Building a FreeNAS Storage Solution

[dragonfoxSL]

Hi Guys I am hoping to build a dedicated storage system for my home. My main uses are for Media Streaming (Plex), Backup , File Sharing and some iSCSI.

 

I have Selected the following parts

 

• Case : SilverStone DS380B (Link)
• Processor : Intel Xeon E3-1275V3 (Link)
• Motherboard : Intel DBS1200V3RPL uATX Server Motherboard  (Link)
• Ram : Kingston 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR3 (Link)
• SDD (Boot Drive): 2 X ADATA XPG SX900 ASX900S3-64GM-C 2.5" 64GB (Link) / RAID 1
• Ethernet Card : Intel Ethernet Server Adapter I350-T2 (Link)
• Power Supply : SILVERSTONE ST45SF-G 450W (Link)
• HDD : 8 X Western Digital Red 4 TB (Link)

I am stuck on one thing hoping you guys will help i am planing to use 8 WD RED 4TB Drives, I need a raid controller to manage all my storage drives can u guys recommend me a raid controller for this build, because i am planing to use FreeNAS i am not going to be using the hardware raid but FreeNAS own ZFS file system.

 

Thanks                

 

Any suggestion to make the build is appreciated 

[Captain_WD]

Hi Guys I am hoping to build a dedicated storage system for my home. My main uses are for Media Streaming (Plex), Backup , File Sharing and some iSCSI.

 

I have Selected the following parts

 

• Case : SilverStone DS380B (Link)
• Processor : Intel Xeon E3-1275V3 (Link)
• Motherboard : Intel DBS1200V3RPL uATX Server Motherboard  (Link)
• Ram : Kingston 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR3 (Link)
• SDD (Boot Drive): 2 X ADATA XPG SX900 ASX900S3-64GM-C 2.5" 64GB (Link) / RAID 1
• Ethernet Card : Intel Ethernet Server Adapter I350-T2 (Link)
• Power Supply : SILVERSTONE ST45SF-G 450W (Link)
• HDD : 8 X Western Digital Red 4 TB (Link)

I am stuck on one thing hoping you guys will help i am planing to use 8 WD RED 4TB Drives, I need a raid controller to manage all my storage drives can u guys recommend me a raid controller for this build, because i am planing to use FreeNAS i am not going to be using the hardware raid but FreeNAS own ZFS file system.

 

Thanks                

 

Any suggestion to make the build is appreciated 

 

 

Hey dragonfoxSL,

 

The build looks solid and ready for pulling the trigger.

I would, however, suggest you consider WD Red Pro over the regular WD Red drives. WD Red Pro are designed for 8-bay or larger arrays, spin faster and have longer warranty. The Pro line works smoother and easier compared to the regular Red drives in larger NAS/RAID setups. Here's a link: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1280.

 

May I ask why did you choose a RAID 1 mirroring solution for your boot drive? 

 

Regarding the RAID controller, I've found an interesting article on the FreeNAS forum on the topic, giving tips on the different hardware parts and some useful advice for the RAID controller itself: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/so-you-want-some-hardware-suggestions.12276/ .

 

Hope this helps,

 

Captain_WD.

[dragonfoxSL]

 

Hey dragonfoxSL,

 

The build looks solid and ready for pulling the trigger.

I would, however, suggest you consider WD Red Pro over the regular WD Red drives. WD Red Pro are designed for 8-bay or larger arrays, spin faster and have longer warranty. The Pro line works smoother and easier compared to the regular Red drives in larger NAS/RAID setups. Here's a link: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1280.

 

May I ask why did you choose a RAID 1 mirroring solution for your boot drive? 

 

Regarding the RAID controller, I've found an interesting article on the FreeNAS forum on the topic, giving tips on the different hardware parts and some useful advice for the RAID controller itself: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/so-you-want-some-hardware-suggestions.12276/ .

 

Hope this helps,

 

Captain_WD.

 

 

Hi Captain_WD

 

Thanks for the suggestion I will look into the RAID controllers and WD Red Pro drives

 

Regarding the RAID 1 i thought it will be good to have a redundancy because I am going to run some custom scripts and play with some FreeNAS jails for experiments so i thought it will be good to have a mirrored setup if there is some error in the drive or power failure, I am living in a area where there is a lot of power fluctuations even with a solid ups i am going better protection. I thought it was a good idea

[wpirobotbuilder]

Hi Captain_WD

 

Thanks for the suggestion I will look into the RAID controllers and WD Red Pro drives

 

Regarding the RAID 1 i thought it will be good to have a redundancy because I am going to run some custom scripts and play with some FreeNAS jails for experiments so i thought it will be good to have a mirrored setup if there is some error in the drive or power failure, I am living in a area where there is a lot of power fluctuations even with a solid ups i am going better protection. I thought it was a good idea

You will have to flash the RAID controller to IT mode, which is not trivial. Check out alpenwasser's post on it.

 

Your motherboard is also too big for this case. You can only use a mini-ITX motherboard, the one you selected is a micro-ATX one. Take a look at this one.

 

Given the case you want to work in, a RAID card will complicate things a bit:

 

- From reading the reviews on it, it sounds like RAID cards in general don't fit easily inside it. If they do, you have to sacrifice a drive bay (see this video, around 24:20)

- Similar to the above comment, you might want to rethink your NIC, or at least get a smaller one. NICs have very similar dimensions to RAID cards.

