WIFN – First Build Check

[SonOfSevenless]

Hi guys,

I am planning my first FreeNAS Build after reading up on some basics - I hope I didn’t miss too much of them - in this forum and some linked guides. After trying FreeNAS out on a VM, I want to begin with a smaller capacity pool and spend a larger portion of my budget on the other hardware.

Use Case: NAS for Media (incl Streaming) and Backup-Storage for Documents. Plus a few jails.

Location: I live in Germany - used gear seems hard to come by and new gear is equally expensive/cheap. I used the following price comparison / search engine: www.heise.de/preisvergleich

The “General Requirements” were gather in this forum or FreeNAS documentation.

Parts:

• Case: Fractal Node 804
  • My Requirements: 10x 3.5” bay and some 2.5” bays
• CPU: Intel Xeon E-2126G
  • My Requirements: Passmark Score over 12k for 4k-transcoding/streaming
• Motherboard: Supermicro X11SCL-F
  • My Requirements: µATX (see Case), C242-Support and 1151-Socket (see CPU)
• RAM: 1x Crucial UDIMM 16GB, DDR4-2666, CL19, ECC (CT16G4WFD8266)
  • My Requirements: ECC, UDIMM (see CPU), 288 Pin (see MB)
  • General Requirements: 1GB per 1TB, min 8GB (better 16GB), compatible to Tested Memory List (really short list for this MB :D )
• Hard drives: 4x WD Red 4TB (WD40EFRX) in Raid Z1
• Boot drives: 2x Kingston SSDNow UV500 120GB, SATA (SUV500/120G)
  • My Requirements: 2x 2.5” SATA SSD, min 32GB
• Drive for Jails: 1x Samsung SSD PM981 256GB, M.2 (MZVLB256HAHQ-00000)
  • My Requirements: M.2- 2280/22110 - M-Key via PCI-E 3.0 x4 (see MB)
• PSU: be quiet! Straight Power 11 750W (BN283)
  • My Requirements: modular cable management
  • General Requirements: 80+ Gold, Target Wattage = (TDP + 25W (MB) + 35W per drive + 6W per RAM + 15W per fan) * 1.25

Future Upgrades:

• UPS (NUT-compatible)
• second set of hard drives: 6x 8TB in RAID Z2 (probably)
• additional RAM

Did I miss any (important) Requirements or Incompatibilities? Any feedback will be appreciated :)

 

[dina4]

Hi,

you will need a Host Bus Adapter for a future second set of HDD.

Your cpu supports 2 memory channel and the C-242 chipset has 2 DIMMs per channel. I'm not 100% sure but i would suggest you at least to fully populate the cpu channels with 2 Memory modules, possibly following this advice (quote from the first link below)

Do not try to guess at compatible memory. Use the memory selection tools for the manufacturers to ensure your RAM is compatible. This isn't always easy as many parts of the world cannot easily get some types of RAM, but making sure it's compatible is very important.

Here you are some useful links i've found time ago:
Hardware recommendations (read this first)
Hacking WD Greens (and Reds) with WDIDLE3.exe


din

 

[SonOfSevenless]

1. Yeah, totally forgot to mention the need of a HBA
2. Thanks for pointing out the dual channel problem. I looked it up in the manual: "The motherboard will support odd-numbered modules.
However, to achieve the best memory performance, a balanced memory population is recommended." I am having trouble to find the one tested 8GB-RAM (I did, but cost the same as tested 16GB...). So my options are: getting 1 (unbalanced) or 2 (balanced) 16GB-RAMs...
3. Didn't knew about WDIDLE3.exe. Definitely gonna do that after building :)