Freenas Mini in Europe

[etz]

Hey guys, 

 

I am looking to buy//build a Freenas system in Europe. I ruled out old Xeon systems, because of noise and power consumption and looked at iXsystems Freenas 4-drive box, but unfortunately, I can't find them in Europe - what components would you recommend for a budget Freenas build ? I'd use it mostly for storage, maybe one stream of plex transcoding, but not much more. 

I ruled out QNAP and Synology systems, because I like to tinker around with the software and the hardware. 

Thanks.

[WereCatf]

3 minutes ago, etz said:

I am looking to buy//build a Freenas system in Europe. I ruled out old Xeon systems, because of noise and power consumption and looked at iXsystems Freenas 4-drive box, but unfortunately, I can't find them in Europe - what components would you recommend for a budget Freenas build ? I'd use it mostly for storage, maybe one stream of plex transcoding, but not much more.

My personal recommendation would be to buy the Plex Plus - subscription or whatever it was called so you can take advantage of hardware-transcoding of videos, then find any cheap i3 or Ryzen 3, a mobo for it, 8GB RAM and a GTX 1050 for the hardware-transcoding. If you go for software-transcoding, you'll need a beefier CPU.

 

Transferring files itself doesn't require a lot from the CPU, like e.g. my decade-old Athlon II x3 can handle it just fine.

[etz]

Good recommendations. However, I'd like to run ECC memory, but what would be the most cost efficient solution for that. Supermicro is a one option, but are there any others ?

EDIT: seems ZFS and budget are contradictory terms, so maybe I should look into a UnRAID build ? Are there any good build lists that anyone knows of ? 

[phoenixflower]

6 hours ago, etz said:

Good recommendations. However, I'd like to run ECC memory, but what would be the most cost efficient solution for that. Supermicro is a one option, but are there any others ?

EDIT: seems ZFS and budget are contradictory terms, so maybe I should look into a UnRAID build ? Are there any good build lists that anyone knows of ? 

DDR4 is about as stable as DDR3 ECC.  Each iteration of DDR becomes safer.  It's not like they forget to add more stability in each iteration.

 

ZFS and budget are fine as long as you look into your work load.  It's perfectly fine to run ZFS with 8-16 GB of standard DDR4 RAM and if you want to have some nice L2ARC, add it after you've noticed a performance problem.  Usually an aftermarket Intel 900p.

 

As for the mini, you can just build it yourself.  They just used a commodity asrock board.  It wasn't that great it used a really under powered processor.  If you want to use Ryzen 3000 series with DDR4 RAM.  It's perfectly fine.

 

If you really really really really want ECC RAM because of that solar flare in your file cabinet then you can just pick up an old Dell r720xd and pimp it out with as much ECC RAM as you want.  I recommend replacing the fans with noctua fans.  You'll have to use DuPont DIY wiring or any DIY wiring you can get your hands on to match the pins on the custom motherboard to the pins on the noctua fans.  I use ZFS with 128 GB of DDR4 RAM Oced and 64 GB of DDR4 RAM with no problem.  Unless there's some SLA agreement involved that we're not aware of that guarantees certain probabilities it'll be fine.

[phoenixflower]

6 hours ago, etz said:

Are there any good build lists that anyone knows of ?

Storage solutions are very dynamic and have many different applications.  If you explain your use case, then it might be easier to provide a budget build  

[etz]

Thanks for the constructive feedback. As for the usage: it's going to mainly be used as a media storage server and some torrents. Might run Plex on it, but Direct play mostly. Seems I'll go the DDR4 route, since ECC seems overkill for non-mission important usecases. What do you think would be a good budget-oriented build then ?

[Olaf6541]

15 minutes ago, etz said:

Thanks for the constructive feedback. As for the usage: it's going to mainly be used as a media storage server and some torrents. Might run Plex on it, but Direct play mostly. Seems I'll go the DDR4 route, since ECC seems overkill for non-mission important usecases. What do you think would be a good budget-oriented build then ?

I'm not sure how much cpu power youll need for plex but as a reference: I'm running a celeron j3355 dual core with 8GB RAM and a small array of 3 a400 sdd's with a pfsense vm running openvpn for remote access. I can easily saturate the 1gb lan limit and the VPN throughput is about 50-60mpbs.

[etz]

If I'm transcoding, then Plex requires quite a lot of firepower on the CPU side, but imho, Plex transcoding is shoddy, at best, so I prefer to Direct Play. With 1080p streams, I shouldn't reach the 1Gb threshold quick, but 4K is a whole other ballpark, then I should definitely use 10Gb with a beefier CPU.

[Required]

how about: https://geizhals.eu/hpe-proliant-microserver-gen10-p04923-421-a1936043.html ?