked all these links and they should be good to go.

I actually have a preference for the hot-swap drive bays of a server chassis myself because I like to be able to change the drives without the need of opening the chassis. The problem with that in most home environments is that it allows dust to enter through the front of the chassis and accumulate inside the server. Most servers are not built with any dust filters because they are intended for server rooms / data centers, where the dust is extremely minimal. I have servers at work that have been running for six or eight years and the inside is just as clean as the day it was installed.

Home use is quite different though. There is usually a lot of dust to contend with. For that reason, it is often best to sacrifice the ease of drive swap for the filtration that less server specific hardware provides. My favorite for this was the Fractal Design Define R5, which I have one of, but they discontinued it. I am not as big a fan of the Define R6, but it is a quiet case with filtration and it has 6 included 3.5 drive trays with the option of ordering more for future expansion. If it were me, I would go ahead and order the additional trays now because they might be difficult to get later.

I looked around and, at the moment of this post, the best price I could find was at NewEgg:

Fractal Design Define R6 Blackout Brushed Aluminum/Steel ATX Silent Modular Mid Tower Computer Case
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352091

This power supply should do the job for the drives you want to run and give you room to add more drives later without needing to be replaced.

POWER: Corsair-CS650M-ATX-Gold-Rated-Modular-Power-Supply-650watts - - US $44.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/163426512807

Some of these items are slightly older, discontinued components, but still very powerful and perfectly capable for FreeNAS.

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.

System Board: Supermicro X9SRL-F Motherboard Socket LGA2011 System Board w/ I/O Shield - - US $219.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/352538266577

Note: I bought two of these for under $150 each earlier this year. The price is inflated now because they are discontinued and supplies are running low. Supply and demand. They are great boards and still in demand. I would suggest making an offer to see if the seller will come down on the price.

Memory: SAMSUNG 16GB Samsung PC3L-12800R DDR3L 1600 Registered ECC Server Memory - - US $51.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/183022002934

That is a good price on the memory and you might want to go ahead and get two, but the system board can take eight of these.
If you really want a lot of RAM, you can go with 32GB memory modules, but they are a good bit more money. Let me know.

For the CPU cooler, 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, but only slightly.

CPU Fan: Dynatron R27 Side Fan CPU Cooler 3U for Intel Socket LGA2011 (Narrow ILM) - - US $42.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/401284811045


You have a lot of options for CPUs to go in this system board, but I bought one of these back in Feb 2018 myself:

PassMark score of 10385... If you are wondering... This is the model I use for the NAS I run Plex on.

CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2630 v2 SR1AM 2.6GHz 15MB 7.2GT/s Hex Core Server CPU Processor - - US $54.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/183546336257

If you want something a bit more powerful, you can easily upgrade to an eight or ten core processor and higher clock speeds, but the price goes up.

For example, with a PassMark score of 15847:

CPU: INTEL XEON E5-2680V2 10 CORE 2.80 GHz 25M 8 GT/s 115W PROCESSOR (SR1A6) - - Price: US $188.00
https://www.ebay.com/itm/262936243927


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 - - US $44.88
https://www.ebay.com/itm/192639052923

Data 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, two if you want redundancy, which would be good.
Plug these into the SATA controller on the system board and the BIOS can be configured to boot from either of them. Meaning that if one fails, the system will automatically boot from the other drive. I tested that on my system by unplugging a drive and rebooting.
These are used drives, but as a boot drive in FreeNAS, it should last as long as the server, if not longer:

Boot drive: Intel 320 Series 80GB Internal 2.5" (SSDSA2CW080G3) SSD (33 available) - - US $15
https://www.ebay.com/itm/163414398768

If you need it, this is a great product.

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

With the cost of the case, this is a bit more than the $450 I stated earlier, but without using a calculator, I think it is still under $650.

 

[670739]

Sorry for the delay getting back to this. I had to look for some replacement items because the ones I pointed out before had sold and I wanted to give you actionable information. I just checked all these links and they should be good to go.

