Feedback and suggestions on a new NAS storage build

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wixter

Weaksauce
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Mar 8, 2012
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So I wanted to get some feedback from folks here on a possible design for my NAS. This storage unit will primarily be holding a lot of video files and general archives of home movies, pictures, and all the other junk we want to keep in a central repository. So with that said, I'm looking for some feedback on what specific components can meet these requirements, and if my requirements might be a little unrealistic.


-A case supporting at least 10 drives. I need a minimum of 50TB of storage space.

-file system will be ZFS using FreeNAS. Is there a better solution? I would also need a motherboard that supports ECC memory

-The motherboard would need a sufficient amount of ECC memory to support ZFS requirements, so given the amount of storage space I'm needing, would 32GB be enough?

-Is it possible to find a motherboard that is completely fanless? The less air movement the better, but I know this may not be realistic. I've had good luck finding mini-ITX motherboards that are fanless for firewall builds, but I know this is a different beast.

-Integrated 1Gb nic.

-The system needs to be able to enter sleep mode after maybe an hour of no activity.

-The system will primarily be used for *reading* data from storage, not writing to the storage space.


Any other suggestions on something I might be overlooking, or useful additions to such a setup? I've not used FreeNAS before, but I assume I can make the share available via netbios? In such a way that the storage space would be displayed as a network share for workstations running Windows.
 
Depending on the HDD Size you choose you can get by with as little as 4 bays in your case. HGST makes pretty damn reliable 14TB drives (56GB for 4 of them) so you could get a normal case if you can swing the buy-in price of moving to 14TB. That allows you some flexibility in mobos and connection speed, as well.

I have six of their 8GB drives in use for almost 2 years so far and I've been happy with them.

I don't know if you want to go fanless for quiet-ness' sake but, if it were me, I'd find a 6-8bay case with a 200mm fan (slow spinning = less noise while still cooling all your components)

You can find a 1GB NIC in most decent mobos now...but you may want to pick up a pair of 10GB cards in addition to the 1GB built-in one on the mobo...I'm specc'ing out a new NAS system using a direct connection of 10GB from my main workstation to the NAS so when I generate large files from Video Editing/Processing, I can throw them onto the NAS F-A-S-T .
 
wixter said:
-The system needs to be able to enter sleep mode after maybe an hour of no activity.
Click to expand...
It doesn't make much sense to run FreeNAS like that as you'd be crippling much of what it is there to do.
 
Do you really need 50 TB of usable storage space, or are you attempting to future-proof? If you can, start smaller and then upgrade when available capacities are greater and prices have dropped. Last i checked, 8-10 TB units were the sweet spot for $ per GB.

SSD caching will be of no use for such a setup. Don't bother with L2ARC or SLOG devices.

Completely fanless is probably not going to happen, especially if you do need to go with the proposed number of drives. You want air movement. A few, large, slower fans would be sufficient, and basically silent unless you put your ear right up to the box.

As for the case, hotswap is only going to make things louder and more expensive for no real gain for a home setup. A little downtime to add/swap a drive isn't going to hurt any. A well-designed case with lots of space (e.g., the Fractal Define R6) (I'm using an Arc Midi R2) will do fine.

Integrated 1 Gb ethernet is pretty much a given now. Intel NICs are most desirable, as they're well-supported under FreeNAS.

FreeNAS is perfectly good at serving files via SMB/CIFS (NetBIOS is old).

Are you planning to use this solely for storage, or do you expect to run any VMs/jails/containers under FreeNAS? Because that will certainly affect how much CPU you'll need. For simple file sharing only, a basic CPU (I'm using an i3-4130 (could have gone with a lower Celeron or Pentium had I not wanted AES-NI) on a Supermicro X10SL7-F) is more than sufficient.

For a home box just serving the occasional media files 32 GB is more than enough. 16 GB would work quite well I believe (it's what I use for my 6 TB x10 RAIDz2 setup without issue). Of course, more is warranted if also running VMs/containers/etc.

Were I putting together a fileserver-only system today for SOHO, I might be looking at something like the Supermicro X11SDV-4C-TP8F. It's low-powered, has lots of SATA connectivity, and 10 Gb ethernet.
 
BlueLineSwinger said:
Do you really need 50 TB of usable storage space, or are you attempting to future-proof? If you can, start smaller and then upgrade when available capacities are greater and prices have dropped. Last i checked, 8-10 TB units were the sweet spot for $ per GB.

SSD caching will be of no use for such a setup. Don't bother with L2ARC or SLOG devices.

Completely fanless is probably not going to happen, especially if you do need to go with the proposed number of drives. You want air movement. A few, large, slower fans would be sufficient, and basically silent unless you put your ear right up to the box.

As for the case, hotswap is only going to make things louder and more expensive for no real gain for a home setup. A little downtime to add/swap a drive isn't going to hurt any. A well-designed case with lots of space (e.g., the Fractal Define R6) (I'm using an Arc Midi R2) will do fine.

Integrated 1 Gb ethernet is pretty much a given now. Intel NICs are most desirable, as they're well-supported under FreeNAS.

FreeNAS is perfectly good at serving files via SMB/CIFS (NetBIOS is old).

Are you planning to use this solely for storage, or do you expect to run any VMs/jails/containers under FreeNAS? Because that will certainly affect how much CPU you'll need. For simple file sharing only, a basic CPU (I'm using an i3-4130 (could have gone with a lower Celeron or Pentium had I not wanted AES-NI) on a Supermicro X10SL7-F) is more than sufficient.

For a home box just serving the occasional media files 32 GB is more than enough. 16 GB would work quite well I believe (it's what I use for my 6 TB x10 RAIDz2 setup without issue). Of course, more is warranted if also running VMs/containers/etc.

Were I putting together a fileserver-only system today for SOHO, I might be looking at something like the Supermicro X11SDV-4C-TP8F. It's low-powered, has lots of SATA connectivity, and 10 Gb ethernet.
Click to expand...



I thought you were pretty limited in adding more drives to an existing ZFS pool? As I mentioned, I've never used the filesystem before but I do want to use it to ensure integrity of my archived data. Also i have no need for hotswap enclosures. Mainly just looking for a case that has the ability to hold a lot of drives.
 
To increase storage you can either:

Forgot to mention before: something you may want to consider trying is installing FreeNAS into a virtual machine under VMware Player or similar. A single 8 GB virtual disk good for the OS, and then a whole bunch of thin-provisioned 1 GB virtual disks to use as your storage pool. This is what I did to get comfortable with the system and experiment with various setups.
 
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