Is my NAS configuration good, and do i need a RAID controller

May 5, 2018
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Hello,

I want a home server with FreeNAS and a plugin for plex, is this configuration good:

-Intel Core I3 8100
-8GB DDR4-2400
-300W PSU
-2x2TB Seagate Ironwolf (For Backups of my PC's)
-1x750GB HDD (For plex)
-1x60GB Corsair SSD (Boot Drive


Do i need to buy a raid controller for my RAID-1 configuration, i've seen that there's also a RAID-1 function in FreeNAS.

Thank You!!!!
 
you might even experiment just installing the OS to a pair of USB flash drives (8 gb each), as the install to USB flash drives will be a RAID 1/mirror, saving your SSD as either faster storage, or a write cache....

It is not recommended to use an actual hardware RAID controller, let FreeNAS have the direct access to the drives that it needs via MB's SATA ports, it will 'software mirror' them.

FreeNAS is rather a RAM hog, so, if/when possible, bump your RAM to 16 GB if you can....

(I've enjoyed tinkering with FreeNAS off and on the past several months...
 

asoroka

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Apr 19, 2009
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You do not need to buy a raid controller.
You can set up software stripe (raid 0) or mirroring (raid 1).

You can also achieve what you want with any standard Linux distro as well, it does not have to be FreeNAS, (FreeNas is just a preconfigured Linux server based on FreeBSD).

If you intend to have this machine powered on 7x24, look a low power CPU, possibly even a dedicated NAS box. You should crunch numbers to see if it is economical to buy a low power NAS box or to run your old PC.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator


My Qnap TS-453A NAS box , in use, uses about 1/2 the power of my i7-4790k at idle.
 
May 5, 2018
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Ok thx for your reply!!! (mdd1963)

I've just reconfigured my NAS, i replace the SSD for 16 Gigs of RAM and 2x8GB usb drives for my boot.
Just one more question??
Why a RAID-1 config for the boot drives, if you use RAID-0 it will be much faster.


 
Config looks good for plex transcoding.

freenas has ZFS support, raid card is not needed.

Make a mirror pool with your 2TB disks and add the SSD as cache for that pool.
Install everything on that pool.

The 750GB could be used for system backups maybe. It's not needed very much. The backup might help if you have to restore the os and hopefully rebuild the pool. It's best to have another unit for full backup. esp if you decide to stripe anything.
Once you fill your 2TB buy some 6TB or 8TB and create new mirrors with those in a new pool.
 


The USB flash boot drive is used mostly read only during bootup...; the RAID 1/ ('mirror' in FreeNAS/OpenBSD- speak, as they do not use RAID 0,1,5,6,10,50, 60 terms) is so that if one flash drive fails, the system still boots...

an SSD will work, but, a pair of $8 USB flash drives for redundancy is better yet, but, is your call...; I'm sure somewhere, someone is using a pair of striped 2 TB NVME drives to shave 1 second off the once a year reboot, pretty much wasting the drives otherwise.... :)

 
May 5, 2018
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So i decided to save some money and i changed some things because there will be only 1 or max 2 devices who will stream at the same time and i don't have 4k content. So this is my setup:

-Asrock j4205
-2x2TB seagate ironwolf (Shared files)
-1x750GB HDD (plex)
-2x16GB flashdrives for boot
-400 watt PSU

How am i going to set the 2 flash drives in a RAID-1 configuration??

Thx!!!
 

asoroka

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Apr 19, 2009
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you can boot off the same drive as you use for plex.

Where will you install your OS, you could use a 16GB flash, if it is big enough. performance will be slow and it will wear out quickly as flash drivesare not meant for many write cycles.

Any reason why you can't boot off an internal drive?