NAS for video production studio

[Steven Porter]

I am an experienced PC/workstation builder with basic knowledge of some server gear, so I'd really appreciate someone with more experience double checking my work before buying anything.

 

TL;DR I need a new server yesterday, 6TB 200MBPS bare minimum, somewhere around 16-24TB 10Gb is ideal. I do not need any virtualization, just a big fast hard drive. For now, I need to keep it under $500-ish, but upgrading this server will be top priority once work picks back up. Will the parts I found below be sufficient?

 

Parts (Ebay links) $530 total

SuperMicro CSE-825 X8DTN+ 8LFF Server 2x Intel Xeon E5520, 24GB, DVD-ROM $200

Seagate Constellation ES 2TB drives $20 ea, 10 needed (8 installed, 2 backups) $200 total

10Gb RJ45 NIC for client PC $130

FreeNAS, ZFS with 2 parity disks giving me 12TB capacity after 2 parity drives

 

I have many flash drives and an extra SATA SSD I can used as a boot drive as well, if needed.

 

Questions:

1- Are these parts/FreeNAS configuration compatible?

2- Is it worth considering used drives temporarily until finances allow an upgrade?

3- What is the most cost effective way to get reliable bandwidth of at lease 200MBPS to my editing workstation? My workstations currently have 1Gb Ethernet, USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type A and Type C, and one PCI Gen 3 16X slot each and are 20 and 50 feet respectively from where the server will be. 

4- If I go this route, how should I configure FreeNAS? My gut says either two Z1 VDEVs with 4 drives each or a single Z2 VDEV with all 8 drives, but I could very well be wildly wrong in every possible way. I'm trying to figure this out!

5- What is my upgrade path in terms of capacity? Can I get another chassis with more drive bays and add more VDEVs to the existing pool that way?

6- What did I miss? There's gotta be something stupid I totally forgot about.

 

 

Unnecessary Amounts of Detail For Those who are Curious

 

Here's the full story. I own a small video production company. My business partner and I shoot corporate video, real estate, and short films on Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro and Pocket 4K in BRAW 8:1. Occasionally, we handle 6K or 8K RED footage, but that's pretty rare and usually involves proxies. For years, I've been using an OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual 2-bay RAID enclosure with a pair of HGST 3TB NAS drives. This is my "Active Projects" drive. In RAID 0, this gives me 6TB around 300MBPS. Perfect for my needs so far. Yesterday, that enclosure failed. My data is safe (Yes, I have backups thank goodness) but I'm very interested in replacing the desktop RAID box with a proper server since I'm working with a team now on some projects and sharing files in the office at high speed will be a nice upgrade.

 

Currently, I only have 1Gb Ethernet on my 2 workstations. In order to hit my bandwidth needs, I'm sure I'll be needing 10Gb, but I'm not sure whether I should stick with CAT6 cables or try out a different solution since I'm sure I'll be upgrading NICs anyway. Any thoughts here would be appreciated.

 

To be clear, I know that buying used hard drives probably isn't the best long term plan, but we're totally shut down thanks to COVID-19 and I am not in any position to be spending a lot on new drives. I currently have 5TB of media on my Active Projects drive, around 2TB of which is essential for a project I am currently editing, so getting at least that on high-speed media is very important. It's high res RAW footage, so some kind of RAID (or similar) or SSD is necessary to edit at any reasonable speed. I have a solid backup system, so this will really just hold me over for a few months until we get back on our feet and get shiny new drives installed. 

 

Thanks in advance!

[Electronics Wizardy]

17 minutes ago, Steven Porter said:

SuperMicro CSE-825 X8DTN+ 8LFF Server 2x Intel Xeon E5520, 24GB, DVD-ROM $200

Not really a great deal, There are system like the hp dl180g6 that can be gotten with better spec for less

 

but really, Id try to get something like this, its a bit more, but a much better systemhttps://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMicro-4U-CSE-846-24-Bay-SAS2-BP-X9DRi-F-2x-W-2x-E5-2620-16GB-IT-MODE/202743312268?epid=16034592515&hash=item2f34716f8c:g:wUUAAOSw~p5dO3c3

 

but for that price. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro-SuperChassis-CSE-826-2-CPU-X5675-2U-12x3-5-Server/303251526302?hash=item469b33129e:g:yfoAAOSwdmRdUbvC

 

Better cpus and more hdd bays.

 

21 minutes ago, Steven Porter said:

10Gb RJ45 NIC for client PC $130

Why rj45? id go fibre or dac, cheaper, and lower latency, and lower power. Also gonna need a nic for the server.

 

23 minutes ago, Steven Porter said:

1- Are these parts/FreeNAS configuration compatible?

