Nas parts and os

[Zygizz]

I was putting it off and putting off but finally decided to build nas. I living in europes so all prices will be in euros sorry

 

I was thinking of using Freenas os because of jails programs ( plexmedia and sickrage and crachplan .. another ) but i want to hear your guys options or suggestion for better operating system .

 

A listing my parts dont below i want your guys opinnion about my choices Thanks

 

My server parts :

 

Cpu: I3-6100 ( for 120 euros ) or G4400 (57 euros ) I will be using plex and i head that plex transconding hiting cpu preatty hard but for worse case scenerio my plex server will be hit with two clients one 1080p another 720p for most of times all playing 1080p videos.

 

Motherboard : Gigabyte Ga GA-B150M-D3H  6 sata ports enought for time being and pcie slots for raid cards and in future for 10gbe port ^^

 

Ram: HyperX FURY Black DDR4 2400MHz 8GB for (35.52 euros ) or HyperX FURY Black DDR4 2400MHz 16GB for (68 euros) For this building time i think of using only 6 tb storages and that i read and heard freenas only want 1 gb of ram for 1 Tb ? So i can run for 8 gb our just suck it and buy 16gb ?

 

Psu: EVGA 500B 500W power supply i read it have good rewiev points and everthing .

 

Case : I have already bought for another year trying to build nas  its 4u rackmount chassis Logic Case SC-43550B

 

Hard Drives : I unsure that hard drives to buy but for know thinking of buying Barracuda 2TBx3 for (80 euros) ( and i think of build raid 5 array )

 

And another Queastion can freenas stripe two raid 5 arrays because in future i will upgrade and buy new hdd and this methond let me not lose from older array.

[dobo2001]

2 minutes ago, Zygizz said:

I was putting it off and putting off but finally decided to build nas. I living in europes so all prices will be in euros sorry

 

I was thinking of using Freenas os because of jails programs ( plexmedia and sickrage and crachplan .. another ) but i want to hear your guys options or suggestion for better operating system .

 

A listing my parts dont below i want your guys opinnion about my choices Thanks

 

My server parts :

 

Cpu: I3-6100 ( for 120 euros ) or G4400 (57 euros ) I will be using plex and i head that plex transconding hiting cpu preatty hard but for worse case scenerio my plex server will be hit with two clients one 1080p another 720p for most of times all playing 1080p videos.

 

Motherboard : Gigabyte Ga GA-B150M-D3H  6 sata ports enought for time being and pcie slots for raid cards and in future for 10gbe port ^^

 

Ram: HyperX FURY Black DDR4 2400MHz 8GB for (35.52 euros ) or HyperX FURY Black DDR4 2400MHz 16GB for (68 euros) For this building time i think of using only 6 tb storages and that i read and heard freenas only want 1 gb of ram for 1 Tb ? So i can run for 8 gb our just suck it and buy 16gb ?

 

Psu: EVGA 500B 500W power supply i read it have good rewiev points and everthing .

 

Case : I have already bought for another year trying to build nas  its 4u rackmount chassis Logic Case SC-43550B

 

Hard Drives : I unsure that hard drives to buy but for know thinking of buying Barracuda 2TBx3 for (80 euros) ( and i think of build raid 5 array )

 

And another Queastion can freenas stripe two raid 5 arrays because in future i will upgrade and buy new hdd and this methond let me not lose from older array.

Definitely go for the i3. You'll want the hyperthreading. I'd also go for the 16GB of RAM, cause the more the better. Also, I'd look more towards NAS oriented drives, like WD Reds. These are more reliable and made to operate 24/7.

[79wjd]

A pentium is enough for two bluray 1080p streams, although I'd still go for the i3 since it's not that much more and gives you more headroom for the future (and 4k).

 

FreeNAS doesn't actually need 1gb per tb. 8gb should be enough, but you may as well go with 16gb anyway (I'd also spend the extra $80~ and go with ECC and an ECC board).

