Hypothetical first server, looking for feedback

[Filip Orrling]

Hi,
I'm new to the whole server building game, and I'm not looking to build something fancy. I want a low power but capable Plex media server and a Time Machine backup station. I would be very happy if someone could give me some feedback on this

Build’s Name: Tetrix v1
Operating System/ Storage Platform: FreeNAS or Ubuntu
CPU: Intel i3-4130T
Motherboard: ASRock E3C226D2I
Chassis: Fractal Design Node 304
Drives: 2 x WD Red 4 TB (mirrored)
3- x WD Red 3 TB (RaidZ)
RAM: 2 x Kingston DDR3 1600MHz 8Gb ECC
Add-in Cards: -
Power Supply: be quiet! PSU TFX Power 2 300W Gold
Other Bits: USB stick for FreeNAS boot

Usage Profile: On the mirrored drives: Time Machine backup for three computers, plus backup of photos etc
On the RaidZ: Movies, music, photos

My main concern are the hard drive setup. I've just started to read about this stuff and I'm totally lost in the jungle of recommendations of how to set up Raids etc. I want to make sure that my other computers are safely backed up, and that's what the mirror is for. For my movies and music I just want more space with acceptable safety. Does this seem sound?

Also, leaning more towards FreeNas as it seems more accessible than Ubuntu. I've never tried either, but all the instructions about "~Sudo add-apt" etc just loses me after a while. Is there a clear reason why I should choose one or the other?

Any and all tips are welcome. As stated in the beginning, I'm totally green at this so all help is appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

 

[5teve]

Regarding freenas.. look at having 2 boot devices (usb sticks) as I have previously had sticks fail, and freenas now supports mirroring of usb drives for boot devices as standard (IIRC as part of the install process, but can be done via the GUI)

I've been using freenas for a couple of years on a HP microserver, but my usage case is purely a NAS for backing up files from my server. No other usage scenario. Its basically hammered from midnight to 4am daily and the sits there doing nothing for the other 20 hours.

I'll leave the more knowledgeable people to advise on other matters / systems

Steve

 

[SeanFi]

I don't have much experience with FreeNAS, but I can give you a couple of ideas.

Seems like you have a pretty good build, and it might even be a little overkill in some areas (16GB memory). Of course, you could always decide to do more with it later!

Is there a reason for doing RAID1 on the two 4TB drives? You said it will be a Time Machine backup as well as backup for photos and stuff, but you might not need redundancy there. The odds of something killing both your Macs/photos and one of those drives at the same time is pretty slim. If something like that were to happen, it would probably be something that would take out the other 4TB drive as well! In my mind, you might be better off to set up the second drive somewhere else and use something like Crashplan to get off-site or atleast off-machine data backup.

Also, a note about Time Machine. In my experience, it can be very finicky, especially when you're not using an Apple supplied product all the way through. I had absolutely awful results getting an office with 6 Macs to backup to a Netgear NAS, and eventually had the office get a Mac Mini with attached storage as a backup server. Even that's a bit flaky.

Since you are backing up several Macs, do yourself a favor and give them separate partitions to back up to. Time Machine will use as much space as it possibly can before consolidating old backups to make room for new ones. When it gets to that point, multiple Macs will begin to "fight" for space if they backup to the same volume, and the whole thing can grind to a halt.

Hope that helps! Good luck with putting it all together.

Sean

 

[Filip Orrling]

Thank you for your answers! I'll make sure to use double USBs as boot drives.

@SeanFi: My main reason for mirroring the two 4TB drives is just to be safe. I can see that I don't need a mirror for the time machine backups, but for photos etc I really want to be on the safe side (wise and bitter form experience). If I understand you correctly, your opinion is to only use one drive for time machine, and to make 3 partitions (vdevs?), one for each of the computers that I intend to back up? Do I need to use a external hard drive to back that one up regularly, or should I be fine with just the one back up?
As I mentioned, I really don't want to risk the photos and home videos, so I'll have to think about an alternative setup. How about

Alternative drive setup: 1 x WD Red 4TB for time machine
4 x WD Red 3 TB (RaidZ) for Photos, movies and other media

With this setup, I'd still have to back up manually to an external drive from time to time to be sure that the photos are safe, right?

 

[SeanFi]

I think you got it. I entirely understand the need to keep good backups of photos and other important stuff! My main concern about the RAID1 not being necessary is that it's already a backup, so if the drive died you are only losing the backup, not the actual files. If something took out the primary RAIDZ store of photos as well as the backup drive, then it was probably something that wiped out the whole server (surge, flood, etc) and having your backup drives in RAID1 wouldn't have helped. For the best protection, having either an external drive that you can store elsewhere or another remote backup point is the best way to go. An external drive is a little more of a pain in the butt since you have to manually move it, but it will work fine!

Again, for Time Machine, since it is just a backup redundancy at the drive level is not supercritical (unless you routinely roll your Macs back to earlier time points for some reason). You've got the right idea about the partitions. Just give each Mac it's own little "sandbox" to work with and they won't fight for space!

 

[Filip Orrling]

Ok, thanks.
I'm a bit lost when it comes to cooling. Do I need an extra fan or some special device to keep the CPU cool?

 

[SeanFi]

Assuming that you're buying the processor new in a box, it will come with a combination heatsink/fan assembly. The included ones work fine, but some people like to buy aftermarket ones for better performance if they're overclocking or running the processor hard.

As an aside, on commercially built servers and high-end workstations the CPU will often have just a heatsink and will rely on the strong airflow in the case to cool it off.

 

[Filip Orrling]

Nice, thanks.
Last question (I think): Do I need a SSD hard drive for L2ARC? I wouldn't think so because of the relatively small rig I'm planing, but I'm not sure. Any thoughts?

 

[SeanFi]

I'm not too familiar with ZFS, but from what I can tell, no, you shouldn't need it. Maybe someone more knowledgeable on the subject will give you better advice on that point.

Sounds like you're on the right path. Good luck getting it all put together!