Building FreeNAS

[GelinosOne]

Hallo everybody,

I again have a few questions about the usage (or building) of a NAS Server.

I want to create a private NAS with a huge amount of files (I think there are about 18 Terabyte of files I want to save) and my biggest fear is to lose them due to Bit Rot.
So I Read that ZFS should be able to detect Bit Rot errors and corrects them automatically.
i also read that the FreeNAS OS should do quite good job and also supports ZFS (and RAID-Z2, which I intended to use)

After reading this I wanted to buy a hardware NAS which supports FreeNAS and ZFS but all I saw did nor really mach all my criteria.
So I thought it would be better to build a NAS myself.
because there is a lot of data I want to save but also want to keep a "little" puffer for upcoming data I want to use 6x 8 TB HDDs, because I also lose some space due to the filesystem.

here we come to my question;
What hardware should I consider to buy?
For example I read in a few posts that I will need a lot of (ECC-)RAM (1 GB RAM for 1 TB Storage).
and what CPU and motherboard do I need for 6 HDDs?

Another topic is - I want to use the server "offline" (or better said only in my local network)
My question is, can I use the NAS without any internet connection?
Maybe it could also be possible to connect it to a Router (I have a fritzbox) to access the NAS via other devices in my network.
and with that comes my next question, how fast does copying or moving files from one device to my NAS work?
i have only 16Mbit/s Internet connection, so is my NAS working with the same speed or faster/Slower ?

Is it also possible to stream huge files (for example a 5o Gigabyte Video) to any device in my network? for expample on my iOS Smartphone or my Apple TV (via Plex?)?
And am I able to copy and move files via different Operativ Sstems? (For example MacOS or Windows?)
And do i have some kind of UI like Windows Explorer or Mac Finder ?

Hopefully last question - I read NAS's you can buy (for example Synology) only cost about 100-200$ oder year for electricity. But in many articles I read that they recommend a 200-400 Watt PSU. if this is running 24/7 it could easily coast about 1000$ a year.
Or maybe my calculation is wrong and the NAS doesn't use all the Wattages ?
(My calculation for all the components sum up to about 187 Wattages)

I'm sorry for the long post but I'm not really an expert on this topic.
Thanks for your time and your help.

 

[i386]

hardware nas

You mean like the synology/qnap nas devices?
Qnap released some nas devices in 2014 that use zfs for storage, but these are for enterprises (rackmounted nas!), expensive and loud compared to the consumer oriented nas devices.

I want to use the server "offline" (or better said only in my local network)

Yeah that's possible and I would even say that's 99% of all use cases for a nas.

Maybe it could also be possible to connect it to a Router (I have a fritzbox) to access the NAS via other devices in my network.

Your fritzbox is a so called ISR (integrated services router) that has a switch integrated. If you connect hosts to these switch ports they are part of your local network and can access the services available in your local network.

and with that comes my next question, how fast does copying or moving files from one device to my NAS work?

That depends on many factors, like what network you have (1 gbit/s, 10gbit/s or faster), how many hard drives/ssds you use, if you have a slog device/l2arc cache, how much ram and so on you have.
With semi decent hardware and zfs you will easilly max out the 1gbit/s (~120mb/s) of your fritzbox.

Is it also possible to stream huge files (for example a 5o Gigabyte Video) to any device in my network? for expample on my iOS Smartphone or my Apple TV (via Plex?)?

That depends on the video (1080p or 4k? avc/h264 or hevc/h265?) and the hardware of the system, especially cpu and gpu (hardware acceleration)

And am I able to copy and move files via different Operativ Sstems? (For example MacOS or Windows?)

I don't know about apple devices but windows clients can acces files over smb.

Hopefully last question - I read NAS's you can buy (for example Synology) only cost about 100-200$ oder year for electricity. But in many articles I read that they recommend a 200-400 Watt PSU. if this is running 24/7 it could easily coast about 1000$ a year.

That depends on the hardware you want to use. If you stick with the 6 hdds I would say that 200watt can be enough.
I have a supermicro 836 chassis with a dual core pentium d, 8gb ram and a raid6 of 14 6tb hdds (+ 2 sas ssds for cache) which consumes about 190 watt which is ~450€/year with 0.27€/kWh.
Newer hardware will consume less power but costs more than used and a little bit less efficient hardware.

 

[KioskAdmin]

Bit rot! ZFS is good for that but I'd be more worried about spinning disks failing and what the capacity growth rates are.

18TB is 2 drives these days.