 So the wonderful people over at IX systems Send us this. This is a free NAS mini XL. This is a demo unit. We have which unfortunately I have to return but we did some testing with it We've been using it some having some fun and I really like this box now first thing is it's solid. It's heavy It's well made And it looks really cool also really quiet we're gonna get to some as I'll turn it on for you and can Get you an idea, but that's something. It's hard to really convey. I don't have a nice fancy decibel meter But I can tell you even having this on see next to it. It's really really silent They did a nice job with the fan design and I like that because this has a different use case Me you probably aren't going to see this model in a data center This is more like what you're gonna see in a small office In a lot of those small offices don't always have a dedicated IT room where they put all the gear even when you do it's nice walking in and not being as loud And we have a lot of small businesses that work out of their home like designers that have just went maybe one or two Workstations, this is a great setup for something like that as well where you need a lot of the power But you go hey my office doesn't need to be you know roaring with fan noise I kind of have cold calls to taking things like that. I didn't do an Unboxing of it. We wanted to get right into using it But I will tell you that it comes like the way the packaging is on this very solid like And Yeah, it's when you can see the amount of protection They've got plenty of protection they ship this to you the box is actually kind of bigger than my camera zoomed out And I'm like yeah, I'll just say it comes really well packaged And yes, the drives come really well packaged as well and they're on these trays, so we have eight hard drives here We're gonna pop one out We'll slide a drive out and when they come they have static wrap that I have off to the side here I feel like making crinkling noises But they ship all the drives wrapped in nice little IX systems bags. They're cute and The drives are all set down in here. So everything's nice well packaged, but I didn't do the full unboxing It's not that exciting I don't think but maybe I'm wrong and if you guys tell me next time do an unboxing video in detail Let me know Then we have a power cord which we left in the bag and they give me a network cable. We have our own power cords It's standard You'll see when we go through the hardware on this and there's a key Now obviously the key will if this is a nice front But obviously someone was really determined they're going to crack it off but it does keep the kids out of it from Popping the drives out plus the drives themselves have the little turn spot on them to allow you to twist locks So you can't just eject it like that But these are really well made everything's really nice and solid and we have Western Digital 4 TB red Nass drives in here now There's always the debate of which drives you should use the reason you use Nass drives is they are generally Engineered to be lower power and for radar rays and lower heat So you don't want to even though it has plenty of fans and it's got good air flow You don't want any more heat than you need especially when you're stacking all these drives on top Now the mini XL plus Has if you didn't see it at the top. We do have one more drive That's another hot swap at the top that you can dedicate as a Zill drive or as a right-cash your leisure, whichever you want to choose And when we get inside here, you'll see some of the other components of it in terms of you have more spots inside Demount drives So let's go ahead and open it up side covers are just held on with some thumb screws Pop right off. They're like I said everything's well made. It's not going to cut you on the edges I think we're over that I maybe I'm thinking about it because of my older age of dealing with old cases In early days of computers. They didn't roll the edges or anything They made them and they you could use them as a razor blade outside all the cases really well made and solid Turn it and slide the other side off. So both sides come off for convenience. So yay and are symmetrical. So We should be able to do this I like that. So you don't have to remember which way you set it All right, let's dig inside. All right, so let's take a look from the front And we can see all the drives pretty clear here. We have the power button a recess reset button power on light hard drive activity light network card one network on two and Like I said, the drives pop out really easy pretty simple mechanism here and they're all labeled and the same thing with the one up here Now here's the other drive we have mounted inside of here and space for one more You can see the back plane that controls all the drives is all standard SATA But it does have a special connector on the board so it's like an expander to come on there So it's not a bunch of individual SATA cables for the eight drives But there is a individual SATA cable for this one an individual SATA cable It's up here for our front drive and still one more empty spot for to put one more two and a half inch drive right here You can see the active CPUs has a fan on an actively cooled CPU then back over here There is a cooler for the 10 gig network interfaces I believe that should be the 10 gig chip that's under there and this is