First NAS build

[Rayhunter]

Hi guys,

 

I'm looking to use FreeNAS, i've read on quite a few areas of the forums that ECC ram is highly recommended for ZFS but i'm finding it difficult to find a range of motherboards that support ECC RAM, mind providing some suggestions?

From what I've read, I'm interested in running 4x4TB WD Red in RAID 10 (Wishlist would to be able to expand to 6 disks if necessary to future proof), I'm aiming to have this NAS used for all my families important documents, video, music, pictures, maybe game streaming and perhaps video surveillance in the future.

 

Current budget is around $1,000 AUD.

 

 

[NelizMastr]

Any particular reason you're looking to build it, rather than buy it? There are many prebuilt NAS options that are easier to setup, take up less space and consume less power.

 

If you really want a custom build for this, and ECC, you'll need to look for a board with a C-series chipset, like the C236 (s1151 Skylake/Kaby Lake) or C246 (Coffee Lake) paired with an i3 or Xeon, as those support unbuffered ECC memory. Supported chips include:

 

- Xeon E3 v5/v6 for C236

- Xeon E-G series for C246

 

If you want video streaming at 4K an i3 will do fine as long as it's either Kaby or Coffee Lake. If that's not important, you could start with even a Pentium G4600 or Pentium Gold.

[Rayhunter]

On 10/9/2018 at 12:26 AM, NelizMastr said:

Any particular reason you're looking to build it, rather than buy it? There are many prebuilt NAS options that are easier to setup, take up less space and consume less power.

 

If you really want a custom build for this, and ECC, you'll need to look for a board with a C-series chipset, like the C236 (s1151 Skylake/Kaby Lake) or C246 (Coffee Lake) paired with an i3 or Xeon, as those support unbuffered ECC memory. Supported chips include:

 

- Xeon E3 v5/v6 for C236

- Xeon E-G series for C246

 

If you want video streaming at 4K an i3 will do fine as long as it's either Kaby or Coffee Lake. If that's not important, you could start with even a Pentium G4600 or Pentium Gold.

 I thought it would be a better option in the long run as it would open up the door for expansion and support. I'd like to keep this NAS for as long as i can and thought using FreeNAS would provide more/better features in the long run compared to an all in one NAS system.

 

If you were to recommend a pre-built NAS, which one would you suggest for my situation?

[beersykins]

You may want to consider doing something like raidz2 within zfs and not creating a hardware array.  Most disk setups are recommended as hba mode to the os.

[Rayhunter]

On 10/11/2018 at 9:10 PM, beersykins said:

You may want to consider doing something like raidz2 within zfs and not creating a hardware array.  Most disk setups are recommended as hba mode to the os.

 

Thanks for the tip, i'm still early days and from what i've read raidz2 is very similar to RAID 10 right?

 

I've also been looking around for parts and this is what i've come up with, more expensive than i originally thought

 

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type	Item	Price
CPU	Intel - Xeon E3-1220 V6 3GHz Quad-Core Processor	$310.98 @ Mwave Australia
Motherboard	ASRock - C236 WSI Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard	$329.57 @ Amazon Australia
Memory	Kingston - ValueRAM 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory	$156.98 @ Mwave Australia
Storage	Western Digital - Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive	$169.00 @ Mwave Australia
Storage	Western Digital - Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive	$169.00 @ Mwave Australia
Storage	Western Digital - Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive	$169.00 @ Mwave Australia
Storage	Western Digital - Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive	$169.00 @ Mwave Australia
Case	Fractal Design - Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case	$135.00
Power Supply	SeaSonic - FOCUS Plus Gold 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply	$145.00 @ Mwave Australia
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$1753.53
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-10-14 17:55 AEDT+1100

 

[Jarsky]

Keep in mind that FreeNAS hasn't yet implemented the ability to expand vdev's by adding more drives. If you want to expand your zpool in future you'd either have to create a second vdev or you would have to swap the drives out one at a time for larger capacity and expand the dataset once theyre all upgraded.