 

Also, if you want to do any form of raid (keep in mind you can't/shouldn't use raid cards -- you want HBA cards with FreeNAS), you'll want drives designed for RAID (with things like TLER support and better vibration tolerance) -- WD Reds for example. 

[Zygizz]

11 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

A pentium is enough for two bluray 1080p streams, although I'd still go for the i3 since it's not that much more and gives you more headroom for the future (and 4k).

 

FreeNAS doesn't actually need 1gb per tb. 8gb should be enough, but you may as well go with 16gb anyway (I'd also spend the extra $80~ and go with ECC and an ECC board).

 

Also, if you want to do any form of raid (keep in mind you can't/shouldn't use raid cards -- you want HBA cards with FreeNAS), you'll want drives designed for RAID (with things like TLER support and better vibration tolerance) -- WD Reds for example. 

Sorry but HBA cards its like nic ?I am not really familiar with term.

[79wjd]

36 minutes ago, Zygizz said:

Sorry but HBA cards its like nic ?I am not really familiar with term.

NIC = network card. 

 

RAID Card is for storage. HBA cards are for storage but are completely transparent (i.e. the OS has full control over the drives whereas with a RAID card, the RAID card controls the drives and the OS talks to the raid card -- which isn't good for FreeNAS). 

[Aekim]

The Pentium+8GB Ram should do it but get another psu, I got the seasonic g-360 and it's great ( with a celeron g1840 and 8gb but don't have to transcode)

Also go for WD Red drives (3y warranty), Barracuda drives got only 2 and are not for 24/7 workloads.

[Zygizz]

I have another question but in the future if i want add 10Gbe nic ( becaused i just love idea for having fast transfer speeds ) i will need more powerful cpu then pentium or no ?

 

 

 

[Mikensan]

If you have the money, 16gb. FreeNAS works with less, but performs better with more. Memory is used as the first cache for files, so if it's larger it creates a nice buffer. If only ever moving large files, you'll never notice the difference. Also for a little extra money, go with ECC RAM. Not a must, and may never be an issue - but a NAS does not need super fast crazy high end memory. Error correction is more important than fast memory.

 

Motherboard: I don't think that board will support ECC, and lazy to look it up. If not then no big deal. If this will be sitting far away from you, a "nice to have" feature would be IPMI which gives you full remote control over the server. You can even go in to the bios etc... So a board like the Supermicro MBD-X11SSA-F-O would be nice. But it does cost more..

 

How many people streaming from Plex? 1 or 2? Then G4440 will be fine. Transcoding does hit CPU, but with only a couple streamers it's ok. Looks like both your choices support ECC, so good job on that. 

 

SATA ports: You can use the built in SATA ports, just make sure the BIOS is configured for JBOD and not raid. The fear is if the sata controller does anything fancy for failure detection because what you really want is to pass the hard drives off directly to freenas. FreeNAS needs 100% control over the disks. This is why some would suggest buying a HBA card. It's just a dumb card that does nothing but pass the hard drives through to the computer. You could buy a used LSI card like the IBM M1015 and flash it to IT mode (HBA mode essentially).

 

FreeNAS (like most storage solutions) uses "pools" which is comprised of raid arrays or disks. So say you create a RaidZ1 (Raid5) of 5 disks, you then add it to a pool (Pool1) and a year later you buy 5 more disks and create another RaidZ1 array. Then you just join it to Pool1 thus expanding capacity. The downside is, if ANY of the RaidZ1 arrays fail, the ENTIRE pool is lost. So if you're going to create a large pool, you want more redundancy. Of course you will have backups (right.. RIGHT?!!! lol) so it isn't about losing data, just the nightmare of rebuilding your pool and putting the data back. So if you do not mind that headache, then a pool built of Raid5 arrays is OK.

 

Also, have you considered buying used hardware? The Dell C2100 is very nice and generally cheap. If not available in your area, then look for Dell R710 or Dell R610 - generally offered in the same hardware just fewer drive bays.

