Will this NAS build work well with FreeNas?

[Ripper7620]

Here's the initial build I'm planning on running FreeNas setup in 40TB, and then expanding it to 60TB: 

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Isabella_Shiri/saved/3NfZ8d

 

I'm planning on starting out with 40TB of 4 10TB WD Red NAS drives into the NAS, and then expanding it to 60TB. I'll be running Z2 in FreeNas  (raid 6). Thank you in advance! Sorry, I forgot to mention that the main purpose will be for music and video production and storage/ streaming. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

You can't expand a raidz(yet, its comming soon)

 

Id get a intel nic, they work better than the Aquantia nic here. Im also personally a sfp+ guy as there much lower power, but rf45 works fine.

 

CPU is overkill, id go with something like a pentium or a i3.

 

Ram is overkill 16gb is fine here. The 1gb per tb for zfs is bs as the ram is just used as a read cache, yea more is better, but it won't make a big difference, esp for seq speeds(thats what you seem to be doing here).

 

 

[Ripper7620]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You can't expand a raidz(yet, its comming soon)

 

Id get a intel nic, they work better than the Aquantia nic here. Im also personally a sfp+ guy as there much lower power, but rf45 works fine.

 

CPU is overkill, id go with something like a pentium or a i3.

 

Ram is overkill 16gb is fine here. The 1gb per tb for zfs is bs as the ram is just used as a read cache, yea more is better, but it won't make a big difference, esp for seq speeds(thats what you seem to be doing here).

 

 

Thank you very much, I'm basically just trying to hedge my bets with some over speced parts for expandability. I'll absolutely take your suggestions into consideration, and will just build in the 60TB into it from the start. I didn't realize that FreeNas was so hard to expand after the fact. My choice of parts was to hedge my bets for future expandability, but it sounds like I need to just build the entire package from the start, and avoid trying to expand. 

[Oshino Shinobu]

9 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

 

 

Id get a intel nic, they work better than the Aquantia nic here. Im also personally a sfp+ guy as there much lower power, but rf45 works fine.

 

 

 

If I'm not mistaken, I believe the FreeBSD/FreeNAS devs have said there is no driver available for the XG C100C and that there are no plans for it either, so it may just not work at all Real shame considering how good the value is compared to Intel 10G NICs. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Ripper7620 said:

Thank you very much, I'm basically just trying to hedge my bets with some over speced parts for expandability. I'll absolutely take your suggestions into consideration, and will just build in the 60TB into it from the start. I didn't realize that FreeNas was so hard to expand after the fact. My choice of parts was to hedge my bets for future expandability, but it sounds like I need to just build the entire package from the start, and avoid trying to expand. 

ALso how much performance do you need? ZFS isn't known for being the fastest solution often due to how its COW and values data integrity over speed.

 

Are you editing this NAS?

 

 

 

[Ripper7620]

2 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

If I'm not mistaken, I believe the FreeBSD/FreeNAS devs have said there is no driver available for the XG C100C and that there are no plans for it either, so it may just not work at all Real shame considering how good the value is compared to Intel 10G NICs. 

Thank you very much! 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

If I'm not mistaken, I believe the FreeBSD/FreeNAS devs have said there is no driver available for the XG C100C and that there are no plans for it either, so it may just not work at all Real shame considering how good the value is compared to Intel 10G NICs. 

One thing you can do is run linux with zfs which gives you the exact same storage solution and much better driver support.

 

You can also use 10gbe like these. https://www.ebay.com/itm/RT8N1-0RT8N1-DELL-MELLANOX-CONNECTX-2-PCIe-10GBe-ETHERNET-NIC-SERVER-ADAPTER/351416547732?_trkparms=pageci%3A8080ab72-1b36-11e8-8a3f-74dbd180dbe9|parentrq%3Ad3e0621e1610aa493150e6b5ffffdffd|iid%3A1&_trksid=p2481888.c100675.m4236

[Ripper7620]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

ALso how much performance do you need? ZFS isn't known for being the fastest solution often due to how its COW and values data integrity over speed.

 

Are you editing this NAS?

 

 

 

Yes, I would hope to be able to edit inside the NAS. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Ripper7620 said:

Yes, I would hope to be able to edit inside the NAS. 

What footage and program, it will work fine, but a local ssd for current projects is normally a better solution and much faster unless you have multiple editors.

[Ripper7620]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

One thing you can do is run linux with zfs which gives you the exact same storage solution and much better driver support.

 

You can also use 10gbe like these. https://www.ebay.com/itm/RT8N1-0RT8N1-DELL-MELLANOX-CONNECTX-2-PCIe-10GBe-ETHERNET-NIC-SERVER-ADAPTER/351416547732?_trkparms=pageci%3A8080ab72-1b36-11e8-8a3f-74dbd180dbe9|parentrq%3Ad3e0621e1610aa493150e6b5ffffdffd|iid%3A1&_trksid=p2481888.c100675.m4236

Thank you very much, I've got this on my eBay watch list. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Ripper7620 said:

Thank you very much, I've got this on my eBay watch list. 

What is your network like? are you running 10gbe everywhere or is this point to point?

