Considering building myself a FreeNAS based home NAS system

[Bateluer]

My storage drives are about full to the gills. And they're both Seagates, not exactly known for high reliability right now.

The SYBA card provides the SATA ports for 4x 2TB WD Red drives, which would be running a RAIDZ1/RAID5 array. 6TBs of space. PC Parts Picker doesn't recognize the card, however, and it trips the compatibility filter. Its also complains that the motherboard doesn't have a USB3 header for the Define Mini's top mounted USB3 port. Not a big deal, but I plan to install FreeNAS to a USB3 stick mounted in the rear.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Integrated with Motherboard
Motherboard: ASRock Q1900M Micro ATX Celeron Celeron J1900 Motherboard ($56.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($55.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($95.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($95.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($95.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($95.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design Define Mini MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA 400W ATX Power Supply ($35.98 @ Newegg)
Case Fan: Fractal Design FD-FAN-SSR2-120 40.6 CFM 120mm Fan ($10.99 @ Newegg)
Other: SYBA SI-PEX40064 ($33.77)
Total: $637.66
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-27 23:31 EDT-0400

Thoughts? Seems like a decent build to me, but I'm a little concerned that the J1900 only lists 8GBs of RAM supported which doesn't leave much headroom for future growth if I wanted to expand storage later. FreeNAS suggests 1GB of RAM for every 1TB of storage.

 

[vailr]

A saw a power usage comparison between a true NAS vs. something like your parts list: ~15 Watts for something like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...7184&cm_re=qnap_ts-431-_-22-107-184-_-Product
or maybe 2x of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...7183&cm_re=qnap_ts-231-_-22-107-183-_-Product

vs. about 150 Watts for a PC configured as a NAS.

 

[Bateluer]

I was actually looking at a QNAP TS-420 before looking at a more custom build FreeNAS set up. Once I had the drives, the final price is comparable and I get a lot more control with the FreeNAS OS.

 

[Bateluer]

A variation, swapping out the J1900 board in favor of an AMD Kabini 5150. Which eliminates the need for the Syba card as its board has 4x SATAIII ports. 2.5x the TDP though.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD 5150 1.6GHz Quad-Core Processor ($45.98 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock AM1H-ITX Mini ITX AM1 Motherboard ($50.48 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($95.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($95.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($95.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($95.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design Define Mini MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA 400W ATX Power Supply ($35.98 @ Newegg)
Case Fan: Fractal Design FD-FAN-SSR2-120 40.6 CFM 120mm Fan ($10.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $637.37
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-28 00:28 EDT-0400


Edit - Too many threads on the FreeNAS forums about AMD issues. :/

Seems to be either one of these two builds right now. The first has more expensive SO-DIMM RAM, but it has 4x SATA ports, 2x 3Gb/s and 2x 6Gb/s as well has a USB3 header to connect the Mini's USB3 ports.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($95.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($95.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($95.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($95.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design Define Mini MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA 400W ATX Power Supply ($35.98 @ Newegg)
Case Fan: Fractal Design FD-FAN-SSR2-120 40.6 CFM 120mm Fan ($10.99 @ Newegg)
Other: ASRock Q1900-ITX Intel Celeron J1900 ($76.00)
Other: Kingston 8GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM KVR16LS11/8 ($57.00)
Total: $623.92
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-28 03:16 EDT-0400

or


PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Integrated with Motherboard
Motherboard: ASRock Q1900M Micro ATX Celeron Celeron J1900 Motherboard ($56.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($95.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($95.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($95.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($95.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design Define Mini MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA 400W ATX Power Supply ($35.98 @ Newegg)
Case Fan: Fractal Design FD-FAN-SSR2-120 40.6 CFM 120mm Fan ($10.99 @ Newegg)
Other: SYBA SI-PEX40064 ($33.77)
Total: $631.66
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-28 03:18 EDT-0400

 

[dave_the_nerd]

A saw a power usage comparison between a true NAS vs. something like your parts list: ~15 Watts for something like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...7184&cm_re=qnap_ts-431-_-22-107-184-_-Product
or maybe 2x of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...7183&cm_re=qnap_ts-231-_-22-107-183-_-Product

vs. about 150 Watts for a PC configured as a NAS.

That's specious.

A 4-bay NAS is only pulling 15w if it has no HDDs installed (they average 10-15w each.)

A full on desktop system can idle in the 25-40w range, no problem. (A NAS will spend most of its time idle, doncha know.)

That figure is without HDDs, of course, but stack enough hard drives in the box, and the platform power use becomes insignificant anyway.