I actually have a preference for the hot-swap drive bays of a server chassis myself because I like to be able to change the drives without the need of opening the chassis. The problem with that in most home environments is that it allows dust to enter through the front of the chassis and accumulate inside the server. Most servers are not built with any dust filters because they are intended for server rooms / data centers, where the dust is extremely minimal. I have servers at work that have been running for six or eight years and the inside is just as clean as the day it was installed.

Home use is quite different though. There is usually a lot of dust to contend with. For that reason, it is often best to sacrifice the ease of drive swap for the filtration that less server specific hardware provides. My favorite for this was the Fractal Design Define R5, which I have one of, but they discontinued it. I am not as big a fan of the Define R6, but it is a quiet case with filtration and it has 6 included 3.5 drive trays with the option of ordering more for future expansion. If it were me, I would go ahead and order the additional trays now because they might be difficult to get later.

I looked around and, at the moment of this post, the best price I could find was at NewEgg:

Fractal Design Define R6 Blackout Brushed Aluminum/Steel ATX Silent Modular Mid Tower Computer Case
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352091

This power supply should do the job for the drives you want to run and give you room to add more drives later without needing to be replaced.

POWER: Corsair-CS650M-ATX-Gold-Rated-Modular-Power-Supply-650watts - - US $44.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/163426512807

Some of these items are slightly older, discontinued components, but still very powerful and perfectly capable for FreeNAS.

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.

System Board: Supermicro X9SRL-F Motherboard Socket LGA2011 System Board w/ I/O Shield - - US $219.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/352538266577

Note: I bought two of these for under $150 each earlier this year. The price is inflated now because they are discontinued and supplies are running low. Supply and demand. They are great boards and still in demand. I would suggest making an offer to see if the seller will come down on the price.

Memory: SAMSUNG 16GB Samsung PC3L-12800R DDR3L 1600 Registered ECC Server Memory - - US $51.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/183022002934

That is a good price on the memory and you might want to go ahead and get two, but the system board can take eight of these.
If you really want a lot of RAM, you can go with 32GB memory modules, but they are a good bit more money. Let me know.

For the CPU cooler, 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, but only slightly.

CPU Fan: Dynatron R27 Side Fan CPU Cooler 3U for Intel Socket LGA2011 (Narrow ILM) - - US $42.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/401284811045


You have a lot of options for CPUs to go in this system board, but I bought one of these back in Feb 2018 myself:

PassMark score of 10385... If you are wondering... This is the model I use for the NAS I run Plex on.

CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2630 v2 SR1AM 2.6GHz 15MB 7.2GT/s Hex Core Server CPU Processor - - US $54.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/183546336257

If you want something a bit more powerful, you can easily upgrade to an eight or ten core processor and higher clock speeds, but the price goes up.

For example, with a PassMark score of 15847:

CPU: INTEL XEON E5-2680V2 10 CORE 2.80 GHz 25M 8 GT/s 115W PROCESSOR (SR1A6) - - Price: US $188.00
https://www.ebay.com/itm/262936243927


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 - - US $44.88
https://www.ebay.com/itm/192639052923

Data 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, two if you want redundancy, which would be good.
Plug these into the SATA controller on the system board and the BIOS can be configured to boot from either of them. Meaning that if one fails, the system will automatically boot from the other drive. I tested that on my system by unplugging a drive and rebooting.
These are used drives, but as a boot drive in FreeNAS, it should last as long as the server, if not longer:

Boot drive: Intel 320 Series 80GB Internal 2.5" (SSDSA2CW080G3) SSD (33 available) - - US $15
https://www.ebay.com/itm/163414398768

If you need it, this is a great product.

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

With the cost of the case, this is a bit more than the $450 I stated earlier, but without using a calculator, I think it is still under $650.

