BUILD Recommendation for low-cost NAS?

[Johhhn]

Hi all!

I've been threatening to build a ZFS box for quite some time and have finally decided to do it. I've built a couple using desktop-class parts and have gotten some great results.

I need to build a low-cost NAS box with the following specs:

1- 16GB ECC RAM (this box will only serve one or two computers at at time- video files for editing)
2- Low cost CPU and motherboard with ECC support

There are so many different motherboards/cpu combos out there that it's very overwhelming. I'm looking for something with a low-end cpu since there won't be many users (as indicated above) and only will be in use for a few hours a day (at most).

Two questions:

1- Recommendations?

2- ZFS RAID Type.
I've read the PPT presentation (good job!) and noticed that it only talked about RAIDZ1,2,3, but not mirror RAIDs. A lot of the reading re: ZFS I've done over the years talked about mirror RAID for reliability and performance.

My question is: with such large drives being used nowadays (2TB+), are you guys not worried about BER (bit error rate)? If there's a technical reason why it's not as big of a deal with ZFS, please enlighten me.

thank you!

John

 

[cyberjock]

Recommendations:

1. Play with FreeNAS in a VM so you are familiar with it. Use the manual and the forum stickies to answer your questions. Also read the presentation I wrote(link in my sig).
2. Using the stickies you can get recommended parts for FreeNAS.
3. Ask any additional questions you have that aren't in the manual or stickies.

 

[Johhhn]

Hi,

Apparently my trackpad was very happy to submit the post before I finished!