RE: Time to build a new computer ...
August 2, 2014 at 6:23 pm
(This post was last modified: August 2, 2014 at 6:35 pm by Jackalope.)
I built a new NAS / media server system a couple of months ago, but went a different route -
Reused an Antec Sonata Proto case and 650W modular power supply. Ripped out everything else that was in the case.
Added a Supermicro X9SCM server motherboard.
...and a quad core Xeon E3-1230 CPU (this CPU is way overkill for this purpose - even when transcoding multiple video streams and streaming locally and to friends over the internet).
...and 16GB of ECC DD3 SDRAM.
Filled up the case with four 3TB WD Red NAS drives.
Load FreeNAS 9.2 on a USB thumb drive (which conveniently plugs into a USB port on the motherboard).
It runs headless so no video is needed - it also has an IPMI module so I can get a console from anywhere on the network, even when it's powered off. No sound, doesn't need it.
Boot it up, set up a ZFS RAIDZ1 volume, install the Plex Media Server plugin. Clients are anything that can run the Plex Media Player or a browser or access a DLNA server. I use the Roku set top box to stream to my TVs.
It's now a backup and media server. I've since set it up so that it's fairly automated - automatically finding and scheduling downloads and loading media into the server as it's downloaded - but how that was accomplished is a topic for another day.
I could have used hardware (other than drives) that I had lying around - but ZFS *really* needs ECC RAM - and I didn't want to be restricted to using UFS.
Reused an Antec Sonata Proto case and 650W modular power supply. Ripped out everything else that was in the case.
Added a Supermicro X9SCM server motherboard.
...and a quad core Xeon E3-1230 CPU (this CPU is way overkill for this purpose - even when transcoding multiple video streams and streaming locally and to friends over the internet).
...and 16GB of ECC DD3 SDRAM.
Filled up the case with four 3TB WD Red NAS drives.
Load FreeNAS 9.2 on a USB thumb drive (which conveniently plugs into a USB port on the motherboard).
It runs headless so no video is needed - it also has an IPMI module so I can get a console from anywhere on the network, even when it's powered off. No sound, doesn't need it.
Boot it up, set up a ZFS RAIDZ1 volume, install the Plex Media Server plugin. Clients are anything that can run the Plex Media Player or a browser or access a DLNA server. I use the Roku set top box to stream to my TVs.
It's now a backup and media server. I've since set it up so that it's fairly automated - automatically finding and scheduling downloads and loading media into the server as it's downloaded - but how that was accomplished is a topic for another day.
I could have used hardware (other than drives) that I had lying around - but ZFS *really* needs ECC RAM - and I didn't want to be restricted to using UFS.
