Free NAS build!

[kprice789]

Going to be building a FreeNAS server and these are the parts I have ordered.

 

 

Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128514

 

AMD FX-8320

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113285

 

Seagate NAS HDD 2TB (X5)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178391

 

Intel NIC PRO/1000 Dual Port

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000BMZHX2/ref=pe_385040_30332200_pe_309540_26725410_item

 

RAM 16GB Crucial

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148545

 

Corsair CX 430 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139026

 

NZXT Source 210 Black

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146075

 

 

The total cost is roughly $1000 USD. Software is free and I plan on using RAIDZ1 for the HDD's, the ZFS file system may only use 8GB so I may pull one of the sticks just depends. So 10TB physical storage and 8TB usable storage, parity of 1 disk. I will be posting pics as the parts come in and as the build gets underway. Also I will show software screen shots as I use it and how I plan on using this NAS to its full potential. Questions, comments, and concerns are greatly appreciated!

[UselessBread]

I find that CPU to be confusing. Would have probably gone with a low low low low power haswell CPU personally.
Also what RAM are you going to use?

[Vitalius]

I find that CPU to be confusing. Would have probably gone with a low low low low power haswell CPU personally.

Also what RAM are you going to use?

This.

And honestly man, you screwed up if you bought an 8320 for a FreeNAS machine. And I mean completely.

FreeNAS works well with a Dual Core running at 1-2GHz. You will literally NEVER use more than 4 of those cores, and I doubt you'll ever go over 2. 

I mean really, you basically did the equivalent of buying 64GB of RAM when all you want to do is play Minecraft on normal settings. Just ... fail. 

Oh well, what's done is done. I suggest disabling 4-5 of the cores and down clocking the CPU to 1-2GHz to consume the least amount of power possible.

And be sure to get at least 16 (2x8GB) GB of RAM. It's a minimum with your setup for FreeNAS. I'm being completely serious. FreeNAS needs RAM. LOOOOOTS of RAM.

The general rule of thumb is 1GB of RAM for every 1 TB of storage, and you count ALL the storage, not effective storage. So you would need at least 10GB of RAM, not 8GB. I would just go with 16GB for safety.

Also, make sure the RAM you buy is ECC RAM. Not non-ECC. Your motherboard supports it (and it better well do so), so get it. It's very important for FreeNAS.

[kprice789]

I find that CPU to be confusing. Would have probably gone with a low low low low power haswell CPU personally.

Also what RAM are you going to use?

Updated the RAM, simply forgot about it. Also I already have a MSI motherboard and AMD FX-6300 in my Proxmox VE server. I may eventually swap that and use the 8 core for the VM server and the 6 core for the FreeNAS build. You bring up a great point but essentially I want to have flexibility in the future. 

[Vitalius]

Updated the RAM, simply forgot about it. Also I already have a MSI motherboard and AMD FX-6300 in my Proxmox VE server. I may eventually swap that and use the 8 core for the VM server and the 6 core for the FreeNAS build. You bring up a great point but essentially I want to have flexibility in the future. 

Ah, then that's fine. Just remember to underclock and disable cores.

That isn't ECC RAM. Kingston sells ECC RAM. I believe it's called "ValueRAM". You'll want to go into the BIOS to enable ECC.

That's a good amount though.

[kprice789]

Ah, then that's fine. Just remember to underclock and disable cores.

That isn't ECC RAM. Kingston sells ECC RAM. I believe it's called "ValueRAM". You'll want to go into the BIOS to enable ECC.

That's a good amount though.

From what I've read ECC shouldn't be a big deal. Sure ECC would be nice for everything but not necessary. 

[Vitalius]

From what I've read ECC shouldn't be a big deal. Sure ECC would be nice for everything but not necessary. 

It costs maybe $10 extra to have and everything else you have is compatible with it. Not having it would be intentionally leaving your data unprotected.

ZFS does storage scrubs. This means that it essentially searches your database for corruption and fixes any it finds on the HDD's. 

If you have ECC memory, and an error in the RAM occurs, it will be caught and fixed.

If you don't have ECC memory, and an error in the RAM occurs during a scrub, it will literally corrupt your entire database making all your data unsalvageable. 

The odds of that happening are pretty low, but why intentionally leave the possibility of that happening open when it would only cost an extra $10 to prevent completely?

That's just asking for it to happen. You might get lucky. You might not.

[kprice789]

It costs maybe $10 extra to have and everything else you have is compatible with it. Not having it would be intentionally leaving your data unprotected.

ZFS does storage scrubs. This means that it essentially searches your database for corruption and fixes any it finds on the HDD's. 

If you have ECC memory, and an error in the RAM occurs, it will be caught and fixed.

If you don't have ECC memory, and an error in the RAM occurs during a scrub, it will literally corrupt your entire database making all your data unsalvageable. 

The odds of that happening are pretty low, but why intentionally leave the possibility of that happening open when it would only cost an extra $10 to prevent completely?

That's just asking for it to happen. You might get lucky. You might not.

If you could help me find a decent price on ECC RAM. I'm seeing it being quite a bit more expensive right now. Also I don't want to spend $200 on RAM if I already have those DIMMs laying around

[Vitalius]

If you could help me find a decent price on ECC RAM. I'm seeing it being quite a bit more expensive right now. Also I don't want to spend $200 on RAM if I already have those DIMMs laying around

This set is $165.

 

Note that when I said it would cost roughly $10 more, that's assuming you haven't bought a set of DIMMs already. Re-buying something always costs more.

 

What I would do is set up your machine using the DIMMs you already have and just upgrade to ECC memory when you have the budget later. That's what I've elected to do, and I just leave scrubbing off until then.

[crazy_demon_01]

I think you mean/meant Raid 0 if you want to get 10TB.