 

**I just bold to make it easier to skip around while reading. tl;dr technique lol.

[Zygizz]

1 hour ago, Mikensan said:

If you have the money, 16gb. FreeNAS works with less, but performs better with more. Memory is used as the first cache for files, so if it's larger it creates a nice buffer. If only ever moving large files, you'll never notice the difference. Also for a little extra money, go with ECC RAM. Not a must, and may never be an issue - but a NAS does not need super fast crazy high end memory. Error correction is more important than fast memory.

 

Motherboard: I don't think that board will support ECC, and lazy to look it up. If not then no big deal. If this will be sitting far away from you, a "nice to have" feature would be IPMI which gives you full remote control over the server. You can even go in to the bios etc... So a board like the Supermicro MBD-X11SSA-F-O would be nice. But it does cost more..

 

How many people streaming from Plex? 1 or 2? Then G4440 will be fine. Transcoding does hit CPU, but with only a couple streamers it's ok. Looks like both your choices support ECC, so good job on that. 

 

SATA ports: You can use the built in SATA ports, just make sure the BIOS is configured for JBOD and not raid. The fear is if the sata controller does anything fancy for failure detection because what you really want is to pass the hard drives off directly to freenas. FreeNAS needs 100% control over the disks. This is why some would suggest buying a HBA card. It's just a dumb card that does nothing but pass the hard drives through to the computer. You could buy a used LSI card like the IBM M1015 and flash it to IT mode (HBA mode essentially).

 

FreeNAS (like most storage solutions) uses "pools" which is comprised of raid arrays or disks. So say you create a RaidZ1 (Raid5) of 5 disks, you then add it to a pool (Pool1) and a year later you buy 5 more disks and create another RaidZ1 array. Then you just join it to Pool1 thus expanding capacity. The downside is, if ANY of the RaidZ1 arrays fail, the ENTIRE pool is lost. So if you're going to create a large pool, you want more redundancy. Of course you will have backups (right.. RIGHT?!!! lol) so it isn't about losing data, just the nightmare of rebuilding your pool and putting the data back. So if you do not mind that headache, then a pool built of Raid5 arrays is OK.

 

Also, have you considered buying used hardware? The Dell C2100 is very nice and generally cheap. If not available in your area, then look for Dell R710 or Dell R610 - generally offered in the same hardware just fewer drive bays.

 

**I just bold to make it easier to skip around while reading. tl;dr technique lol.

Wow thanks amazing input , I was considering in the first place buying used hardware or retard server but my most conserd its power draw , because its of course going to be cheaper of the start but after so time my power bill going to catch up . 

[79wjd]

56 minutes ago, Zygizz said:

Wow thanks amazing input , I was considering in the first place buying used hardware or retard server but my most conserd its power draw , because its of course going to be cheaper of the start but after so time my power bill going to catch up . 

Anything from Intel from the last few years will have similar power consumption under idle (which is probably what the server will be under most of the time).

[Mikensan]

1 hour ago, Zygizz said:

Wow thanks amazing input , I was considering in the first place buying used hardware or retard server but my most conserd its power draw , because its of course going to be cheaper of the start but after so time my power bill going to catch up . 

Ah yes, they do draw a decent amount of power. You could decrease it greatly by removing the raid card and removing 1 of the 2 CPUs most come with. Then you have a CPU you can build another rig with etc... I think my L5520 based C1100 draws around 240watts just sitting there. Though you could still go used, find old workstations that are xeon based and save money there too. Just transplant the parts to your case :-) I forgot the codename for those xeons but they start with W.

 

Look for something like this: http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/mld/syd/5795922043.html

 

Just an idea anywho :-)

[Zygizz]

24 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

Anything from Intel from the last few years will have similar power consumption under idle (which is probably what the server will be under most of the time).