Should work fine with freenas, frebsd likes server hardware.

 

23 minutes ago, Steven Porter said:

2- Is it worth considering used drives temporarily until finances allow an upgrade?

I have a lot of used drives, there normally pretty good. Just keep good backups.

 

23 minutes ago, Steven Porter said:

- What is the most cost effective way to get reliable bandwidth of at lease 200MBPS to my editing workstation? My workstations currently have 1Gb Ethernet, USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type A and Type C, and one PCI Gen 3 16X slot each and are 20 and 50 feet respectively from where the server will be. 

How many systems? Id get a switch and run fibre

 

24 minutes ago, Steven Porter said:

4- If I go this route, how should I configure FreeNAS? My gut says either two Z1 VDEVs with 4 drives each or a single Z2 VDEV with all 8 drives, but I could very well be wildly wrong in every possible way. I'm trying to figure this out!

Id be tempted to go with mirrors if you can afford the loss of space. Otherwise, probably z2 cause those drives might fail in a rebuild where z1 gets a bit iffy.

 

25 minutes ago, Steven Porter said:

5- What is my upgrade path in terms of capacity? Can I get another chassis with more drive bays and add more VDEVs to the existing pool that way?

Yea you can add more sas enclosures. Get a external sas card, and lots of cheap sas enclosures like the netapp ones.

 

 

 

This should work for a bit, but if this is important for the buiness, id rreally try to get some better hardware soon.

[Steven Porter]

14 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Not really a great deal, There are system like the hp dl180g6 that can be gotten with better spec for less

How about this? https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Proliant-2U-Server-SE326M1-DL180-G6-2x-Xeon-E5649-2-53ghz-Hex-48gb/293068886279?hash=item443c445107:g:GYsAAOSwkkZdjk3w:sc:FedExHomeDelivery!92084!US!-1

 

It says it has a RAID controller. How does that affect functionality with FreeNAS? Should I swap that for an HBA or will this work as is?

 

14 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

but really, Id try to get something like this, its a bit more, but a much better systemhttps://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMicro-4U-CSE-846-24-Bay-SAS2-BP-X9DRi-F-2x-W-2x-E5-2620-16GB-IT-MODE/202743312268?epid=16034592515&hash=item2f34716f8c:g:wUUAAOSw~p5dO3c3

If I were able to, I'd love to go with a better system. Now just isn't the time unfortunately.

14 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

but for that price. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro-SuperChassis-CSE-826-2-CPU-X5675-2U-12x3-5-Server/303251526302?hash=item469b33129e:g:yfoAAOSwdmRdUbvC

I saw this, but passed due to the shipping price and cost of adding RAM nearly doubling the price. Thanks for the suggestion though!

14 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Why rj45? id go fibre or dac, cheaper, and lower latency, and lower power. Also gonna need a nic for the server.

Honestly, because I didn't know any better. Could I use one workstation on fibre and another (less important) one on 1Gb RJ45?

 

Just to double check, something like this should work just fine right? One NIC for the server, and one for the client with SFP+ cables

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Silicom-PE210G2SPI9B-SR-Dual-10GB-Fiber-Ethernet-PCI-E-Intel-NIC/353024768245?hash=item5231ea78f5:g:iUwAAOSw49Befjwy

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/SFP-H10GB-ACU7M-Cisco-10GBASE-CU-SFP-CABLE-7-METER/223911195161?hash=item342225b219:g:N-gAAOSwFWNeR09~

 

14 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How many systems? Id get a switch and run fibre

I only really NEED one workstation (20 feet away) but I'd like to add another editor about 50 feet away. I have no plans for needing more than 2 clients.

 

Thanks so much for your advice! 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

10 hours ago, Steven Porter said:

How about this? https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Proliant-2U-Server-SE326M1-DL180-G6-2x-Xeon-E5649-2-53ghz-Hex-48gb/293068886279?hash=item443c445107:g:GYsAAOSwkkZdjk3w:sc:FedExHomeDelivery!92084!US!-1

 

It says it has a RAID controller. How does that affect functionality with FreeNAS? Should I swap that for an HBA or will this work as is?

That only has 2.5 drive bays, so you can't fit those 2tb drives you wanted. Id stay away.

 

10 hours ago, Steven Porter said:

I saw this, but passed due to the shipping price and cost of adding RAM nearly doubling the price. Thanks for the suggestion though!

ram is chep for these systems, I got 64gb that would fit in these system for 60 bucks.

 

10 hours ago, Steven Porter said:

I saw this, but passed due to the shipping price and cost of adding RAM nearly doubling the price. Thanks for the suggestion though!

Yea you cna have one system on fibre and one on 1gbe. Might be cheaper to get a a few transcivers and a lc cable at that distance.