 

Also if this is just for your workstation, id suggest just putting these drives in your workstation.

[Ripper7620]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

What footage and program, it will work fine, but a local ssd for current projects is normally a better solution and much faster unless you have multiple editors.

Thank you, I'm brand new to NAS, and know very little about what is possible. I don't know at this point what exactly I'll be running for programs. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Ripper7620 said:

Thank you, I'm brand new to NAS, and know very little about what is possible. I don't know at this point what exactly I'll be running for programs. 

what Editing programs?

 

 The other thing with editing here is latency. With hdds your thinking about 5-10ms, while a ssd is about .1ms. Thats a huge jump.

[Ripper7620]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

What is your network like? are you running 10gbe everywhere or is this point to point?

 

Also if this is just for your workstation, id suggest just putting these drives in your workstation.

I'm planning on plugging the NAS straight into my Wi-Fi router. I will take your suggestions and put the drivers into my workstation. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Ripper7620 said:

I'm planning on plugging the NAS straight into my Wi-Fi router. I will take your suggestions and put the drivers into my workstation. 

what router? is your router 10gbe? 

 

Do other systems need to access this data? 

 

Putting a raid card in your desktop and putting the drives in there seems like a simpler faster solution for your use case.

[Ripper7620]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

what Editing programs?

 

 The other thing with editing here is latency. With hdds your thinking about 5-10ms, while a ssd is about .1ms. Thats a huge jump.

For music production I will be using Reaper. I don't know much about video editing programsat this point. 

[Ripper7620]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

what router? is your router 10gbe? 

 

Do other systems need to access this data? 

 

Putting a raid card in your desktop and putting the drives in there seems like a simpler faster solution for your use case.

I still don't know all the details of the router. I don't have my Wi-Fi service yet. I'm new to all this and admittedlyhave no idea what I'm doing at this point. 

[Ripper7620]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

what router? is your router 10gbe? 

 

Do other systems need to access this data? 

 

Putting a raid card in your desktop and putting the drives in there seems like a simpler faster solution for your use case.

Yes, other systems need full access to the system. 

[Ripper7620]

Just now, Ripper7620 said:

Yes, other systems need full access to the system. 

Ok, I will absolutely consider putting raid drivesinto my desktop. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Ripper7620 said:

I still don't know all the details of the router. I don't have my Wi-Fi service yet. I'm new to all this and admittedlyhave no idea what I'm doing at this point. 

Is this just for you or are there multiple editors? 

 

Id suggest having a 1-4tb ssd in your workstation and use that for current projects. It will be much faster than the nas. Then when your done with a project copy it to the nas or hdd storage. The nas/hdds is more than fast enough for editing projects, its just that a ssd is faster. Then use the hdds/nas to backup the ssd.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Ripper7620 said:

Yes, other systems need full access to the system. 

Then you want a nas. 

 

Go for the 6 drives now or use mirrors. You can expand a vdev. 

 

Id go easy on the ram, you don't need that much, and it can be added easily later.

 

Consider adding a ssd pool in the nas for faster projects.

 

Do some more network planning. You will probably need a 10gbe switch.

[Ripper7620]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Is this just for you or are there multiple editors? 

 

Id suggest having a 1-4tb ssd in your workstation and use that for current projects. It will be much faster than the nas. Then when your done with a project copy it to the nas or hdd storage. The nas/hdds is more than fast enough for editing projects, its just that a ssd is faster. Then use the hdds/nas to backup the ssd.

Thank you, I understand that, and that makes sense, and soundslike a easy solution. 

[Ripper7620]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Then you want a nas. 

 

Go for the 6 drives now or use mirrors. You can expand a vdev. 

 

Id go easy on the ram, you don't need that much, and it can be added easily later.

 

Consider adding a ssd pool in the nas for faster projects.

 

Do some more network planning. You will probably need a 10gbe switch.

Ok thank you very much, I will absolutely consider all of these suggestions. I've got a great deal to learn about how everything works and will probably make several missteps before I get a handle on things. 

[paddy-stone]

Just want to add here, that unless you actually need the redundancy of zfs (z1/z2), you could run JBOD instead and freenas is easily expandable in that scenario. You will also need to think about backup solutions, as even if you go with redundancy, redundancy does not equal backup. You would be screwed if more than 2 disks failed, or something major happened to the system.

I am in the process of getting ready to move my freenas over to z1/z2 myself, and so at the moment will have to re-copy over the data once the raid is setup on the disks... I am hoping that by the time I need to expand the volume that you WILL be able to add disks to the raid config.

[Ripper7620]

30 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

Just want to add here, that unless you actually need the redundancy of zfs (z1/z2), you could run JBOD instead and freenas is easily expandable in that scenario. You will also need to think about backup solutions, as even if you go with redundancy, redundancy does not equal backup. You would be screwed if more than 2 disks failed, or something major happened to the system.

I am in the process of getting ready to move my freenas over to z1/z2 myself, and so at the moment will have to re-copy over the data once the raid is setup on the disks... I am hoping that by the time I need to expand the volume that you WILL be able to add disks to the raid config.

Yes, thanks, I'm going with a Z2 setup in FreeNas