That useful info ! thanks , but you buying used servers still taking gamble because mostly dont come on with any kind of warranty

[Mikensan]

Ah yes warranty is certainly a concern. I built my NAS from new parts too for this reason and just wanted it to be "new." Though I did put in a E3-1220 that was used, everything else was new. I did have to RMA a Seagate 3TB (I know, shocker).

[Zygizz]

3 minutes ago, Mikensan said:

Ah yes, they do draw a decent amount of power. You could decrease it greatly by removing the raid card and removing 1 of the 2 CPUs most come with. Then you have a CPU you can build another rig with etc... I think my L5520 based C1100 draws around 240watts just sitting there. Though you could still go used, find old workstations that are xeon based and save money there too. Just transplant the parts to your case :-) I forgot the codename for those xeons but they start with W.

 

Look for something like this: http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/mld/syd/5795922043.html

 

Just an idea anywho :-)

Another thing its kinda hard in my location find any used server or just server used parts for normal price . And Best choice for used parts going to be form  http://www.bargainhardware.co.uk or ebay.

[79wjd]

1 hour ago, Zygizz said:

That useful info ! thanks , but you buying used servers still taking gamble because mostly dont come on with any kind of warranty

True, but certain pieces of hardware are also very unlikely to have a problem down the road (if you test them and they work when you get them).

 

CPU, mobo, ram, cooler -- these are all generally things that if they pass a stress test, they'll more than likely be fine forever (assuming they're not mistreated). Cases are obviously safe to buy used (but there usually aren't any worthwhile deals with cases), and PSUs are more than likely also going to be fine if they work on day 1, but I'm all for not playing around with an old/used PSU just because of reasons. And lastly there is storage -- which I would never touch used. But it's still worthwhile looking for deals on used hardware (I got a 1230v2+Supermicro board+32GB ECC for $350 -- about what I would have paid for an i3 based system with 16gb ECC new).

[Zygizz]

5 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

True, but certain pieces of hardware are also very unlikely to have a problem down the road (if you test them and they work when you get them).

 

CPU, mobo, ram, cooler -- these are all generally things that if they pass a stress test, they'll more than likely be fine forever (assuming they're not mistreated). Cases are obviously safe to buy used (but there usually aren't any worthwhile deals with cases), and PSUs are more than likely also going to be fine if they work on day 1, but I'm all for not playing around with an old/used PSU just because of reasons. And lastly there is storage -- which I would never touch used. But it's still worthwhile looking for deals on used hardware (I got a 1230v2+Supermicro board+32GB ECC for $350 -- about what I would have paid for an i3 based system with 16gb ECC new).

wow never expect its possible to get such deal from used parts  

[Zygizz]

But guys i stil have question how freenas deals with nics ? as i read its have problems with not intel nics. or it false story 

[79wjd]

1 hour ago, Zygizz said:

But guys i stil have question how freenas deals with nics ? as i read its have problems with not intel nics. or it false story 

It will work with non Intel NICs, but officially FreeNAS only offers full driver support/compatibility with Intel NICs. I had no issues running my FreeNAS server on an H81m board with a Realtek NIC.

[Zygizz]

9 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

It will work with non Intel NICs, but officially FreeNAS only offers full driver support/compatibility with Intel NICs. I had no issues running my FreeNAS server on an H81m board with a Realtek NIC.

Its useful to know that freenas works with non intel nic .its very intresting in 10gbe nic that linus made video about and allways wanted to try out  by myself

[Mikensan]

Current release of FreeNAS is based off of FreeBSD 10, which as of late has a large support for a rainbow of NICs. 10gbe cards are very expensive compared to 10gb SFP+ cards... for 10gb SFP+ cards FreeNAS/BSD loves Chelsio cards as well as intel.

[Mikensan]

Easy to just find out what NIC you will be using, and google if it's compatible or if there are any known issues.

[Dark]

You don't NEED nas/enterprise/server grade disk, you can use quality desktop drives and be in just as good a situation while spending less money.  Consider Toshiba and HGST desktop drives unless you find a better deal on a NAS/Enterprise grade disk.

