Small size freeNAS hardware for about 4TB of data?

[sherry]

Hello everyone,

I have to migrate from my QNAP box to something new and ask myself whether freeNAS is s.th. for me. I need small size and following things.

- low power consumption
- up to 4 TB (I have 4x 4TB WD Reds) storage (personal videos and photos)
- power off over night
- backup to the cloud (Google Drive, AWS Glacier oder Backblaze)
- monitoring and alerting for disks
- hot swap of defective disks
- I want to run Plex to consume all media from the data drives
- OS not installed on data drives (like in my QNAP)
- small and silent
- dirt cheap

Could you guys recommend any battle proof hardware?

 

[garm]

power off over night

That’s a really bad idea, it will wear down you drives quicker

backup to the cloud

FreeNAS uses rclone, check it out in the manual

monitoring and alerting for disks

A core function of FreeNAS

hot swap of defective disks

This is hardware dependent

I want to run plex

Might increase the performance requirements, efficiency and noise

OS not installed on data drives

FreeNAS separates OS and storage

- small and silent
- dirt cheap

Those two rarely go together, FreeNAS uses ZFS which is enterprise grade. It is built on FreeBSD and any hardware you select needs to be compatible. The forum have a hardware guide worth with looking through, but RAM requirements alone will not make the box “dirt cheap”.
Personally I use a Dell T20, T30 being the present model. It’s quiet, mATX and houses 7 drives (4 x 3.5 and 3 SSDs, one velcroed to the chassi). I’ve added RAM and a LSI HBA. I’ve spent around $700 in total excluding disks and I don’t think you will find anything suitable for less. A small ITX Atom board and a hot swap chassi will have a smaller footprint but land you in the same ballpark cost wise with less horsepower then the Xeon you get with an entry level off the shelf server form a decent brand.

 

[sherry]

Sounds like I'd be better off with a Qnap device :/

 

[Pierce]

I used an HP Microserver for my freenas build. I built it many years ago, its the original N40L version of the Microserver, I got one minimally configured for about $300 and added 16GB ram to it and 4x3TB disks (initially... later upgraded to 4x8TB)

 

[blooper98]

Dunno about 'battle tested' but my build checks the following boxes:

- backup to the cloud (I run to backblaze nightly)
- Plex (I run emby)
- low power consumption
- small and silent
- dirt cheap

my build:

Motherboard & CPU: ASRock J3455
Memory: 16GB non-ECC
Case & Power Supply: APEX MI-008
HDD: 2x 4TB WD Red

I find I get network transfers up to 400mbps (as fast as my router, anyway), and I store all my media as H264 so no live encodes needed for my use case. I spent about $200 before the drives, which puts you in the same price range, though I would recommend a node 304 over the case I use. It also looks like ASRock put out some new products you might be happier with.

 

[garm]

ASRock J3455

Not the best server board, Realtek LAN is far from ideal.

16GB non-ECC

Only if you don’t care much about the data (volatile and easily replaced)

APEX MI-008

A power supply is more important then people think, for reliable storage you need a dependable PSU. Such as Seasonic

it is really worth taking a look at the hardware guide..

 

[rdl]

I use a Gen 7 HP Microserver. It's been running 4 years now with no problems. For just a few users, something like that is fine.