a PCIe And you'll see that when we flip over to the back so you can add another expansion card in here and Then we have the fans two of them mounted in the very front here with the rubber dampers on them Of course, we want to make sure that things quiet so the fans this you know minimizes the vibration while still maximizing airflow and on the other side a very accessible power supply if you ever need to change it out and Standard ATX power connector nothing too strange here if you ever need to put something different in there Not a problem. You have two USBs in the back IPMI the two 10 gig connections and it does have VGA on the back But that's really not necessary because you can see everything from the IPMI We're gonna jump to the software on that in a minute and speaking USB I didn't mention it But we do have the two USB up in the front one standard USB and one USB 3 So plenty of USB connections on here both front and back now one of the things I wanted to do here because this is not as easy to do is Tell you how quiet it is. So I brought the mic in shot so you can see the mic is Hopefully I make too much noise right there next to it We're gonna plug it in with the case off So the case is open and then we're gonna put the lid on it You know to dampen the noise a little bit, but you're gonna get an idea just how quiet this is There's the That's it. I actually hear the hard drives and the fans but they took some time to make sure it was really quiet and I think I mentioned this but like if you're gonna use This in a small office where there's not a dedicated spot to put all your IT stuff Maybe this sits, you know Because you're a creator and it sits in your general area Well, this is gonna be quiet enough that not to disturb the piece and things like that So it's only this loud with the case off and when we put the case on it gets that much quieter Yeah, I don't know if you can really even pick much up on there. I'm looking at the levels I hardly see it doing it. I don't have anything that's real accurate I didn't feel like using just some app on my phone to get the exact ambient noise But ideally I'm talking next to this and obviously it's not louder than me I can see that I'm peaking the meters way more than the minor amount of noise that this makes And we spin it around like this Now the noise is going back towards me because the more noise comes out of the back than the front Maybe you hear a little hard drive. So do you like the blue lights though? It definitely looks really nice All right, let's get into the software and talk about the details and the specs of the system So I have this all set up and I moved it to the back of our building where I have a 10 gig connection I just didn't feel like running a nice cat 6a all the way to our studio one day I will different video different project now this system has IP MI and I'll look it up on Wikipedia If you're not familiar with the intelligent platform management interface But essentially this is allows you to completely control the system even view It's on the screen instead of plugging into an HMI or VGA port or anything like that you can view it there so this does have a VGA port on the back of the board they put on here, but It's much nicer be able to do it this way And this is a nice feature that you don't get when you build it yourself unless you choose a higher-end motherboard which they have here And especially for clients when we set this up if we have to remote into something and they're going Hey, I can't connect and if we're for some reason unable to get into the machine. This will allow us to power down reset Or you know do whatever we need to do or even see what's on there so this is actually going to be like a preview of what's on there, but let's jump right into remote control options and They have a HTML5 version, which is great so I can actually get to the free nas interface and see the IP address I thought this was a really nice Really nice feature so I can capture pull up the virtual keyboard if I wanted to send something special commands to it and Previously a lot of IP MI especially if you dealt with the older ones on some of the other brands They're not as great IP MI has come a long way in the fact that an HTML5 interface means these are really easy over IP So if you're VPN into another network remotely, you can still easily get to the interface We can also see inside of here. We're going to be here Hardware information and let's talk about the specs on the free nas mini XL plus so right away We could see the system manufacturer IX systems free nas mini XL plus like I said They've customized and branded like the motherboard and everything on here The CPU is a Intel atom C 3758 at 2.2 gigahertz and for those you that cringe when I said Adam Yes, I know Intel should change the name the original atoms We're not wonderful the newer atoms are actually quite fast and quite powerful and used a lot in This type of device or devices that are enterprise that you want lower power consumption But so I want to have good power. They still make a great chip I wish they would have changed your branding because it's just anyways. I won't ramble about that But yes, it's the newer better atom. Go ahead and read up on that processor model as shipped to us This does have a pair of 16 gig memories 24 100 megahertz. So nice fast memory in here And here's all the specs. So