Hi.
Retired IT worker (3yrs ago). Haven't really kept up as I have been pursuing other interests, which was the whole point :) . Couple of yrs ago I built a very capable desktop for use as a photo editor in a fractal designs node 804 case which I was very impressed with. I backup my data x2 to usb drives and offsite 1 copy. I have also had in place a WDMycloud "nas" with a couple of additional usb drives attached serving media (movie and music collection) to one tv in the house for the last couple of yrs. It is what it is and actually served its purpose. The board on this died a week ago out of warranty.
I could have replaced this with another mycloud or something a little more robust - thought about synology/qnap device but these seeemed to me underpowered for the most part for what they're touted for, the ARM ones at least. I repurposed in the end an old celeron NUC to serve the media from the surviving usb drives from the mycloud setup. All this prodded me into considering an issue which I've meen manyana-ing.
My ever increasing archive of photos which, although I follow a reasonable backup strategy for will necessitate expanding my editing machine disk capacity soon anyway. My wife has recently started a small business which generates a fair amount of data and also involves a lot of product photography. Two users then on a wired 1gb ethernet home. So potentially a fair amount of valuable (to us) data being generated over the next few years. I then wondered about a raid-ed linux box and google pretty quickly led me here and my interest picqued & I am considering a Freenas build.
When I worked I was fortunate that it was for an organisation that was tech enthusiastic and with a budget that allowed a fairly rapid refresh cycle. We used to dispose of a lot of server equipment that could have still had a lot of life left in it so I'm not averse to used gear at all but the availability here (Scotland) of decent attractively priced used server grade parts doesn't seem as developed as the U.S. I am therefore thinking of a fairly economical build using new.
Board - the Supermicro X11SCL-F seems suitable and available at just over £200
CPU - i3-9100F looks a good buy at around £65 and I see no point in running this machine anything other than headless through ipmi. It won't be transcoding anything.
This appears to me to be adequate for use case which will essentially be a file server
Planning a small cheap SSD for boot drive and populate the rest of the six SATA ports with 5 WD Red 4Tb drives in RaidZ. I have wondered about a plex media server running off this box and moving the media. It all direct plays to a nvidia shield. No transcoding required.
Probably a 650W Seasonic PSU as seems to be favoured.
16Gb memory - ECC of course.
The Supermicro recommended memory for this board seems to consist of one entry only, for a SKHynix stick which a quick google for looks expensive..... Is that really my only sensible choice? I get the advice to avoid Kingston like the plague but although it's not on the list, what about Samsung ECC memory? It's around half the price of the SK Hynix recommended. Been a fan of crucial memory in the past but there configurator doesn't offer ECC for this board.
For case I had automatically veered towards another Fractal Designs 804 as I was pleased with the form factor and quality of the one I used for my photo editor and had the idea that they might stack on a frame but there seems to be none available for purchase at the usual suspects and some vendors state that it's discontinued.... Doesn't seem to be an alternative in the cube format from any other vendor? The alternative is to either re-house my photo editor in something like a Fractal Design Define Mini case and use my existing 804 for the freenas or put the freenas into something from the Fractal Design Define range - R5, R6 etc.
Incidentally, the WD Red 4tb (WD40EFRX manufacture date 2017) from the Mycloud seems fine, I rescued its files using a usb dock. I haven't fully read through the issues yet regarding these drives. Am I as well slinging this for new or could it be re-used?
I haven't ordered anything yet so am open to persuasion...
Thanks
Retired IT worker (3yrs ago). Haven't really kept up as I have been pursuing other interests, which was the whole point :) . Couple of yrs ago I built a very capable desktop for use as a photo editor in a fractal designs node 804 case which I was very impressed with. I backup my data x2 to usb drives and offsite 1 copy. I have also had in place a WDMycloud "nas" with a couple of additional usb drives attached serving media (movie and music collection) to one tv in the house for the last couple of yrs. It is what it is and actually served its purpose. The board on this died a week ago out of warranty.
I could have replaced this with another mycloud or something a little more robust - thought about synology/qnap device but these seeemed to me underpowered for the most part for what they're touted for, the ARM ones at least. I repurposed in the end an old celeron NUC to serve the media from the surviving usb drives from the mycloud setup. All this prodded me into considering an issue which I've meen manyana-ing.
My ever increasing archive of photos which, although I follow a reasonable backup strategy for will necessitate expanding my editing machine disk capacity soon anyway. My wife has recently started a small business which generates a fair amount of data and also involves a lot of product photography. Two users then on a wired 1gb ethernet home. So potentially a fair amount of valuable (to us) data being generated over the next few years. I then wondered about a raid-ed linux box and google pretty quickly led me here and my interest picqued & I am considering a Freenas build.
When I worked I was fortunate that it was for an organisation that was tech enthusiastic and with a budget that allowed a fairly rapid refresh cycle. We used to dispose of a lot of server equipment that could have still had a lot of life left in it so I'm not averse to used gear at all but the availability here (Scotland) of decent attractively priced used server grade parts doesn't seem as developed as the U.S. I am therefore thinking of a fairly economical build using new.
Board - the Supermicro X11SCL-F seems suitable and available at just over £200
CPU - i3-9100F looks a good buy at around £65 and I see no point in running this machine anything other than headless through ipmi. It won't be transcoding anything.
This appears to me to be adequate for use case which will essentially be a file server
Planning a small cheap SSD for boot drive and populate the rest of the six SATA ports with 5 WD Red 4Tb drives in RaidZ. I have wondered about a plex media server running off this box and moving the media. It all direct plays to a nvidia shield. No transcoding required.
Probably a 650W Seasonic PSU as seems to be favoured.
16Gb memory - ECC of course.
The Supermicro recommended memory for this board seems to consist of one entry only, for a SKHynix stick which a quick google for looks expensive..... Is that really my only sensible choice? I get the advice to avoid Kingston like the plague but although it's not on the list, what about Samsung ECC memory? It's around half the price of the SK Hynix recommended. Been a fan of crucial memory in the past but there configurator doesn't offer ECC for this board.
For case I had automatically veered towards another Fractal Designs 804 as I was pleased with the form factor and quality of the one I used for my photo editor and had the idea that they might stack on a frame but there seems to be none available for purchase at the usual suspects and some vendors state that it's discontinued.... Doesn't seem to be an alternative in the cube format from any other vendor? The alternative is to either re-house my photo editor in something like a Fractal Design Define Mini case and use my existing 804 for the freenas or put the freenas into something from the Fractal Design Define range - R5, R6 etc.
Incidentally, the WD Red 4tb (WD40EFRX manufacture date 2017) from the Mycloud seems fine, I rescued its files using a usb dock. I haven't fully read through the issues yet regarding these drives. Am I as well slinging this for new or could it be re-used?
I haven't ordered anything yet so am open to persuasion...
Thanks
