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Ashley's Ultimate FreeNAS Build
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ultimate-freenas-build.mdown

Ashley's Ultimate FreeNAS Build

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Written Feb 22nd 2016 while working at Launch Academy

Background

It's time to replace my (circa 2010) Drobo FS, which has been running pretty smoothly doing music studio, video editing, and home-office storage duties. It experienced a power brick failure in late 2014, (worth all of $14 at wholesale,) and Drobo insisted that I pay an absurd ($160 CAD+) cost to replace it. Otherwise, it's been really solid, at least up until a drive/index crash a few weeks ago, i.e. Jan 2016.

Old Specs

The FS is spinning 3x 3TB Seagate and 2x 3TB HGST HDDs, for a total usable (Drobo's software "BeyondRAID") pool of ~10.9TB of storage. Average read/write speeds over gigabit ethernet have been around 25-35MB/sec. (Great for the basics but sucks for high-bandwidth use cases.)

New Requirements

Ideally, I'd like to be able to edit HD1080p29.97 ProRes 4:4:4 footage in FCPX right off my storage pool, but this has been impractical with the Drobo FS. I'd also like to store the occasional 4K ProRes master edits (but not edit live) from a NAS box. Time Machine (Mac OS X) backups and my Plex media pool are also front-and-centre uses.

The FreeNAS open-source project looks like the software-based solution, and although I can't find a capacity calculator online for their ZFS-based storage pools, I'd estimate that I'd get over 17TB of usable storage with the specs below.

Onwards

So with this performance in mind, and having outgrown my FS, I assembled this parts list as my "dream build" replacement NAS server.

This build is notable for not requiring a RAID controller card (the usual PCIe 2.x SAS-to-SATA controller) and instead using an ASRock Mini ITX board that has 6 SATA headers onboard. FreeNAS boot would be from a 16GB USB stick, with a mirrored stick on standby as backup boot.

PCPartPicker part list

Photo Type Item Price
Alt text CPU Intel Xeon E3-1220 V3 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor $356.22 @ NCIX
Alt text CPU Cooler Corsair H60 54.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler $81.73 @ NCIX
Alt text Thermal Compound Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver 3.5g Thermal Paste $10.06 @ NCIX
Alt Text Motherboard ASRock E3C226D2I Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard $345.97 @ Newegg Canada
Alt text Memory Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory $162.43 @ NCIX
Alt text Storage Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive $235.18 @ NCIX
Alt text Storage Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive $235.18 @ NCIX
Alt text Storage Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive $235.18 @ NCIX
Alt text Storage Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive $235.18 @ NCIX
Alt text Storage Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive $235.18 @ NCIX
Alt text Storage Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive $235.18 @ NCIX
Alt text Case Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case $143.33 @ NCIX
Alt text Power Supply Corsair CSM 450W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply $128.77 @ NCIX
Alt text Case Fan be quiet! SilentWings 2 50.5 CFM 120mm Fan $35.81 @ NCIX
Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
Total $2675.40

Not too shabby! It just sucks to the USD/CAD forex right now...

@ctrlaltdylan
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Have the same case though so that's something.

@tonyschuite
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Nice list, Personally I would make a few changes:

Mainboard: ASRock C2750D4I (Avoton Octacore SoC), 12 SATA Ports (for expansion purposes)
Case: The 304 was my choice as well. though I am considering the 804 now because of a slightly different layout.
Memory: Definitely go for ECC memory. even if it is only the non brand. I was going for Kingston ValueRAM KVR16LE11K4/32

And if you need a lot of bandwidth, you might want to add another NIC an check out link aggregation (2 ethernet ports for double bandwidth). The Asrock boards both already has a second NIC built in, since it is a server board.

Edit: never mind the last comment, your asrock board has that as well.

@beforeyouknowit
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@tonyschuite Thanks for your suggestions! :)

I should update; I have an older but fully functional HP xw8600 workstation with dual-quadcore Xeon 2.66 CPUs, essentially a server-grade motherboard, with 7 SAS/SATA headers and 5 SATA 3 headers. I've purchased and installed a 2x 5.25 (optical) bay caddy that houses 3x more 3.5" HDDs; I've done a benchtest build with FreeNAS, now all I need to do is order a 32GB ECC DDR2-667 RAM kit on eBay and then place the big (pricey) order for the 7x 4TB HDDs!

I'll probably post an update gist about that final build soon!

@johnnyicemaker
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Almost the exact same system I completed in January 2016. Only difference is I went with 5x4TB HGST drives instead of the 6x4TB WD Reds. Be aware that power supply only comes with 2x2 SATA modular cables. You will have to get different modular cables for your 6 HDDs. Secret tip, if you go to the corsair tech support site you can request additional cables, and they might send them to you for free. I got an extra 1x4 SATA cable from them for free with no questions asked. With the case design and the reverse alignment of every other HDD, you will want 2x4 SATA connection power cables for easier cable management. See my build here. https://pcpartpicker.com/b/KpccCJ
Your final capacity will be determined by which ZFS configuration you choose. If you go with a Z2 Raid you will get about 16TB with 2 disc fault tolerance.

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