it's plenty powerful enough to run free nas You can run things in jails on it virtualization all of that works fine with this But these are the core specs of the machine itself You can get sensor readings out of here So we have you know the CPU tap and everything else and you're getting this from the motherboard So you could cross-reference if you ever had a sensor reading discrepancy for what you may have seen inside of free nas But yes, it's directly from the motherboard You can get all of this information for all sensors or narrow things down fan speed sensors Just the voltages on there. I like the fact that this is all built in This is really nice. And like I said, we have the remote control options and Configurations this even has if an authentication and notification systems that you can have within here I was seeing customized networks. So it is nice having an IPMI on the especially when you want to manage things that are You're managing remotely. This is great. So now you don't have to worry about How do I have a monitor next to it in case I ever have to troubleshoot it? No need for any of that It does support having a CD-ROM image or other images loaded to it I haven't really tested any of that But if you wanted to you'd be able to put in like a host and image in here So you could even reload this remotely because you'd be able to see the screen and get the image on there So for some reason you need to reload or have some Catastrophe that you can't physically get to the machine. That's so you're like us We're helping a lot of clients remotely that is completely an option with this So I really like this whole interface on there. Now once we get into the box itself We are greeted with the traditional free nas interface. You can see the setup that I have here Free nas mini XL plus for running the latest version 11 to u5 processors here and Also things like all the reporting and all that because free nas Built this hardware assemble this hardware chose this hardware. No problem. It's all completely compatible So you don't have to worry about that through any of the updates as for the pool itself. I've set up a pretty simple raid Z2 and a setup a healthy 20 gig setup here So we've got a plenty of storage that we're doing a testing on and I set up a NFS share with Xcp-ng and you can get a little more detail. Here's our raid Z2. Here's the data storage drives We have a log drive the Zill and the cash drive setup So one is the one installed that is at the top there and the other one is the one that's on the inside so I guess there are plenty of Grandability on this and you can support up to a hundred terabytes if you got the larger 14 terabyte drive So that's the biggest. I think that's available right now as of July 2019 But I see, you know, there's still room. There's the standard supports higher. That's just what you can go by right now So for such a small box, you can get quite a bit of storage in here So we have the free nas mini XL connected at 10 gig rj-45. I've been doing a little bit of testing So you can see there's you know the hundred gig Connection it's white and actually just like my computer is connected at hard getting a port 15 So I had no problems linking it up and for those of you wondering I'm using that thin cable That is rated for cat 6. It's a short one because it's sitting in our back by the server room But no problems running 10 gig over that cable and let's do a quick test just to show that it's working So I'll drag this over here. So this is the Free nas mini XL and we have a 192 168 10 dot 55 assigned to it And we did that because I wanted to connect it to another free nas box It is also running at 10 gig. So we're gonna go ahead of here. We're gonna IPerf 3 dash s For servers gonna listen and we'll go down here at IPerf 3 dash c for client 1 2 1 6 8 dot 10 dot 55 like so this is the second one we have one is management one is storage So yes, the interface we were on was a 3 dot 1 9 7 that's what I'm managing it on And then we are tying the storage to the 10 dot 55 and Here we are at full 10 gig no problem 9.41 gigs a second with the overhead. So yes, it's routing and working perfectly fine at 10 gig There's always seems to be people who question whether or not these devices will actually connect at 10 or they will just try to connect It's I don't know why that's always a debate 10 gigabyte is a standard. It's actually been real round for a little while no problem connecting at 10 gig a bit there Now in XC PNG just as a quick test. I have the mini XL set up here as a storage invite over NFS I didn't do any fine tuning. This is just kind of a quick test I want to show what happens when you load the machine up and do some heavy testing with it And let's log into that VM and we'll do a quick kickoff with the pharaonics test suite just so I can create some IO activity So we'll do option one do some small write tests With option two and then we'll do all test options. This is a little I don't care about saving results. This is just some, you know Bench testing and by the way before you get excited about it There's lies damn lies and benchmarks So you get kind of especially when you're dealing with layers of virtualization You're going to get some different numbers on here. So this is not to a thorough or exhaustive test This is just to create some load on show you what the load looks like on the