[kprice789]

This set is $165.

 

Note that when I said it would cost roughly $10 more, that's assuming you haven't bought a set of DIMMs already. Re-buying something always costs more.

 

What I would do is set up your machine using the DIMMs you already have and just upgrade to ECC memory when you have the budget later. That's what I've elected to do, and I just leave scrubbing off until then.

Thats what I'm thinking at this point. Thanks for the help!

[Vitalius]

Thats what I'm thinking at this point. Thanks for the help!

You're welcome. Like I said, it's a one in a million thing, so you should be safe. It's just not safe to leave a server running for 2+ years without ECC RAM in it. 

[kprice789]

I think you mean/meant Raid 0 if you want to get 10TB.

I'm buying five 2TB disks, using ZFS Filesystem in RAIDZ1, so I get 8 TB of usable storage, parity of one disk. Hope this clarifies.   

[crazy_demon_01]

I'm buying five 2TB disks, using ZFS Filesystem in RAIDZ1, so I get 8 TB of usable storage, parity of one disk. Hope this clarifies.   

Yeah sorry only had a quick read of it.

[kprice789]

Well the parts are in however 3 of the 5 drives are DOA. Waiting on RMA at the moment. 

[Exotath]

Subbed as I plan to do something similar with my old 1050T rig. Nice parts selection....disturbs me about the drives DOA though.

[Vitalius]

Well the parts are in however 3 of the 5 drives are DOA. Waiting on RMA at the moment. 

I suggest RMAing all the drives, simply because if they are all from the same batch, those other two won't last long. 

[kprice789]

I suggest RMAing all the drives, simply because if they are all from the same batch, those other two won't last long. 

Don't think it was the drives, had to of been shipping because of the damage to the box and bubble wrap the drives were in.

[kprice789]

Build update! Its built (Almost)

 

 

Motherboard with CPU installed. 

 

Rest of build. 

 

CPU Cooler, Video card, and NIC

 

Booting off flash drive

 

Makes it through bootloader

 

Made it to the web interface login page!

 

So I added some extra parts that I did not list out because I just had them laying around so I figured might as well use them. [Flash drive(Boot Drive), Fans, CPU Cooler, GPU(Which I actually needed)] Also I only have one stick of RAM in there because I am using the other stick in my main rig while waiting on a RMA.  I will document as much as I can and where I see need fit.  

[Vitalius]

Thanks :D. Awesome.

If you need help installing plugins (it's very easy once you know your way around the GUI), let me know. Firefly, Transmission, and MiniDLNA are pretty cool imo.

[kprice789]

Thanks :D. Awesome.

If you need help installing plugins (it's very easy once you know your way around the GUI), let me know. Firefly, Transmission, and MiniDLNA are pretty cool imo.

Probably won't be installing plugins, maybe a few to test, because they are on dedicated VM's. Thanks for the offer though!

[kprice789]

Well then... one of the three RMA drives is dead. At this point I'm starting to get fed up with the way these are shipped. Also I have to pay for return shipping back to Newegg. I'm trying to figure out a store that sells enterprise grade drives in store and are not shipped. I always by drives in store and never have a problem. I'm from the Dallas area so if anyone knows a place I could buy either NAS drives or enterprise value drives it would be greatly appreciated. I think I'm going to go with Vitalius on this one, not sure how much I can even trust the drives that are functioning, might just RMA them all while I have the chance to get a refund. Thoughts?

[ERSCreeper]

I would return them

[Vitalius]

Well then... one of the three RMA drives is dead. At this point I'm starting to get fed up with the way these are shipped. Also I have to pay for return shipping back to Newegg. I'm trying to figure out a store that sells enterprise grade drives in store and are not shipped. I always by drives in store and never have a problem. I'm from the Dallas area so if anyone knows a place I could buy either NAS drives or enterprise value drives it would be greatly appreciated. I think I'm going to go with Vitalius on this one, not sure how much I can even trust the drives that are functioning, might just RMA them all while I have the chance to get a refund. Thoughts?

Dallas area? 

I know for a fact there's a Micro Center in Dallas. It's by the Studio Grill Movie Theater if you know where that is.

13929 N Central Expy  Dallas, TX 75243

(972) 664-8500

^ Address and phone number. If anyone would have them in a brick and mortar store, it's them. 

I would just tell them you are tired of the way they are shipped (as you said) and get a refund. Buy them at Microcenter. They may be a bit more expensive, but shipping is the difference. And you can just drive there if they are DOA or you need to RMA/get a refund.

Also, @kprice789, as I may have said, buy one, test it. Come back and buy the rest if it's good. That way you can check if it's a good batch.

[kprice789]

Dallas area?

I know for a fact there's a Micro Center in Dallas. It's by the Studio Grill Movie Theater if you know where that is.

13929 N Central Expy Dallas, TX 75243

(972) 664-8500

^ Address and phone number. If anyone would have them in a brick and mortar store, it's them.

I would just tell them you are tired of the way they are shipped (as you said) and get a refund. Buy them at Microcenter. They may be a bit more expensive, but shipping is the difference. And you can just drive there if they are DOA or you need to RMA/get a refund.

Just looked online, I go there often for parts and they don't seem to have any NAS drives for sure, limited on the CS 2TB drives. I might be able to convince them to order more, we shall see. Another option is just getting Barracuda Drives. They upped their warranty to two years manufacture and to be honest, I'm not sure how different they are from the NAS drives. Physically they seem to be very identical comparing to the Barracuda I already have, PCB traces are even the same. Difference must be in firmware, and obviously spindle speed. Also I know lots of people preferred the Barracudas before the NAS series came out.

Also I thought FreeNAS claimed ZFS to be good with commodity disks?