 

[Bateluer]

After much debate and Googling, I've gone with the Kabini based build. Board had too many advantages for its price tag to pass up. If FreeNAS runs into issues, I'll use another distro.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

After much debate and Googling, I've gone with the Kabini based build. Board had too many advantages for its price tag to pass up. If FreeNAS runs into issues, I'll use another distro.

You should probably skip FreeNAS anyway and just use a proper general purpose OS like Ubuntu or something.

Installing PLEX server or Crashplan on a boring, commonly used, well documented OS like Ubuntu is a gazillion times less headach-ey than dealing with FreeNAS Plugins / Jails. (partially because FreeNAS, and partially because FreeBSD isn't Linux.)

The only caveat is ZFS support, using ZoL (ZFS-on-Linux), disk I/O might not be as good as it is on FreeNAS. And the enterprisey types who worship the false gods of Uptime and NeverReboot don't trust it yet. (It's still fairly new.)

For home use it won't matter, though.

 

[hasu]

You should probably skip FreeNAS anyway and just use a proper general purpose OS like Ubuntu or something.

Installing PLEX server or Crashplan on a boring, commonly used, well documented OS like Ubuntu is a gazillion times less headach-ey than dealing with FreeNAS Plugins / Jails. (partially because FreeNAS, and partially because FreeBSD isn't Linux.)

I can vouch for that from my experience. I am building my ZFS on Ubuntu. I won't use FreeNAS. They already lost their track. My QNAP 212 is way better than FreeNAS. My second option would be FreeBSD. (I wanted to try Solaris with all the bells and whistles but the whole exercise is taking too long).

I used proper server hardware (Supermicro MBD-X10SLM+-F-O and ECC RAM). It turned out to be a little pricey but still less than a comparable commercial offering.

The only caveat is ZFS support, using ZoL (ZFS-on-Linux), disk I/O might not be as good as it is on FreeNAS.

Well, I tried FreeBSD, FreeNAS, ZFSGuru and ZoL. I did not notice any performance difference, and ZoL performed better IIRC. but I may be wrong.

For home use it won't matter, though.

I guess it is important data vs just entertainment media files. I have some very important documents, programs, photos and videos that I keep copies on multiple external storage! To me the most important files are under 2TB. I can loose everything else without having much effect.

 

[Essence_of_War]

The only caveat is ZFS support, using ZoL (ZFS-on-Linux), disk I/O might not be as good as it is on FreeNAS.

dave_the_nerd, is that mostly speculation, or do you have a specific reason to think this might be the case? With ZoL being a kernel-space port, I figured that performance should be equivalent to BSD/Solaris/illumos et al.

 

[PliotronX]

A saw a power usage comparison between a true NAS vs. something like your parts list: ~15 Watts for something like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...7184&cm_re=qnap_ts-431-_-22-107-184-_-Product
or maybe 2x of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...7183&cm_re=qnap_ts-231-_-22-107-183-_-Product

vs. about 150 Watts for a PC configured as a NAS.

My NAS/HTPC consists of an i3 4330 with an SSD, three fans, five 3TB RE4 drives and a GTX 650. Most of the time it pulls about 40W. That's running Windows so I don't know if the RAM-thrashing happy FreeNAS would ramp up the juice but 150W seems like an excessive figure. I don't particularly care for neutered "cloud BS" NAS units but different strokes...

 

[dave_the_nerd]

dave_the_nerd, is that mostly speculation, or do you have a specific reason to think this might be the case? With ZoL being a kernel-space port, I figured that performance should be equivalent to BSD/Solaris/illumos et al.

Somebody here recently had posted benchmarks while they were building a system. I think they were getting like 60-80% the speed with ZoL. Like ~350MB/sec vs. ~500MB/sec. I don't recall the user/posts though, sorry.

Either way, it was waaaay faster than 1GbE would be able to transfer, so it's not a material difference for the end user, and it wouldn't stop me from using ZoL.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Interesting! Good to know that it's still more than adequate to saturate gigE though!

 

[hasu]

Somebody here recently had posted benchmarks while they were building a system. I think they were getting like 60-80% the speed with ZoL. Like ~350MB/sec vs. ~500MB/sec. I don't recall the user/posts though, sorry.

Either way, it was waaaay faster than 1GbE would be able to transfer, so it's not a material difference for the end user, and it wouldn't stop me from using ZoL.

I had tested ZoL vs FreeNAS (http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37265972&postcount=74)
Both tests yielded around 360MB/s (ZoL was slightly higher, very minor within expected variability).