system So we're going to go over here to our services And we do have net data turned on. I love that ever since they built this in to free nas. This is great And now we're loading it up. So we're seeing some disk writing going on here hitting about the 300 Which isn't bad. Like I said, these are still spinning disks that we have in here So you're going to get and this is an aggregated number You're going to get some different numbers in here Then you would if you would have went with a salad state system Which is always going to be substantially faster But we can go over here look at the ipv6 networking stack And see all the stats on here. Well, it's actually jumped to something more interesting like network interfaces Here we go And we can see the data on the bandwidth across here now This is different. This is where we did the test where you peek it out These are the tests for moving data back and forth But like I said, there's also going to be some overhead based on the system It's run the vm it's in and bringing it across the network. So you get this peak, you know Here we are saturating it versus when you are Not saturating it just pulling some data back and forth, but it performs really well for this This is still a really fast box and we're not overloading the cpu running these tests and by the way, they're still running right here And you can watch this just going along actually I got to change it to keep moving when it's unfocused There we go That way this will keep going while this is going so you can keep the numbers moving Like I said, I'm these aren't thorough works off to test because there's a lot of specific parameters And it's going to vary with your use case on here I will probably do some more testing on it before we send it back But so far the performance has been really good on it. So I really do like the free nasmini excel This is for the people that are probably already type these comments and our machinals buttons down Oh, we hit like 400 on the disc right now. Very cool This is not a build it versus buy it argument for those of you that want a out of the box working free nas where you jump right in And only have to set up the software and things like that. These are excellent buys for those of you that want to Pizza together. That's a completely different debate. You can do that. Yes. I'm aware Uh, which one's a better deal for a lot of times even if you end up spending a lot of money A lot of people just want systems that work right out of the box and this is that system you get a excellent Uh, the free nas operating system, which I've done a lot of videos on I'm getting ready for my new 11 to series of videos on it You have all the jails and the plugins and all the cool features you get with free nas, which is wonderful And for those of you that don't want to spend spend time tinkering, uh, You know finding all the right hardware combinations for compatibility Look no further free nas their mini series is a really excellent affordable way to build a really nice nas system. That is, uh You know right out of the box get going with the ways for your free nas and no worries about compatibility and a lot of expandability here eight drives And two in the inside and one more hot swap on top and 10 gig networks No more sorting out drivers and trying to figure out which one to buy This all works great right out of the box. We unboxed it set it up And like so we've had running for a few days now of testing before I did this video No problems at all. And of course I did my usual abuse of free nas, but as expected Unplugging it randomly and moving it around the office Has not managed to break a thing not even the vm's running on it Or vm's running the vm server running on it. I didn't test any of the actual vms in it yet But we'll probably do a couple more tests where we have to send this thing back But it is performed well And I will admit we'll look at the ambient temperature real quick here Go over here to server health sensor readings We are looking good here as far as temperature or system temp. I mean, this is sitting, you know, where it's already generally warm I think the temperature is about 78 degrees at the back of my office where the server is Let me convert that so 78 fahrenheit is going to be 25 Celsius and we're looking at a 45 system temp back there with all the drives in it and doing load testing It never gets above that. It's not that hot Which is actually pretty good because 10 gig by the way, if you aren't aware is a heat producer That's why if you look at any 10 gig cards, they always have either fans on them or large heat sinks With the fans. So it's either a large passive heat sink or that So there is with the case on they have enough airflow that it's really not a problem And like I said, it's really quiet. So not a problem to have it in your office. All right. Thanks Thanks for watching If you like this video, give it a thumbs up if you want to subscribe to this channel to see more content Hit that subscribe button and the bell icon and maybe youtube will send you a notice when we post If you want to hire us for a project that you've seen or discussed in this video head over to laurancesystems.com Where we offer both business it services and consulting services and are excited to help you with whatever project you Want to throw at us? 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