 

NAS drives are a joke and perform no better than a quality consumer drive, they simply cost more.  They usually carry the same warranty period as desktop drives.

 

I've made this statement many times over on this forum but I will say that over the years I've had both enterprise and consumer drives in similar environments and I usually saw more enterprise drives fail then consumer drives.  Enterprise drives usually offer a much longer warranty period, which is great, but you're paying for it.

[79wjd]

1 hour ago, Dark said:

You don't NEED nas/enterprise/server grade disk, you can use quality desktop drives and be in just as good a situation while spending less money.  Consider Toshiba and HGST desktop drives unless you find a better deal on a NAS/Enterprise grade disk.

 

NAS drives are a joke and perform no better than a quality consumer drive, they simply cost more.  They usually carry the same warranty period as desktop drives.

 

I've made this statement many times over on this forum but I will say that over the years I've had both enterprise and consumer drives in similar environments and I usually saw more enterprise drives fail then consumer drives.  Enterprise drives usually offer a much longer warranty period, which is great, but you're paying for it.

NAS drives usually aren't identical to their desktop counterparts. They're designed to handle vibration and heat better (both are big issues when you have many drives on top of each other whereas in a desktop you generally don't). Plus, not all drives support things like TLER -- basically the thing that stops a RAID array from shitting itself if it hits a bad bit. So without TLER one bad read can cause your array to lock up whereas with TLER it will just skip the bad read and move on (and still work just fine). Plus, companies won't always honor a warranty if you use their product outside of its intended use case (and it's pretty easy to tell by looking at on hours/power cycles/head cycles/etc...). 

 

Not to mention that a lot of NAS drives do have better warranties (WD Reds have 3 year, WD Blue are only 1 year).

[Dark]

18 hours ago, djdwosk97 said:

NAS drives usually aren't identical to their desktop counterparts. They're designed to handle vibration and heat better (both are big issues when you have many drives on top of each other whereas in a desktop you generally don't). Plus, not all drives support things like TLER -- basically the thing that stops a RAID array from shitting itself if it hits a bad bit. So without TLER one bad read can cause your array to lock up whereas with TLER it will just skip the bad read and move on (and still work just fine). Plus, companies won't always honor a warranty if you use their product outside of its intended use case (and it's pretty easy to tell by looking at on hours/power cycles/head cycles/etc...). 

 

Not to mention that a lot of NAS drives do have better warranties (WD Reds have 3 year, WD Blue are only 1 year).

Saying that a NAS drive handles heat and vibration is subjective (of course the manufacturer will put that on the box) and usually at the expense of performance.  

 

TLER, while good to have, isn't necessary and not all RAID controllers listen for TLER.  It's also a 'perfect storm' case on the chance of the drive not recovering in time on a failed/failing bit for the controller to care about.  A feature that is certainly beneficial for an enterprise solution where the benefit of these feature sets are worth more than the cost of the drives. 

 

Ultimately, if any NAS/ENT drive is less or equal in cost then I don't see the harm in purchasing it.

 

And I wouldn't recommend Blue; I rarely recommend WD.

 

[Zygizz]

1 hour ago, Dark said:

Saying that a NAS drive handles heat and vibration is subjective (of course the manufacturer will put that on the box) and usually at the expense of performance.  

 

TLER, while good to have, isn't necessary and not all RAID controllers listen for TLER.  It's also a 'perfect storm' case on the chance of the drive not recovering in time on a failed/failing bit for the controller to care about.  A feature that is certainly beneficial for an enterprise solution where the benefit of these feature sets are worth more than the cost of the drives. 

 

Ultimately, if any NAS/ENT drive is less or equal in cost then I don't see the harm in purchasing it.

 

And I wouldn't recommend Blue; I rarely recommend WD.

 

So you can tell that best option in drive deparment for my build because i think for time being 6 - 8 tb of space going to be way more than enough for time being for me