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[need feedback] FreeNAS Build!

jchan94
By jchan94
in Storage Devices
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Hi LTT  community.

After months of contemplating & saving up $ on my broke college student budget, I have decided to finally move forward with building a FreeNAS system instead of buying a QNAP/Synology NAS.

Here are a few things that I'm looking to accomplish.
- Around 100MBps read/write speed to Multiple Clients
        - Going to have a Cisco switch that allows for static link aggregation to link two 1GB ports together.
- 1080P Streaming (with transcoding) via Plex !
- Potential Upgrade to 4K Streamable content (I just want the flexibility to do it someday).
         - Of course, I'd have to upgrade to a 10GB nic.
- Good Redundancy via Raidz2 !
- Backup to Google Drive (need to look if there's some plugin that I can add to do this)
         - Because I have unlimited google drive.
- External Network File Access
- Would like to access it via Android/iPhone app; not videos, but document files etc

- iSCSI Targetting for VMware!

This is the hardware I have planned, but I'm open to changes, and that's where I need help to see if I can accomplish everything that I want with what I have. Please let me know, thank you!

Motherboard: E3C224D4I-14S
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157486
Reason for Choosing it: 1150 Compatible Chipset, SAS for moar drives!

CPU:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116907
Reason for Choosing it: Quad Core Xeon Grade

Ram: 16GB Crucial ECC Ram 240PIN 

PSU: Silverstone 450W SFX Gold
http://www.amazon.com/SilverStone-T...d=1439766971&sr=8-1&keywords=450W+silverstone
Reason for Choosing it: Gold Rated PSU, SFX Form factor, Modular for saving space!

Case: Silverstone DS380
http://www.amazon.com/SilverStone-T...=1439767022&sr=8-1&keywords=silverstone+ds380
Reason for Choosing it: Form Factor & 12 Drive with 8 hotswaps!

Drives: 7x 4TB WD Reds
Configuration: Raidz2 (2 drive redundancy) with 1 drive in hotswap in case of drive failure.

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https://linustechtips.com/topic/431568-need-feedback-freenas-build/
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Seems solid to me. Have fun building it.

 

I don't know much about the plugins though. I use Windows Server 2012 R2 for my build (It was free anyway thanks to Dreamspark).

 

Curious to see what kind of space you get with Z2 and the seven drives.

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Seems solid to me. Have fun building it.

 

I don't know much about the plugins though. I use Windows Server 2012 R2 for my build (It was free anyway thanks to Dreamspark).

 

Curious to see what kind of space you get with Z2 and the seven drives.

Sweet, thanks! Just making sure, I can use SAS for raidz2, correct?

 

I'm hoping to get an effective 16TB of space. I just want the hotswap in there in case something happens. :)

 

On my freenas box im just running a ubuntu server in virtualbox :)

Sweet! Do you use it with vmware or do you directly run the ubuntu server on it? what do you run on the server?

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Sweet, thanks! Just making sure, I can use SAS for raidz2, correct?

 

I'm hoping to get an effective 16TB of space. I just want the hotswap in there in case something happens. :)

 

Sweet! Do you use it with vmware or do you directly run the ubuntu server on it? what do you run on the server?

 

It depends on what the SAS is running off of. Is the SAS is running off of a HBA chipset, then yes. If it's running off of a RAID chip, then no.

 

The motherboard there is a SAS HBA chip, so you should be good.

 

Hmm, unsure if you'll get 16TB of space. Then again, it's all up to Z2's decision.

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Sweet, thanks! Just making sure, I can use SAS for raidz2, correct?

 

I'm hoping to get an effective 16TB of space. I just want the hotswap in there in case something happens. :)

 

Sweet! Do you use it with vmware or do you directly run the ubuntu server on it? what do you run on the server?

 

The new version of FreeNAS comes with VirtualBox, you just have to enable it.

I am then running the ubuntu server inside VirtualBox as a VM (like VMware - VirtualBox is just an open-source alternative).

I run different servers with different thing depending on what I need :) I used to run Plex, but now its a plugin for FreeNAS, so I am mostly just running different servers, ubiquiti wifi controllers, backup-stuff and webservers :)

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It depends on what the SAS is running off of. Is the SAS is running off of a HBA chipset, then yes. If it's running off of a RAID chip, then no.

