Freenas Hardware Advice

[louielips3]

1. What YOUR PC will be used for. That means what types of tasks you'll be performing.

I want a FreeNas server that will handle video and music streaming. I will also be using it for some data backup but the primary function will be a media server with the capability of multiple users streaming video at the same time.

2. What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20% spread

I would like to be around $500 before the hard drives. Since I have a small amount of data now, I intend to buy 1 3TB drive and then once that is close to filled I will buy more drives and configure it with RaidZ.


3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.

USA


5. IF YOU have a brand preference. That means, are you an Intel-Fanboy, AMD-Fanboy, ATI-Fanboy, nVidia-Fanboy, Seagate-Fanboy, WD-Fanboy, etc.

I have no preference. To be honest I'm not sure as to which processor will work better for me.

6. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are.

All New parts.

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds.

Default Speeds

8. What resolution, not monitor size, will you be using?

I think this is a N/A

9. WHEN do you plan to build it?
Note that it is usually not cost or time effective to choose your build more than a month before you actually plan to be using it.

Anywhere for a few weeks to a month.

I guess I'm not really sure I am looking at is overkill for what I need. I planned on getting an i5 with 1GB of RAM for every TB of drive storage (Would probably get 8GB to start - again not sure if this is the right thing to do). Everything I have read focuses on RAM but also read that having a processor with multiple cores is needed for multiple users accessing the server streaming video. If I need to raise my budget than so be it as my main concern is to get something that fits my needs and not my budget so let me know if my budget is unrealistic. Below is what I was originally looking at:

Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Intel Core i5-3450 Ivy Bridge 3.1GHz (3.5GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2500 BX80637I53450

GIGABYTE GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL

FSP Group RAIDER 450W (RAIDER 450) ATX12V2.92 80PLUS BRONZE Certified +12V Single rail Power Supply compatible with Intel ...


Western Digital Red WD30EFRX 3TB IntelliPower SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Per Newegg, I could get everything besides the harddrives for around $500.

Thanks for the help!

 

[adairusmc]

I recently rebuilt my NAS to run freenas/nas4free (settled on nas4free) for the same exact uses you listed here.

I think what you do have is overkill, especially the CPU. I am running six 2tb drives in a ZFS pool, with this board/CPU combo and 16gb of RAM - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131843

The specs only list that it supports 8gb, but it runs 16gb perfectly fine. Plenty of CPU horsepower (from what I have found) and six onboard sata connectors. Works awesome. That board is about half of what the cost is on the board you chosen, and this one comes with the CPU. It also draws very little power - on the UPS I have connected to it, it shows it pulling about 40w from the wall at the highest.

On my pool, as I said I have six 2tb drives in RaidZ-1, and 16gb of RAM works well, but I have yet to see it go above 8gb (right now, it averages about 45% used on that 16gb, so just under 8gb). 8gigs of RAM would be a good choice.

Pic of my build -

That's what I would recommend anyways. I don't think you need that CPU and motherboard horsepower, and you can save enough money to buy another drive with the board I linked.

Hope that helps.

 

[Enigma102083]

If you were to buy such a beefy system you could throw Hyper-V 2012 hypervisor carve out a VM for your NAS, then carve out a few more for anything else you wanted to do. *nix server, ADC, game servers, etc.

 

[Ayah]

The processor is overkill.
I do not believe you can form an array with a filled disk and keep the data.

My system at home is an i3-2120, 32GB of RAM on a Supermicro X9SCL+-F with 10*2TB drives in raidz2 and 5*3TB drives in raidz1.

IMPI is kind of nice for this, but it's probably outside your budget.
As to running it in a VM, if you ever decide to expand your storage capacity I don't believe that's a good idea as zfs is *very* memory intensive and unless you're going to assign FreeNAS it's own ethernet port.

 

[louielips3]

I recently rebuilt my NAS to run freenas/nas4free (settled on nas4free) for the same exact uses you listed here.

I think what you do have is overkill, especially the CPU. I am running six 2tb drives in a ZFS pool, with this board/CPU combo and 16gb of RAM - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131843

The specs only list that it supports 8gb, but it runs 16gb perfectly fine. Plenty of CPU horsepower (from what I have found) and six onboard sata connectors. Works awesome. That board is about half of what the cost is on the board you chosen, and this one comes with the CPU. It also draws very little power - on the UPS I have connected to it, it shows it pulling about 40w from the wall at the highest.

On my pool, as I said I have six 2tb drives in RaidZ-1, and 16gb of RAM works well, but I have yet to see it go above 8gb (right now, it averages about 45% used on that 16gb, so just under 8gb). 8gigs of RAM would be a good choice.

Pic of my build -

That's what I would recommend anyways. I don't think you need that CPU and motherboard horsepower, and you can save enough money to buy another drive with the board I linked.

Hope that helps.

Wow that would save me a ton a money! How many users are hitting your server at once. I would like to be able to handle approx. 5 users at one (I'll probably never hit that number but want the system to be able to handle it). How important is CPU power when dealing with multiple users streaming video?

 

[louielips3]

The processor is overkill.
I do not believe you can form an array with a filled disk and keep the data.

My system at home is an i3-2120, 32GB of RAM on a Supermicro X9SCL+-F with 10*2TB drives in raidz2 and 5*3TB drives in raidz1.

IMPI is kind of nice for this, but it's probably outside your budget.
As to running it in a VM, if you ever decide to expand your storage capacity I don't believe that's a good idea as zfs is *very* memory intensive and unless you're going to assign FreeNAS it's own ethernet port.

I figured by the time I would need more drives, I would backup my one drive to an external, build out the raid with the new hard drives and then copy the data back.

You setup seems to be a bit much for my needs now and for the near future. I'm ripping DVD's at full quality and all menus at about 7GB average per DVD. Going to take me a very long time to get to 10-12 TB!

 

[adairusmc]

Wow that would save me a ton a money! How many users are hitting your server at once. I would like to be able to handle approx. 5 users at one (I'll probably never hit that number but want the system to be able to handle it). How important is CPU power when dealing with multiple users streaming video?

I have 3htpcs and two desktops that regularly access it, and it handles it just fine. I never see the CPU usage go much above 25% total. I don't think the CPU power really is used much when Streaming, I see the highest usage when I am transferring large files onto the server - and even then it doesn't get crazy high on CPU utilization.

 

[mfenn]

The processor is overkill.
I do not believe you can form an array with a filled disk and keep the data.

You can actually attach a drive to mirror an exiting drive with ZFS. That's a special case though, so generally you are correct.

OP, I think buying a NAS with no redundancy is a huge mistake. Drop down to a Pentium or i3 with an H77 board and use the savings to buy a second disk.

 

[Enigma102083]

The processor is overkill.
I do not believe you can form an array with a filled disk and keep the data.

My system at home is an i3-2120, 32GB of RAM on a Supermicro X9SCL+-F with 10*2TB drives in raidz2 and 5*3TB drives in raidz1.

IMPI is kind of nice for this, but it's probably outside your budget.
As to running it in a VM, if you ever decide to expand your storage capacity I don't believe that's a good idea as zfs is *very* memory intensive and unless you're going to assign FreeNAS it's own ethernet port.

I'm a big fan of assigning every VM it's own ethernet port. Which is why I have a giant pile of PCI and PCIe 10/100 and 10/100/1000 NICs laying about.