Replacement for Windows Home Server 2011

[teetime]

Background
About 9 years ago I finished my first ever server build with help from STH (build post here). This was used with WHS 2011, primarily to backup my small network of 3 PCs. Over the ensuing years it worked as expected and required very little care and feeding. It worked so well that I wish there was WHS 2020 because I am in search of a suitable replacement.

To that end I purchased a Synology DS418play with high expectations that it would fill the bill, but I have had problems with the unit and it is now being sent back. It occurred to me that perhaps something like FreeNAS (TrueNAS core) might work for me in my original server hardware. I now only have one PC on the network and will use the NAS almost exclusively for backing up my 2+ TB of data, mostly photos and videos I shoot. Current thinking is I would run Veeam Windows agent on my Win 10 PC and backup the data (daily) and image (as required) to the NAS. I would also backup less frequently to Backblaze's B2.

Questions
1. Is FreeNAS a good choice for the use case described above?
2. If answer to 1 is yes, is my 9 year old server up to the task? I know I will have to upgrade the memory to at least 8GB. I have plenty of storage available - 18TB (2, 4, 4, 8 WD Red EFRX drives). What about the motherboard?

Motherboard: Supermicro X9SCM-F
CPU: Intel Core I3-2100 Sandy Bridge
Case: Coolermaster HAF 922
RAM: Kingston 4GB (2-2GB) 240pin DDR3 1333 ECC Unbuffered
Add-in Cards: None
Power Supply: SeaSonic M12II 620W 80 Plus Bronze Certified

 

[j_h_o]

• Are all your PCs running Windows 10? Coming from WHS, you might find the SMB/CIFS sharing on FreeNAS to be frustrating. The configuration is complicated, performance is mediocre, and I've had updates inexplicably break file shares, forcing me to rollback. I'm sure there are others here that would disagree/had different experiences though For deployments I've done at relatives' houses, I've done Server 2019, with StableBit DrivePool. No issues scaling to 10Gbps, SMB3.0/multichannel out of the box.
• What filesystem are you intending to use? 4GB or even 8GB of RAM won't work very well for ZFS - you'll need more. Your drive sizes also aren't ideal for ZFS at the moment. How much redundancy/protection are you expecting against drive failures?
• I assume you're not seeing the need for new features or performance? Do you want to upgrade to 2.5Gbps, 5Gbps or 10Gbps for example?

 

[teetime]

• Are all your PCs running Windows 10? Coming from WHS, you might find the SMB/CIFS sharing on FreeNAS to be frustrating. The configuration is complicated, performance is mediocre, and I've had updates inexplicably break file shares, forcing me to rollback. I'm sure there are others here that would disagree/had different experiences though For deployments I've done at relatives' houses, I've done Server 2019, with StableBit DrivePool. No issues scaling to 10Gbps, SMB3.0/multichannel out of the box.
• What filesystem are you intending to use? 4GB or even 8GB of RAM won't work very well for ZFS - you'll need more. Your drive sizes also aren't ideal for ZFS at the moment. How much redundancy/protection are you expecting against drive failures?
• I assume you're not seeing the need for new features or performance? Do you want to upgrade to 2.5Gbps, 5Gbps or 10Gbps for example?

Thank you for your response. I only have one computer now and it is running Windows 10. I assumed ZFS and I could upgrade to 16GB if, as you say, more is needed. I'm probably not interested in FreeNAS IF it is complicated and not reliable :-(.

With the Synology I was planning to use their Share1 (Raid 5 equivalent) with 4, 4, 2TB drives for backing up the PC, and use an 8TB for USB backup of the NAS. This yielded 6TB storage on the NAS with support for one drive failing. Is comparable available for FreeNAS?

I started out wanting to use MS Server 2019 Essentials until I learned they have removed the UI.

1Gb is satisfactory for network speed. Once initial backup is done my incremental is quite small, and I will only use the NAS for backup, not for day-to-day application use.

 

[pricklypunter]

Given the oddball mix of disks, you might be better trying out mergerfs and snapraid for your storage and seeing how that works for you. That way you can just roll your own storage appliance with any old Linux distro

 

[teetime]

For FreeNAS I may consider purchasing 2 more 4TB drives giving me 3 of those in a Dev, and a hot spare. Any concerns with the circa 2011 Intel Core I3-2100 Sandy Bridge?

 

[Lost-Benji]

If you are using Windows and familar with it, just move forward to Server 2016 or 19.