[rkeel]

Im new to FreeNAS but have a friend using it, and I am going to implement it into my home network.
I will have a HTPC running XBMCBuntu (xbmc live basically) that will be my primary playback device. I will also have a ps3 that I stream to, and cell phones that I stream to when I am not home.

I am building a new server to handle all of this, and was looking for some pointers.

Hardware:

CPU: AMD FX-4100 Zambezi 3.6GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor
Motherboard: MSI 970A-G46 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
Ram: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500)
Case: Rosewill R5 Black Gaming ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: CORSAIR Builder Series CX500 V2 500W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply
HDD's: SAMSUNG EcoGreen F4 HD204UI 2TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Currently I have 3 2tb Samsung F4's, and am at about 80% capacity. I use them to store all my media, majority of which is movies, but there is several folders dedicated to pics, music, personal data, etc.

I will probably be adding a 4th F4 to the setup + 1 or 2 F4's for parody.

This server will act as my FTP server (FileZilla), ripping my blurays (DVDFab), and running PLEX for streaming/transcoding purposes. It will be running W7 and VMWare for FreeNAS, and I will have it configured so the VMware will always boot with W7. This machine also will be running 85%-90% of the time

Out of the server, I do want reliability/safety of my data.
Also, I do want the capability in the future to add more drives if needed without having to back everything up, or create a secondary raid.

My questions is, do you think this is overkill?
And I have been looking at raid5 (which FreeNAS calles raidZ), would this be the best way to go? Im new to running raids, and based on the reading I have done, it seems raid6>raid5 for better reliability.

I really appreciate any and all help.

[Vankwish]

1) As is my usual stance - for write once, read many, raid5/6 is just going to be a headache at some point, i would suggest raid a la 'drive pooling with parity protection' (unraid\flexraid\drivebender\win8 etc etc).

2) With not that many HDD's in the array 1 parity drive is ok.

3) As far as vmware, have you considered running a 'baremetal' esxi build? It would give the all the client os's more independence (i.e. no underlying os), i currently have a rig running unraid and a few other testing bits and bobs under esxi and quite like it.

4) Should you choose esxi, get some tried and tested hardware. I found some really useful help over on the unraid forums but there's lots of feedback out there.

This is just a brief response from a 'enthusiast', if pickings are slim on this subject here then hit up some knowledgeable folks over on some of the server os forums.

V