Shw mae from Wil.

[PenalunWil]

Shw mae or should I say hello from Wil. I'm a total newbie to Freenas and indeed to the technicalities of computers. After a total computer crash before Christmas I decided that I should look for a safer way to protect my data. So I'm going to build my own NAS box.

 

[gpsguy]

Welcome to the FreeNAS forums! Have you been affected by the rain & flooding? I live on the other side of the pond, but listen to the BBC now and then.

I see that you've met the mean dog. Don't let him scare you off. ;)

As you think about hardware, read the So you want some hardware suggestions thread.

 

[PenalunWil]

Hi gpsguy,

Thanks for the welcome. The weather here in the UK has been bad, especially on the west coast of Wales. We've been lucky in the Tenby area, but other parts of Wales have not been so lucky as they have had flooding and road collapses etc. Which part of the USA do you come from?

Yeppers I've met Mean Dog, but fair play to him he just high lighted something I overlooked to do with how long a blog thread has been running. I've read the rules and conditions for the forum and I promise I'll try and be as good a boy as possible :D having said that I've been looking at those that have joined the forum and its pretty obvious they seem to realise, in some cases too late, that they need a better solution to data storage, which is the main reason why I'm here. Just before Christmas my computer went down with a black monitor. Fortunately after a bit of research it boiled down to a flat battery on the mother board, and I retrieved my data. The Christmas turkey didn't quite have the same taste but hey I'm one happy chappy. That was the warning from the big computer God in the sky... get yourself sorted Wil.

So here I am bright eyed and bushy tailed feeling optimistic about building my own NAS box using a redundant Dell Optiplex 755. I'm considering opening a new thread for the Dell Optiplex's as they all have a similar build pattern which doesn't lend itself to off the shelf motherboards, connectors and the like. I'm no expert in this field but like all trapped animals when your trapped in a corner its sink or swim, and I've been swimming in and around the Dell Optiplex manuals etc., and have pick up quite a bit of trivia about these machines which I can share with others. Do you suggest I open a new thread or carry on here?

Anyways... Thanks again for the welcome gpsguy here's to FreeNAS and all those redundant computers.

Wil

 

[gpsguy]

Yes, please start your own thread. This forum is for introductions.

In your message, let us know what your intended plans are for the storage and how much space you think you'll need, at least for the foreseeable future. That will drive the discussion.

But, be warned that you'll get a lot of flack about it being a desktop machine and that you really need a server class machine with ECC RAM. Read the long winded thread discussing the benefits of ECC RAM.

I live in Ohio. In September, my wife and I took a bus tour of England and Scotland.

 

[Nindustries]

Welcome to the forums! I visited England on Christmas day, what a pleasant experience to say the least. :D
Hope you learn a lot of new things here.

 

[PenalunWil]

Hi Nindustries,

Thanks for the welcome. What part of England did you visit? You know that the UK is made up from 4 countries... England being the main bit. I'm from Wales which is one of the old Celtic bits ;) and of course Scotland and Northern Ireland being two of the other Celtic bits. We Welsh have our own language ( a fi yw un ohonant = and I'm one of them) and enjoy kicking the English butts when we play them at Rugby God bless their rugby cotton socks. (Six Nation tournament immanent comprising Wales-last years winners, England, Scotland, Ireland, France and Italy).

Hey Nindustries... I've learned a huge amount already and think I need a bigger hard drive and more RAM (ECC type off course) for my brain. Is that blood coming from my ears??? WOW what a Forum. So glad I came here before being another casualty of lost data.

Again many thanks for the welcome...

Wil

 

[PenalunWil]

P.S... my avatar is of course our Countries Flag "Y Ddraig Goch" = The Red Dragon.

 

[Nindustries]

Thanks for the welcome. What part of England did you visit? You know that the UK is made up from 4 countries... England being the main bit.

Sorry, it's getting late here. I visited London with my girlfriend, can't go wrong with London during the Christmas period! Did some sightseeing/shopping on foot. Few months ago I also visited Edinburgh for a week, I must say I found it difficult to understand some native speakers. I think I also heard one man talking Scottish, could be any language really.. I didn't understand a single word :D Beautiful countryside!
I must admit I'm intrigued by the Celtic culture! I like your avatar!

In regards for your future NAS; reading the manual/hardware requirements will get you far! I lurked in the forums my first few weeks and I must say I learned a lot of things. Try to not bleed all over the forums!

 

[N00b]

So here I am bright eyed and bushy tailed feeling optimistic about building my own NAS box using a redundant Dell Optiplex 755. I'm considering opening a new thread for the Dell Optiplex's as they all have a similar build pattern which doesn't lend itself to off the shelf motherboards, connectors and the like. I'm no expert in this field but like all trapped animals when your trapped in a corner its sink or swim, and I've been swimming in and around the Dell Optiplex manuals etc., and have pick up quite a bit of trivia about these machines which I can share with others. Do you suggest I open a new thread or carry on here?