 

The motherboard there is a SAS HBA chip, so you should be good.

 

Hmm, unsure if you'll get 16TB of space. Then again, it's all up to Z2's decision.

 

You can calculate it fairly accurate with this: http://wintelguy.com/raidcalc.pl

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It depends on what the SAS is running off of. Is the SAS is running off of a HBA chipset, then yes. If it's running off of a RAID chip, then no.

 

The motherboard there is a SAS HBA chip, so you should be good.

 

Hmm, unsure if you'll get 16TB of space. Then again, it's all up to Z2's decision.

 

Just used a calculator from @InVis and it looks like I'll get 16TB of space !

 

And yes, it will run off of the this motherboard's SAS HBA :) Perfect!

 

The new version of FreeNAS comes with VirtualBox, you just have to enable it.

I am then running the ubuntu server inside VirtualBox as a VM (like VMware - VirtualBox is just an open-source alternative).

I run different servers with different thing depending on what I need :) I used to run Plex, but now its a plugin for FreeNAS, so I am mostly just running different servers, ubiquiti wifi controllers, backup-stuff and webservers :)

 

Sweet! I didn't know Virtualbox was able to run inside of FreeNAS! I gotta do some digging for what else I need to run in this machine.

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Just used a calculator from @InVis and it looks like I'll get 16TB of space !

 

And yes, it will run off of the this motherboard's SAS HBA :) Perfect!

 

 

Sweet! I didn't know Virtualbox was able to run inside of FreeNAS! I gotta do some digging for what else I need to run in this machine.

 

Yeah its a "pretty new" feature, but it works very well! :)

It have cut my power usage down a lot as i no longer have to run a seperate esxi box for the small virtual servers  :D

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My only recomendation is upgrade the cpu to the E3-1231v3 for only $50 more you get 400mhz clock speed increase and hyperthreading.

 

 

 

Dang.Hyperthreading is nice~. I will have to contemplate and see if electricity output will be same on the systems under load since Xeon doesn't offer electricity savings as compared to the Atom and i3 systems

Just tried that calculator.  It says my 8x 4TB in RAIDZ2 should give me 24TB usable space.  The actual number is 19.9TB.

 

Thanks for the insight! I hope I can get the 16TB, but if I can get 12, that would be awesome still in my mind.

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I just ordered a build very similar to this but with the E3-1275l because it has only 45tdp and passmark is around 6000. Something to consider is the DS380 with the -14s version motherboard fits, but only with a flex ATX PSU rigged into the box. The SFX Power supply won't fit because the motherboard goes about an inch into it's area. I found a FSP group flex ATX with 80 PLUS Gold, I'll let you know how it goes after I build.

 

Edit Add: I had considered the C2750 and the C2550 as well, but the Marvell sata controllers made me too nervous in the end. It'd be one thing for using with a regular filesystem, but ZFS can be picky and I want stability. The idea of 'crashing my zpool' sounds miserable and I've heard of the Marvell controller getting overloaded and causing errors. I wish that they'd used different controllers, because I really liked the board and it would have been a little cheaper and lower electricity. I'm happy with my choice so far though.

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Are you buying red pros or normal reds? The normal reds are pretty slow, especially if you're going to host virtual machines on them, stream content (plex), and want to get 100mbps per client over multiple clients. The processor should be plenty to handle RaidZ2 which can eat up some CPU horsepower. I have 4 reds (normal) in a RaidZ2 and using CIFS it only gets 50-60mbps. I have 5 4tb drives (other brand) on a RaidZ1 that gets ~100mbps over CIFS without issue on the same box.

 

The really slow seek time (due to the 5900rpm) also means shitty IOPS. So if multiple people are accessing different files/data - it is going to suffer.

 

If your budget allows for it, I'd get a couple SSDs, mirror them, and throw your VMs on there so the guest O/S doesn't suffer just because of heavy data usage. 

 

Don't forget that your FreeNAS itself needs ram (~1gb?), so you're just barely meeting the minimum requirements for memory (1gb per TB), especially if you're thinking about using other plugins. ZFS performs better with more memory.

 

I do commend you for wanting to do it the right way, whereas so many others try to go cheap. FreeNAS is not an option for small budgets lol.

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