Second Server
Why build a second server?
With the first server built, I now have a much better idea of what a NAS is. I also spent a lot of time reading a lot of materials on the TrueNAS forums. From these readings, I realized that my setup was non-optimal. It uses primarily gamer gear and as such, it lacks ECC.
Armed with that information, I set out to make an ECC-capable system. Unfortunately, crooked Intel likes to keep ECC exclusive to their Xeon CPU’s. Fortunately for me, I found out that the Core i3 line of processors up to 9th-gen do support ECC and that’s perfect for my server.
Hardware
I’m still relatively new to this world and still don’t know too much at this point. I did notice that Supermicro is a reputable brand that tends to be recommended quite a bit. Armed with this information, I just decided to search for Supermicro on Newegg. I found out that enterprise gear tends to be pricy relative to gamer gear. I didn’t really have that many options if I wanted to keep the BoM total low so here’s what I ended up with. Also, at this time, TrueNAS no longer recommends booting from a USB stick, so I added a small SSD.
| Component | Price |
|---|---|
| Supermicro SYS-5018D-MF 1U Barebone Intel C22 Express | $389.99 |
| Intel Core i3-41600 3.6GHz LGA 1150 54W HD Graphics 4400 | $119.99 |
| 2x 16GB Crucial DDR3L 1600 (PC3L 12800) | $99.98 |
| ADATA Premier Pro SP900 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC SSD | $158.89 |
| Shipping | $9.79 |
| Grand Total | $736.75 |
Software
At this point, I still have yet to learn about hypervisors and was only familiar with TrueNAS. I think around this time, I’ve started playing around with the VM (bhyve) and jails functions available from the FreeBSD base OS. This is when I really started to learn the inner-workings of FreeBSD and how it is fundamentally different from the various Linux distros.
In future postings, I will slowly post these learnings and tips & tricks with running various services on FreeBSD.