First NAS - Feeback appreciated

[pmk010]

Just put together my first NAS, planning to run FreeNAS. Completely new to this so any feedback is appreciated, thanks in advance!

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor  (£52.96 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H81M-S2H Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (£37.98 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Kingston HyperX FURY 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  (£26.98 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Kingston HyperX FURY 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  (£26.98 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£90.84 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£90.84 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£90.84 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Fractal Design Node 804 MicroATX Mid Tower Case  (£79.98 @ Ebuyer)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 600W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  (£57.99 @ Amazon UK)
Wired Network Adapter: Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 10/100/1000 Mbps PCI-Express x1 Network Adapter  (£26.25 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £555.39
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-03-15 19:04 GMT+0000

[leonard_sun]

You might want to switch the HDDs to Black instead of Red.

[Groundedbeef]

For a NAS i would keep the red!

[2FA]

6 minutes ago, leonard_sun said:

You might want to switch the HDDs to Black instead of Red.

What? Reds are meant for mass network storage.

[bcp]

I second the keeping Red. Meant for a NAS. Depending what you use (unRAID), you can get an SSD as a cache drive to get a speed increase for your transfers beyond a WD Black. 

[leonard_sun]

1 minute ago, DeadEyePsycho said:

What? Reds are meant for mass network storage.

hmm. I stand corrected. Your right.

[Groundedbeef]

If you can afford it go red pro, you cant go wrong with a 5 year warranty. well theoretically, shit does happen, but then you do have the 5 year warranty to wipe yourself with

[pmk010]

2 minutes ago, Groundedbeef said:

If you can afford it go red pro, you cant go wrong with a 5 year warranty. well theoretically, shit does happen, but then you do have the 5 year warranty to wipe yourself with

They're like double the price, so that's something I'll have to pass on. Though is it worth picking up a 128gb SSD for caching with freeNAS, if that's even a thing?

[leonard_sun]

2 minutes ago, Groundedbeef said:

If you can afford it go red pro, you cant go wrong with a 5 year warranty. well theoretically, shit does happen, but then you do have the 5 year warranty to wipe yourself with

I've re-read the FreeNas Recommendations and RED is the best one for this case. But for the warranty you have a point there it's only 3 years for RED as compared to Black.

[Groundedbeef]

4 minutes ago, pmk010 said:

They're like double the price, so that's something I'll have to pass on. Though is it worth picking up a 128gb SSD for caching with freeNAS, if that's even a thing?

I dont know, i have have never done it myself, but id like to know so i will be lurking... in case someone answers.

[pmk010]

9 minutes ago, leonard_sun said:

I've re-read the FreeNas Recommendations and RED is the best one for this case. But for the warranty you have a point there it's only 3 years for RED as compared to Black.

Could buy another set of reds in 3 years time worse comes to worse and it would still work out cheaper than having failed red pros 5 years down the line.

[Jarsky]

That's a good looking first build - the extra nic card is kinda redundant though? Unless FreeNAS doesn't recognise the built in NIC chipset on the board.

If you want to do nic teaming, you might want to look more at second hand 4 port intel cards on eBay.

 

You probably won't notice much difference with SSD caching with brand new drives - especially over Gigabit. With FreeNAS you can add an SSD cache at a later time though, so you don't necessarily need to get it now.

 

[pmk010]

5 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

That's a good looking first build - the extra nic card is kinda redundant though? Unless FreeNAS doesn't recognise the built in NIC chipset on the board.

If you want to do nic teaming, you might want to look more at second hand 4 port intel cards on eBay.

 

You probably won't notice much difference with SSD caching with brand new drives - especially over Gigabit. With FreeNAS you can add an SSD cache at a later time though, so you don't necessarily need to get it now.

 

Oh I left that nic in accidentally from when I was looking at an 18 quid board that I read had issues with freenas. Thanks for the spot

 

I think I'll pass on an SSD then, rather not spend that additional £50.

[Mikensan]

Your RAM will act as the initial cache and it'll catch majority if not all traffic over a gigabit connection. Definitely a nice build. Some caveats:

It's strongly recommended by the FreeNAS community to use ECC ram, you'd have to switch out your motherboard and ram to achieve this. The H81 chipset does not support ECC ram. Likelihood of data corruption and bitrot is somewhat low, but still a risk. Something to consider.

 

If you're doing more than a single parity drive, the processor might be the choking point. I was using a comparatively under powered CPU - G1610 - and my 2 parity array maxed out at 81mbytes per second, upgraded to an E3-1220 and getting 256mbytes per second. (Bought it used off of Amazon, working great). I think the Pentium processor you chose the G3258 shouldn't have any issues.

 

If I could do it over again, I would've bought the E3 right off the bat, and did a Raid 10 instead of RaidZ1. I probably would've been happy if I bought the pentium processor vs the celeron.. just went cheap not thinking the processor would be a bottleneck.

 

Current FreeNAS:

Xeon E3-1220

Motherboard: SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCL-F-O

32gb ECC unbuffered (Mushkin)

Case: RSV-L4411 (Not rack friendly, wasted 1U on a shelf...)

IBM m1015 flashed to IT mode

4x 3TB WD reds, RaidZ2

5x 4TB Seashit ST4000DM000 (Dead drive < 2 months) RaidZ1