Currently my rig is my central for all things in my house (Gaming Rig, Plex Server, File Storage etc.) Soon i will be updateing my rig to a build built around Ryzen R5 (Probably, waiting to see) and want to retire my current rig to FreeNAS server. I want to run plex and maybe owncloud as well as manage backups.
My specs are as follows: CPU: Intel Core i5 750 @ 2.67GHz RAM: 8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 666MHz MotherBoard: ASUSTeK Computer INC. Maximus III GENE (LGA1156) Drives: 8X Seagate 4TB Drives Retired from a Raid 50 config (The drives only have about 474 days total power on state) 2X Western Digital Green drives (from my current storage solutions they have a total 2039 days on state so might retire these drives for good)
I also have a RocketStor 6418S with a RocketRAID 4522 that i plan to use to house the 4TB drives and connection interface for the drives.
My question is does anyone see any major problems or have any suggestions for this build.I realize the drives arent ideal and the raid controll might be a problem (Thinking i may be able to run the controller in single drive mode and let freenas do the rest) but the biggest thing is seperating my central computer and gaming rig in the end.
I also want to add that this is mostly temporary i hope that a low end Ryzen R3 in a itx board will eventually take over so that i can use ECC RAM for the server
I'll be interested to see how that RocketStor performs with FreeNAS, how it gets hooked up, and all that good jazz. Otherwise, I see no problem with this. Maybe run your memory through a couple of rounds of memtest just for grins.
Depending on the use case (mainly the amount of simultaneous plex transcodes I think) and the power-on time, it could be wise getting a low-power CPU. I have no experience with socket 1156 whatsoever, but I have an old i7 920 which uses quite some power.
If you want to use these in a NAS, remember these park their heads after a very short time. I bought a used NAS which contained WD green disks, and remember them having over 126000 load cycles. The firmware can be altered in order to increase the timer settings. Google WDIDLE3 for more info.
Edit: added link below to a very extensive write-up regarding the head parking of WD disks.
Well now, this makes me want to step up my replacement schedule on the WD Red's in my freeNAS box.
As far as the OP...8GB of ram with 8 4TB drives is simply not enough. I mean sure it will work, but it's going to be painfully slow since freeNAS is so memory hungry.
A have a couple of them still spinning in my Synology NAS while I recently had a dead WD red which was just over one year old. It's always a gamble but I just use SHR-2 and have a spare one ready.
Valid point, Unraid or Xpenology would probably be less frustrating,
that was one of my concerns was the ram considering 8GB is the minimum for freeNAS would it be enough for 4 4TB drives to start with. I'm really trying not to put any money into this until i go the R3 route. As long as it does basic file storage and runs plex ill be fine. Ill need at least 8TB storage just to replace my current storage. A thought just occured to me about how much RAM ill need in my final build ill have to have 64 GB of ECC ram at least to do the proper file system i want to do (At $800 for RAM i probably wont be using that much)
Why even use freenas? You could use just about any distro with that hardware and be in a good spot. Its not like freenas does something your favorite distro simply cant do. Just a thought.
I would probably just wait until you get your R3 if you really want freenas.