mdg
Cadet
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2016
- Messages
- 2
Hi everyone,
I'm new at freenas and servers in general, and I was hoping I could get your guys' opinion on the hardware I've selected before I go ahead with purchasing. Any other advice or suggestions you have are also very much welcome.
My father and I both recently decided it would be good idea to get a backup solution up and running in our houses and figured it would be an added safety if we'd backup to each other as well, in case of fire or theft or stuff like that.
My father also wishes to store a bunch of video files on his machine which he made from old video cassettes. He will not have these files on other pcs in his house due to file size, so it would count as the original files on his server rather than backup files. Backup for these files would be both my server and in the worst case scenario his original video cassettes.
I myself have an old workstation I plan on using for this task, which is an HP XW6600 (xeon 5420, will need to upgrade the ram to 16gb). I figure since all I need it for is NAS \ Backup I don't need anything more fancy, and the hardware is already based on running 24\7 and has ecc ram and all that.
Alternatively if it's a bad choice to go this route (power consumption costs or hardware issues) I'd probably look towards buying a new cheap build or something.
Disclaimer: prices and purchasing will be based from The Netherlands.
The build I'd like a hardware check on is the build I made for my father, who at first I made a simpler pentium build for at around 450€, but he told me he'd like to be able to do other things with the server than just NAS \ Backup and didn't want to feel restricted by the hardware. After much value for price research I finally settled on configuring a LGA2011 build using a xeon e5-2670 since they're really cheap at the moment on ebay\other sites and seem extremely powerful in the benchmark scores (Which with my limited knowledge is all I really knew how to compare CPUs with). I figured that this build would be able to do about anything he could imagine, and managed to configure a build for about 700€.
Here are the hardware choices that I've made thusfar:
---- CPU -------------------------------------- (Used)
€ 90 | Intel Xeon E5-2670
As said before, I went with this cpu because it's quite cheap on ebay and dutch versions of ebay. The costs will be between 70$ to 100€, depending if I buy it from ebay from Hong Kong, United States, Germany or a dutch ebay variant.
---- CPU Cooler -------------------------------------- (New)
€ 30 | Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
This selection can still change. I just picked a popular relatively cheap one. If it turns out this will be too loud we'll probably spend a bit more for a noctua, but I'm still unsure how powerful of a CPU cooler we'll be needing. Low noise is important for this build.
---- Motherboard -------------------------------------- (New)
€ 300 | Supermicro X9SRA ATX LGA2011
One of the cheapest LGA2011 motherboards I could find. About € 100 more expensive than a current-gen supermicro, but I assume that's because of the supply of 2670s causing a huge demand for LGA2011 boards. I'm having trouble finding a cheaper solution.
---- Memory -------------------------------------- (Used)
€ 60-70 | Samsung or Hynix or Micron 32GB 4X8GB DDR3-1600 registered ECC
At first I thought to just buy memory at newprice, but I saw on ebay that there's tons of options available where you can get 32gb for like € 60-70 which is a lot cheaper than newprice ram. I'm not sure if this is the correct ram for this setup, and I'm not sure yet which seller to pick (or if I should avoid hong kong or not), but these are links of ebay offers that tempted me:
Link 1 | Link 2 | Link 3
---- Case -------------------------------------- (New)
€ 50-100 | Fractal Design R5 (or R4), or any other case that works
€ 10-20 | Extra case fan
Like the CPU cooler this one might change. I have an R4 for my current workstation computer and it has served me well. I figured I'd get the same one for my dads build because it's silent and has a ton of drive bays for expansion options. Alternatively I might go for a €50-60 Fractal Design if the R5 is unnecessary. I'm open for suggestions off-brand, though a silent case is important.
Airflow wise I was thinking having 2 fans in the front at the drive bays and dust filter, and then 1 at the back generating positive pressure to prevent dust.
---- Power Supply -------------------------------------- (New)
€ 100 | SeaSonic 650W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply
Seasonic is a brand I already have in use for my workstation, and I've been very impressed thusfar. It's also highly recommended throughout the forums and other websites. I chose 650W because the pcpartpicker website estimated my max wattage at around 250W without disks, and I remember reading somewhere you should consider 30-35W per disk. So I figured that with expansion in mind eventually we might end up with 8 disks, it would be around 530W total. That together with the 80% guideline puts me at 662,5W.
---- Storage -------------------------------------- (New)
€ 12,10 | 2x SanDisk Cruzer Fit CZ33 16GB USB 2.0 Low-Profile Flash Drive- SDCZ33-016G-B35
€ ? | 4x3tb, 5x3tb, 4x4tb, 5x4tb. Either WD red or HGST Deskstar NAS I think?
Storage is still a bit of a pickle I'm having.
For the operating system I went with the advice of just getting two cheap USB drives for mirror, but I'm still not sure if I should go this route or get a small SSD (unsure what the risks and benefits are).
For the storage disks I figured I should stay away from seagate, and that either Western Digital Reds or HGST Deskstar NAS would be a good choice. Differences between the two being noise, power, speed and price. I'm currently favoring reds because of noise concerns, although I'm not sure how big this difference would be with HGSTs?
How many I should get, and how big they should be however is still a bit of a question... Decisions like RAID-Z versus RAID-Z2 in concerns to bigger than 1tb disks (knowing that the backup is a short drive away), and decisions like 4x or 5x or even 6x disks versus eachother. I've yet to figure out which route I wish to take in this regard and it's been one of the more confusing problems I've had.
__________________________________________
Total price of all parts (excluding HDDs): € 652,10 - 720,10
I hope I gave enough information to describe my situation, if not please ask and I'll do my best to give more information.
