Question NAS-True NAS Core

[Mir96TA]

Hi,
I am playing with idea of building a NAS out of old un-used hardware.
I have AMD Phenom II X6 1055T with 16 DDR3 memory.
1 500 GB Seagate Momentus XT for OS.
2X 1TB WD Black HDD
1 240 GB intel 530 Sata SSD (For cache ?)
What you all think ?
It will fly or tank ?
Link for Hardware
I will not do Transcode, (I think too weak for that). I am thinking to use it for a storage
Thanks

 

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

Plenty good hardware for NAS (TrueCore or FreeNAS). It has plenty of horsepower to trascode too (1 or 2 streams wouldn't even begin to stress that CPU). But for just storage use, it's overkill. You can use your budget to get big HDD's and put them in mirrors for redundancy and a good network card (intel chipset). The SSD is a good idea for the OS, you can mirror it to a flash stick for instant recovery if you ever need it (do it periodically). If you need more SATA ports, you can use a PCIe SAS SCSI card and get 8 more SATA ports right away for a good price (SAS9211-8I works natively in True/FreeNAS). The RAM is pretty important to True/FreeNAS, so more the merrier there. It will use all of it. Everything is buffered via RAM in these operating system(s), so fast and copious amounts of RAM is good for performance here. But again you hardware for this setup for just storage purposes with TrueNAS is overkill so you're set really.

Very best,

 

[Mir96TA]

I have no idea, what I am going into it.
I just had a hardware, I want to use it.
I don't have to spend any thing on it.
What I need to keep in mind for 24X7 it will cost me energy bill! ( 125W TDP)

 

[MalVeauX]

I have no idea, what I am going into it.
I just had a hardware, I want to use it.
I don't have to spend any thing on it.
What I need to keep in mind for 24X7 it will cost me energy bill! ( 125W TDP)

It should sit at idle most of the time, so it should be closer to 50~60 watts probably. The CPU does very little work here. The most work is done by the discs and the RAM, both of which are low power consumption even under load. The CPU will idle usually, sometimes spiking some activity here and there, but minimal.

Very best,

 

[fluffmonster]

I found this tutorial extremely helpful in getting file sharing up on TrueNAS:

https://www.lawrencesystems.com/truenas-core-12-user-and-group-acl-permissions-and-smb-sharing/

 

[Mir96TA]

I also have a choice of using i5 3570K (4 Core with no SMT) with ASRock Z68 with 16 GiG DDR3
should I use that ?
Since AMD Phenom II X6 1055T (6 Core) is a over kill ?

 

[Mir96TA]

Should I go one step blew

MB = GA-EP45-UD3R (rev. 1.1) 6x SATA 3Gb/s
CPU = Core 2 Extreme QX9650 (3‎.00GHz Cache=1‎2MB) TDP 1‎30W Quad Core Duo
Memory is DDR2 8 Gig 800Mhz

 

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

It won't matter hardly at all for this application as each processor will run at minimal state with the OS and consume very little. Go with the board that has the most SATA ports and potential max RAM and worry less about the CPU for a storage server. CPU is only important if you had trascoding plex server feeding 10+ streams or something really. For just storage, the CPU will hardly ever do much, so whatever the power draw is at minimum state will be what it is (so having a high TDP CPU isn't a big deal here). So instead again I would look at max RAM capacity (this is far more important to the OS and filesystem (ZFS), and get as much RAM on there as you can, it will use it all. And whatever board has the best LAN chipset (prefer Intel) and whichever has the most PCIe slots so you can expand with SAS controllers as needed (or just straight SATA).

If you're buying new, I would actually suggest hopping on the `bay and look for a gently used Supermicro motherboard with a Xeon CPU and 16~32GB ECC DDR3 ram as a kit with dual intel NIC. You can find them for under $300 usually and those are great for this. ECC is preferred on a server if you care about your data's integrity over time. ECC + ZFS is a great combination for data integrity, very durable.

But if you're just reusing hardware, again, use whatever you have and just use the best featured board and board with the most RAM and SATA and don't even worry about what CPU is on there.

Very best,

 

[VirtualLarry]

I also have a choice of using i5 3570K (4 Core with no SMT) with ASRock Z68 with 16 GiG DDR3
should I use that ?
Since AMD Phenom II X6 1055T (6 Core) is a over kill ?

The Intel CPU probably has lower idle wattage, I would use it for a NAS over a Phenom II X6.

 

[aigomorla]

I also have a choice of using i5 3570K (4 Core with no SMT) with ASRock Z68 with 16 GiG DDR3
should I use that ?
Since AMD Phenom II X6 1055T (6 Core) is a over kill ?

Use the intel.
The ASrock is a much more stable board especially the Z68.

Also you do not want to ask in the freenas forum, unless u have a thick skin, as people will flame you for not using real enterprise gear, or using ECC Ram.

But FreeBSD like MalVeauX states LOVES Ram.
You may want to see if you can source out more sticks and try to max out the ram as much as possible within acceptable $$.
Typically you want at least 1.5GB of ram per TB of storage i read somewhere for FreeBSD thats not including the base 4GB that is recommended.
16GB will probably be good for somewhere between 16TB-20TB of storage in a Raid-Z config.
Although u can probably go more, but again, this is what is recommended and not required.

 

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

Don't worry about people telling you should have ECC RAM and enterprise controllers, etc. There are just as many using trash hardware and will tell you just to make sure you have redundancy on your data and that's likely good enough. You have to consider their perspective, a lot of people running FreeNAS/TrueNAS that camp on those forums are doing it not as a hobby but for an actual business so they need serious in depth knowledge of the OS and security, redundancy, etc. There are others who do it for home hobby type stuff, but they're few and far between and rarely just hang out on a forum like that talking about the OS all day unless they live & breathe it (which is not a hobbyist thing but more someone who works with it all day every day in real business).

Copious RAM is suggested because everything the OS does happens in the RAM, and RAM is faster. It's how it handles everything on slow hardware better. It's also how it handles checking data integrity while doing all that work so fast too. This is why ECC gets recommended, because flipping a bit while doing the work and after already verifying checksum integrity results in corrupt data. This is not a big deal for a home server with movies, music, pictures, etc. This is a huge deal for someone who's being paid to maintain a server for a business that relies on data integrity to be in business. So that's the perspective. If you have too little RAM, it will just perform slower, but it will work. It will load data to RAM, do the work, unload, reload data, etc. The more RAM you have, the less often this has to happen. All the OS systems/services will be loaded into RAM for fastest operation, which again, is why it will be suggested to have lots of RAM and ECC, etc. Basic services in FreeNAS/TrueNAS will take up over 2~3GB of memory instantly.

At the end of the day, just have redundancy on your data. I suggest mirrors over parity methods. HDD's are cheap for massive capacity. Mirrors are just so much easier to handle, repair (re-silver), faster, simpler. Learning this stuff, you need to keep it simple. Go too deep with parity and mess something up and you'll have fits knowing how to even recover your data without trashing it all in the process.

Very best,