Thank you VERY MUCH for your help!
I need a little more time to process this info, I'll reply to you a little later :)

 

[Chris Moore]

6 * 6 tb wd red 5400 RAIDZ2 configuration

PS. I didn't say anything about the drives, but if you have not bought them already, you might want to take a look at the price resource here:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...e-performance-analysis-buying-information.62/

 

[670739]

Fractal Design Define R6 Blackout Brushed Aluminum/Steel ATX Silent Modular Mid Tower Computer Case
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352091

Just checked it and I'm gonna buy it:)
I'm from Ukraine, so case I'm gonna buy locally to not overpay for the shipping

This power supply should do the job for the drives you want to run and give you room to add more drives later without needing to be replaced.

POWER: Corsair-CS650M-ATX-Gold-Rated-Modular-Power-Supply-650watts - - US $44.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/163426512807

I don't know about power supply, because here in Ukraine voltage is 220V, not 110V as in US, can you please advice?

System Board: Supermicro X9SRL-F Motherboard Socket LGA2011 System Board w/ I/O Shield - - US $219.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/352538266577

Note: I bought two of these for under $150 each earlier this year. The price is inflated now because they are discontinued and supplies are running low. Supply and demand. They are great boards and still in demand. I would suggest making an offer to see if the seller will come down on the price.

I'm gonna buy this one too, thank for suggestion about the price:)

S

Memory: SAMSUNG 16GB Samsung PC3L-12800R DDR3L 1600 Registered ECC Server Memory - - US $51.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/183022002934

That is a good price on the memory and you might want to go ahead and get two, but the system board can take eight of these.
If you really want a lot of RAM, you can go with 32GB memory modules, but they are a good bit more money. Let me know.

I think I'll start with 1 16 GB stick and test it, if it's gonna be slow, then will add another 16 or more if needed

You have a lot of options for CPUs to go in this system board, but I bought one of these back in Feb 2018 myself:

PassMark score of 10385... If you are wondering... This is the model I use for the NAS I run Plex on.

CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2630 v2 SR1AM 2.6GHz 15MB 7.2GT/s Hex Core Server CPU Processor - - US $54.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/183546336257

If you want something a bit more powerful, you can easily upgrade to an eight or ten core processor and higher clock speeds, but the price goes up.

I think this one would be enough for me, thanks once again :)

For the CPU cooler, 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, but only slightly.

CPU Fan: Dynatron R27 Side Fan CPU Cooler 3U for Intel Socket LGA2011 (Narrow ILM) - - US $42.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/401284811045

Will buy this one too. Thanks:)

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 - - US $44.88
https://www.ebay.com/itm/192639052923

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

Will buy that too, thank you for the links.

I would suggest one of these SSDs for the boot drive, two if you want redundancy, which would be good.
Plug these into the SATA controller on the system board and the BIOS can be configured to boot from either of them. Meaning that if one fails, the system will automatically boot from the other drive. I tested that on my system by unplugging a drive and rebooting.
These are used drives, but as a boot drive in FreeNAS, it should last as long as the server, if not longer:

Boot drive: Intel 320 Series 80GB Internal 2.5" (SSDSA2CW080G3) SSD (33 available) - - US $15
https://www.ebay.com/itm/163414398768

Thank you for your help, I was thinking about USB boot, but if it's more reliable I'll use SSD's

About the HDD's, thank you for the nfo, will look it up:)

 

[Chris Moore]

I don't know about power supply, because here in Ukraine voltage is 220V, not 110V as in US, can you please advice?

Most modern power supplies automatically sense the range and adjust internally, even years ago they would have a mechanical switch, but the cable to connect to the wall might be incorrect. This might be better to obtain locally or from a retailer that has the correct cable to the wall included.

Thank you for your help, I was thinking about USB boot, but if it's more reliable I'll use SSD's

There have been many situations where the USB drives have failed causing the system to crash. SSDs are much longer lived and I would expect them to be more reliable. I have SSDs that are in their third system and still working without any problem.