NAS Questions

[HerbertKlutzG]

So me and a few people are all pitching in to build a NAS. While rewatching Linus' NAS build in the Define 7 XL case I heard him say he was going with ECC RAM because he was using FreeNAS which uses ZFS. However I will be using the NAS to run a Plex server and Plex really likes Intel quick sync. So because Intel doesn't support ECC RAM I got very confused. Should I just run Windows and have my SSD set as write cache enabled and use Windows Storage Spaces for parity or is it safe to stick with FreeNAS? 

[Skiiwee29]

<-- Moved to Servers and NAS -->

[Electronics Wizardy]

ZFS and freenas doesn't need ecc more than any other os. Ecc is always nice to have, but the fs/os doesn't matter. Don't let ecc ram change which os you use.

 

Some intel chips support ecc, like the i3 9100. Also you can hardware encoding on gpus too.

 

Id probalby use unraid for the ease of expansion here.

[HerbertKlutzG]

5 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

ZFS and freenas doesn't need ecc more than any other os. Ecc is always nice to have, but the fs/os doesn't matter. Don't let ecc ram change which os you use.

 

Some intel chips support ecc, like the i3 9100. Also you can hardware encoding on gpus too.

 

Id probalby use unraid for the ease of expansion here.

Thank you very much! I'm new to the NAS scene so I was kinda intimidated by all the options.

[Loki0111]

On 4/7/2021 at 4:56 PM, HerbertKlutzG said:

So me and a few people are all pitching in to build a NAS. While rewatching Linus' NAS build in the Define 7 XL case I heard him say he was going with ECC RAM because he was using FreeNAS which uses ZFS. However I will be using the NAS to run a Plex server and Plex really likes Intel quick sync. So because Intel doesn't support ECC RAM I got very confused. Should I just run Windows and have my SSD set as write cache enabled and use Windows Storage Spaces for parity or is it safe to stick with FreeNAS? 

As others have mentioned for home use ECC is a nice to have, not a requirement. For business or enterprise its a requirement.

 

If you are new to this then setting up Plex on TrueNAS (FreeNAS) is not what I'd call a simple solution, especially if you are not familiar with FreeBSD.

 

If you are exclusively using this for Plex then Windows works absolutely fine plus it has the benefit of a platform you are already comfortable with. You do not need an SSD write cache for a Plex media library in Storage Spaces as you'll mostly just be reading from it. The sequential read/write speeds of the mechanical drives is more then adequate.

 

What you want is a bank of mirrored hard drives formatted to ReFS (provides some protection against bitrot) using Storage Spaces. Since this is a mirrored media library SMR drives are fine (they are also cheaper). You also want a single SSD for the Plex metadata and to load up on RAM a bit for a RAMdrive (Plex transcoder).

 

The media goes on the mechanical storage pool, you want to go into your Windows registry and point the Plex metadata directory to the SSD as this will drastically speed up the Plex media library browser. You also want to point your transcoding directory to the RAMdisk. By using a RAMdisk for the transcoding you'll save a lot of wear and tear on your SSD.

 

Hope that helps.