Thank you in advanced for your time.
I'm new at freenas and servers in general, and I was hoping I could get your guys' opinion on the hardware I've selected before I go ahead with purchasing. Any other advice or suggestions you have are also very much welcome.
My father and I both recently decided it would be good idea to get a backup solution up and running in our houses and figured it would be an added safety if we'd backup to each other as well, in case of fire or theft or stuff like that.
My father also wishes to store a bunch of video files on his machine which he made from old video cassettes. He will not have these files on other pcs in his house due to file size, so it would count as the original files on his server rather than backup files. Backup for these files would be both my server and in the worst case scenario his original video cassettes.
I myself have an old workstation I plan on using for this task, which is an HP XW6600 (xeon 5420, will need to upgrade the ram to 16gb). I figure since all I need it for is NAS \ Backup I don't need anything more fancy, and the hardware is already based on running 24\7 and has ecc ram and all that.
Alternatively if it's a bad choice to go this route (power consumption costs or hardware issues) I'd probably look towards buying a new cheap build or something.
Disclaimer: prices and purchasing will be based from The Netherlands.
The build I'd like a hardware check on is the build I made for my father, who at first I made a simpler pentium build for at around 450€, but he told me he'd like to be able to do other things with the server than just NAS \ Backup and didn't want to feel restricted by the hardware. After much value for price research I finally settled on configuring a LGA2011 build using a xeon e5-2670 since they're really cheap at the moment on ebay\other sites and seem extremely powerful in the benchmark scores (Which with my limited knowledge is all I really knew how to compare CPUs with). I figured that this build would be able to do about anything he could imagine, and managed to configure a build for about 700€.
Here are the hardware choices that I've made thusfar:
---- CPU -------------------------------------- (Used)
€ 90 | Intel Xeon E5-2670
As said before, I went with this cpu because it's quite cheap on ebay and dutch versions of ebay. The costs will be between 70$ to 100€, depending if I buy it from ebay from Hong Kong, United States, Germany or a dutch ebay variant.
---- CPU Cooler -------------------------------------- (New)
€ 30 | Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
This selection can still change. I just picked a popular relatively cheap one. If it turns out this will be too loud we'll probably spend a bit more for a noctua, but I'm still unsure how powerful of a CPU cooler we'll be needing. Low noise is important for this build.
---- Motherboard -------------------------------------- (New)
€ 300 | Supermicro X9SRA ATX LGA2011
One of the cheapest LGA2011 motherboards I could find. About € 100 more expensive than a current-gen supermicro, but I assume that's because of the supply of 2670s causing a huge demand for LGA2011 boards. I'm having trouble finding a cheaper solution.
---- Memory -------------------------------------- (Used)
€ 60-70 | Samsung or Hynix or Micron 32GB 4X8GB DDR3-1600 registered ECC
At first I thought to just buy memory at newprice, but I saw on ebay that there's tons of options available where you can get 32gb for like € 60-70 which is a lot cheaper than newprice ram. I'm not sure if this is the correct ram for this setup, and I'm not sure yet which seller to pick (or if I should avoid hong kong or not), but these are links of ebay offers that tempted me:
Link 1 | Link 2 | Link 3
---- Case -------------------------------------- (New)
€ 50-100 | Fractal Design R5 (or R4), or any other case that works
€ 10-20 | Extra case fan
Like the CPU cooler this one might change. I have an R4 for my current workstation computer and it has served me well. I figured I'd get the same one for my dads build because it's silent and has a ton of drive bays for expansion options. Alternatively I might go for a €50-60 Fractal Design if the R5 is unnecessary. I'm open for suggestions off-brand, though a silent case is important.
Airflow wise I was thinking having 2 fans in the front at the drive bays and dust filter, and then 1 at the back generating positive pressure to prevent dust.
---- Power Supply -------------------------------------- (New)
€ 100 | SeaSonic 650W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply
Seasonic is a brand I already have in use for my workstation, and I've been very impressed thusfar. It's also highly recommended throughout the forums and other websites. I chose 650W because the pcpartpicker website estimated my max wattage at around 250W without disks, and I remember reading somewhere you should consider 30-35W per disk. So I figured that with expansion in mind eventually we might end up with 8 disks, it would be around 530W total. That together with the 80% guideline puts me at 662,5W.
---- Storage -------------------------------------- (New)
€ 12,10 | 2x SanDisk Cruzer Fit CZ33 16GB USB 2.0 Low-Profile Flash Drive- SDCZ33-016G-B35
€ ? | 4x3tb, 5x3tb, 4x4tb, 5x4tb. Either WD red or HGST Deskstar NAS I think?
Storage is still a bit of a pickle I'm having.
For the operating system I went with the advice of just getting two cheap USB drives for mirror, but I'm still not sure if I should go this route or get a small SSD (unsure what the risks and benefits are).
For the storage disks I figured I should stay away from seagate, and that either Western Digital Reds or HGST Deskstar NAS would be a good choice. Differences between the two being noise, power, speed and price. I'm currently favoring reds because of noise concerns, although I'm not sure how big this difference would be with HGSTs?
How many I should get, and how big they should be however is still a bit of a question... Decisions like RAID-Z versus RAID-Z2 in concerns to bigger than 1tb disks (knowing that the backup is a short drive away), and decisions like 4x or 5x or even 6x disks versus eachother. I've yet to figure out which route I wish to take in this regard and it's been one of the more confusing problems I've had.
__________________________________________
Total price of all parts (excluding HDDs): € 652,10 - 720,10
I hope I gave enough information to describe my situation, if not please ask and I'll do my best to give more information.
Thank you in advanced for your time.