- If it is full of drives with a RAID card, then you might have airflow issues around the PCI-E slots. RAID cards need lots of airflow to stay cool (they can crash if they get too hot).

 

Check out this build with that case.

To get the most out of the system, this is what I recommend:

 

- Get the RAID card, but get 6TB drives instead of 4TB drives. That way you can still get the storage space you need.

- With the RAID card installed you can't fit a 3.5" drive into the third bay, but you might be able to fit a 2.5" drive in it. If that's the case, then you could get two 2.5" drives (or SSDs) and have a small, fast RAID 1.

 

Unfortunately, you won't be able to install both a NIC and a RAID card in this system.

[dragonfoxSL]

You will have to flash the RAID controller to IT mode, which is not trivial. Check out alpenwasser's post on it.

 

Your motherboard is also too big for this case. You can only use a mini-ITX motherboard, the one you selected is a micro-ATX one. Take a look at this one.

 

Given the case you want to work in, a RAID card will complicate things a bit:

 

- From reading the reviews on it, it sounds like RAID cards in general don't fit easily inside it. If they do, you have to sacrifice a drive bay (see this video, around 24:20)

- Similar to the above comment, you might want to rethink your NIC, or at least get a smaller one. NICs have very similar dimensions to RAID cards.

- If it is full of drives with a RAID card, then you might have airflow issues around the PCI-E slots. RAID cards need lots of airflow to stay cool (they can crash if they get too hot).

 

Check out this build with that case.

To get the most out of the system, this is what I recommend:

 

- Get the RAID card, but get 6TB drives instead of 4TB drives. That way you can still get the storage space you need.

- With the RAID card installed you can't fit a 3.5" drive into the third bay, but you might be able to fit a 2.5" drive in it. If that's the case, then you could get two 2.5" drives (or SSDs) and have a small, fast RAID 1.

 

Unfortunately, you won't be able to install both a NIC and a RAID card in this system.

 

Thanks a lot for the advice it was really helpful covered some issues i missed

 

Anyway I think I can change the RAID controller and flash it to IT mode I am thinking of getting  IBM ServeRAID M1015

 

Regarding the case i decided not to use the Silverstone case and go with the Fractal Define R4 it has the drive bays and i don't need hot swap capability much, Its also good with noise and I can add both

my NIC and RAID controller without any issues

 

I will also change my power supply to a regular (not SFX) 80 plus gold one

Thanks again

[wpirobotbuilder]

Thanks a lot for the advice it was really helpful covered some issues i missed

 

Anyway I think I can change the RAID controller and flash it to IT mode I am thinking of getting  IBM ServeRAID M1015

 

Regarding the case i decided not to use the Silverstone case and go with the Fractal Define R4 it has the drive bays and i don't need hot swap capability much, Its also good with noise and I can add both

my NIC and RAID controller without any issues

 

I will also change my power supply to a regular (not SFX) 80 plus gold one

Thanks again

Another thing -- the regular Reds should be fine for your case.

 

The validation process for the Reds and Red Pros is done for the scenario of a tightly packed NAS enclosure, where the drives are close together (think a rackmount server or a Synology NAS). In the Define R4 they will be separated from each other by an inch or so, with rubber mounting preventing them from transferring vibrations to the rest of the case and nearby drives. If you want to look at the Red Pros, I would do it for other reasons (longer warranty and better MTBF).

[dragonfoxSL]

OK will look into all of these things and going to build this in holiday season 

[ErrorNumber419]

That much ram is WAY overkill for a plex server.

 

I ran 4 streams simultaneously from my unbuntu based plex server, all of which were transcoding different 15GB 1080ps file to 4 devices at 4 different bitrates and I never went over 6GB of ram usage.

 

Check plex's website, they also don't recommend crazy amounts of ram.


But, if you need to do a lot of virtualization at the same time, I guess you could go with 32GB, personally, I'd say save the the money and stick it into storage or an add-on raid controller.

[wpirobotbuilder]

That much ram is WAY overkill for a plex server.

 

I ran 4 streams simultaneously from my unbuntu based plex server, all of which were transcoding different 15GB 1080ps file to 4 devices at 4 different bitrates and I never went over 6GB of ram usage.

 

Check plex's website, they also don't recommend crazy amounts of ram.

But, if you need to do a lot of virtualization at the same time, I guess you could go with 32GB, personally, I'd say save the the money and stick it into storage or an add-on raid controller.

It's not overkill for a FreeNAS machine, which will grab as much RAM as it can to build a cache.

[limeyd]

Hey I'm building something similar. Why not think smaller, freeNas runs great off a USB stick but if you wanted it faster add a sata card.

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/RZwqWZ
Price breakdown by merchant: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/RZwqWZ/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1220 V3 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($234.98 @ Amazon Canada)

Motherboard: ASRock E3C226D2I Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($247.59 @ Newegg Canada) 6xSATA 36TB Dual Intel Nic (Link Aggregation)

ECC Memory: Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($214.98 @ Newegg Canada)
Small Footprint Case: Fractal Design Node 304 (White) Mini ITX Tower Case  ($69.99 @ NCIX)
Silent Power Supply: Corsair RM 450W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($118.00 @ Amazon Canada)