Welcome to the forum. I am just adding my 2c or pence if you prefer here without opening another thread. The Optiplex is not a great choice for a FreeNAS is it? I started off with one and I thought it had the following problems :

• Non standard cabinet - the board doesn't fit an off the shelf m-ATX cabinet
• Consequently not enough room for three drives in the desktop cabinet (MT) is what I had. The drives barely had an centimeter between them and ran very hot. This is a hot country, so high ambient temps to start with perhaps that is not an issue in the UK :)
• It has DDR2 ram that is expensive as is maxed out at 8GB! The FreeNAS minimum and the biggest !!! ... (wait for it...)
• I don't think it does ECC....

I love my Optiplex though but not as a NAS. I'm still don't have an ECC box yet but.... I use mine as a PCBSD desktop running a couple of jails now .

Cheers and Welcome again.

 

[PenalunWil]

Hi N00b, you quite right... I'm still in my darkened room here after reading one pile of stuff on this forum, and like wise have come to the same conclusion that the Dell Optiplex 755 is a total waste of time because every point you've mention is true. So now I've decided to build a NAS box from scratch... which has raised a huge number of questions that I need to consider. I've started making a list of items that I want it to be

1. RAM to be ECC.
2. Mother board to have a minimum of 6 sata connectors.
3. Intel CPU.
4. M1015 card if can't get Mobo with 6 SATA's (Tho' I'm in fear of cross flashing the damn thing)
5. Minimum of 16gb of RAM on Mobo. ( I can start with 8 and add later if needs be)
6. What case should I go with as I would like drives to be hot swap. (Got my eye on a cheap Viper Modded 999 USB3.0 Gaming Midi Tower Case)
7. Icy Dock ToughArmor do a nice 2x2.5” SATA Mobile Rack For 3.5” Device Bay but is that going to pack the drives to closely together.
8. Is ventilation crucial to a good build???
9. Cost is a factor as I don't want to be spending a huge amount.
10. I have a small office so my NAS box would be a glorified external hard drive fixed to my router so I could access it from more than one device. I would be the only user with may be 4 devices.

At the moment I'm spending far too much time surfing the net for answers when I should be doing my office work, but hey... I've learnt loads of stuff which can't be a bad thing :D .

Any way N00b thanks for the welcome and the warning :) .

Wil

 

[PenalunWil]

Just a quick p.s. to the above... If anyone has any suggestions feel free to make a comment, I'm sure there are loads of Newbies that are looking for cheap options but its just a matter of where you draw the line between requirements, needs, upgrade-ability and cost. I'm just off to have another look at Cyberjock's thread on ECC vs non ECC and his build suggestions.

 

[cyberjock]

Just a quick p.s. to the above... If anyone has any suggestions feel free to make a comment, I'm sure there are loads of Newbies that are looking for cheap options but its just a matter of where you draw the line between requirements, needs, upgrade-ability and cost. I'm just off to have another look at Cyberjock's thread on ECC vs non ECC and his build suggestions.

And you are completely right. It's all about finding out what's best for you. The problem is that the vast majority of users go to ZFS for the reliability. Unfortunately, if you don't use ECC RAM that whole "reliability" theory goes right out the window.

 

[PenalunWil]

And you are completely right. It's all about finding out what's best for you. The problem is that the vast majority of users go to ZFS for the reliability. Unfortunately, if you don't use ECC RAM that whole "reliability" theory goes right out the window.

I was also reading about the UFS non-ECC option in the freeNAS manual purely to see if I could use my Dell Optiplex as my desk top and my existing Abit AW8-MAX i955X as my NAS, and to be honest this option isn't a lot better, than going non-ECC with ZFS.

It is one of the reasons why I have decided to use a Mobo that supports ECC and an intel CPU. I'm not a gamer so super fast is not on my tick box list which means hopefully I can keep the cost down. I'll max' my ram to 16gb (2x4gb paired x 2) and that will give me an area where I can go with 8gb if I need to reduce cost and add it later. Depends on what motherboard(mobo) is out there. If it gives me max' 32gb then fine.
I'm almost there on what I'm going to use so I'll post in a day or three to see what those interested think. Fingers crossed and all that :)

Thanks Cyberjock for the comment.

 

[PenalunWil]

Well... this is proving more difficult than I thought.

I'm based in the UK and looking for a motherboard like this... Motherboard: Supermicro X9SCM-F ($160ish)

that will take a CPU like this CPU: Pentium G2020 ($60ish)

The thing that's really confusing me is what chipsets go with what Motherboards and vica versa. Is there a blog which explains all this in words of one syllable or maybe two ;)

Wil

 

[PenalunWil]

Can anyone help please... is there a thread explaining the benefits of setting up a FreeNAS box using a IBM M1050 through PCi express with a fast core CPU as opposed to using a Mobo with say six SATA conectors or visa versa?

 

[cyberjock]

Nope. That's something you should be able to figure out for yourself as you should understand all the interconnects, subsystems, etc. You're asking for a "short 100 page essay" on how servers work.

 

[PenalunWil]

Nope. That's something you should be able to figure out for yourself as you should understand all the interconnects, subsystems, etc. You're asking for a "short 100 page essay" on how servers work.

Okay thanks CJ... part of that learning curve I guess ;)