I know there are several FreeNAS builds on here already but Im looking for something with modern hardware.
I dont want to spend tons of money on the hardware but I want to also do transcoding and streaming. i know I need ECC RAM and it is recommended on the Wiki to max out the RAM before getting a SSD Cache. I figure I will need a ZIL Cache though.
I would like to spend less than $1k on the hardware minus the drives.
I want to start with 4 drives but have the option to go up to 8. I am considering SAS drives.
Define modern? (mine runs on a 1275lv3)
How many streams transcoding?
You prob wont need a zil cache
Tower or rackmount
Ok with used parts or just new?
Gigabit network of faster?
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Modern being newer than Haswell. AES-NI support.
Say up to 5 streams. Not necessarily transcoding but have the ability to transcode in a timely manner. Most of what I stream from my current server is not transcoded as I have been using Kodi and an SFTP connection.
Prefer tower as I dont have a rack. Prefer not to have a full tower.
Used as long as they are from a reputable source and good quality (not mined to death for example).
I have an SFP+ port on my router so I would like to run 10Gb but also have maybe a teamed/bonded gigabit dual or quad setup in lieu of a 10G.
Do you want hotswap or doesnt matter that much to you?
Also haswell does have ASE-NI support btw
I would prefer hotswap but if it is not cost effective, I can do without as long as there is a backplane inside the case for drives to just be slid in. With Mulitpath. Especially as I am seriously considering using SAS drives.
That will pretty much push you into used rackmount probably (if you want backplane with multipath) might be some used towers as well
The Guideline
Very roughly speaking, for a single full-transcode of a video, the following PassMark score requirements are a good guideline for the following average source file:
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4K HDR (50Mbps, 10-bit HEVC) file: 17000 PassMark score (being transcoded to 10Mbps 1080p)
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4K SDR (40Mbps, 8-bit HEVC) file: 12000 PassMark score (being transcoded to 10Mbps 1080p)
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1080p (10Mbps, H.264) file: 2000 PassMark score
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720p (4Mbps, H.264) file: 1500 PassMark score
Thats plex so min 10000 score for just the 5 streams.
That puts you in pretty pricey territory
Not doing 4K.
I dont use Plex.
Lets say 2 simultaneous transcodes.
Was using plex as a source for rough transcode numbers should be similar regaurdless of what you are using and they say 2000 passmark per stream at 1080p so multiply that by 5 puts you in 10k passmark score territory.
If you just doing 2 streams thats much more achievable at your budget
Also you might want to reconsider the no haswell as thats the last ddr3 (broadwell isnt real) so you jump to ddr4 and ecc that is still expensive (64gig of fast ecc is like 700 still)
lets just go with 1-2. Since most of the time, I am streaming to a PC and not something like a roku so I shouldnt have Codec issues.
Just throwing this out there…if you’re wanting Haswell or newer with ECC support, you’re going to be stuck with Xeon LGA 2011 V3 or newer…which means if you go with an X99 workstation board and a Haswell-E Xeon CPU, you’re going to eat up about half that $1,000 budget…then you still need…well everything else.
Another option would be going with AMD. Since Ryzen supports ECC, something like maybe Ryzen CPU and a board that supports ECC could be a way to knock off a few hundred dollars over an Intel setup. You’re still going to be sinking a pretty decent amount of that budget into it if you opt for new hardware and you’ll still need DDR4 which is going to be a lot more expensive than DDR3.
If it were me, I would go for an Ivy Bridge system now or a Sandy Bridge system and save some money for a more powerful system down the line. Just looked on Ebay and found a Dell T420 LFF tower with an Ivy Bridge CPU and 64GB RAM for about $800+shipping
(listing was " Dell PowerEdge T420 Xeon E5-2450 v2 64G DDR3 ECC RAM Raid 4X2T 7200PM Hot Swap").
The only missing item would be replacing the RAID controller with an HBA and you’d be set with a pretty sweet server that has all the enterprise grade goodies like hot swap bays, redundant PSU, server remote management, etc.
I looked into a Ryzen FreeNAS build but the FreeNAS forums had many posts with issues using a Ryzen 7 chip. There were no issues using a Epyc chip but when I parted out an Epyc build, the price was Epic. ~$4600 (drives included)
would it not be a better choice to use say a Dell R710? I mean I would prefer not to use a rackmount but if I can make a small rack for it…
I like the Asrock Rack boards if you go full DIY remember i3 allows ECC (4130t was my firs Freenas cpu)
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Dell R710 or it’s tower version the T710 would work fine as a FreeNAS box. But keep in mind the 11th generation Dell servers only go up to the Xeon 5600 series CPU (Westmere). That said it does work just fine. I have an R710 with a couple X5675 running FreeNAS in an ESXI VM.
Didn’t know that, I’ll have to keep that for recommendation in the future!
I definitely want to use 3.5" drives.
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This: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIACSJ8CG1471 would be killer if it wasn’t 2.5" bays. I mean, ~$1300 for a dual socket server with 128GB of RAM and 2 600GB SSDs.
Too bad it will sound like a jet engine.
I dont want a server that sounds like a jet engine. I live in a apartment complex.
2010 cpus