BUILD Sanity check before build.

[Dasweb]

Hi All,

Here is my planned build:

Lenovo TS440 (E3-1225V3)(8x Hotswap bays)
32GB ECC RAM
8x 6TB HGST
T420-SO-CR /w 10GbE Fiber
IBM m1015
Raid2z

Thoughts? I've been researching about maybe adding a small intel SSD SLOG, but I am unsure.

I am also unsure if it's better to go with 2vdevs or stick with one. This will be for a small office, 5 users.

 

[Fuganater]

What are you going to use for your boot device?

 

[Dasweb]

What are you going to use for your boot device?

I'll be using a small supermicro SDOM.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

8x 6TB HGST

Raid2z

I am also unsure if it's better to go with 2vdevs or stick with one.

There is no "better" without parameters.
What is the workload?
What are your long-term plans, particularly for storage growth?
If you go with one vdev, the usable capacity will be roughly that of 6 out of 8 drives.
If you go with two vdevs, the usable capacity will be roughly that of 4 out of 8 drives, but IOPs will be a bit higher and upgrading will be easier.

 

[Dasweb]

There is no "better" without parameters.
What is the workload?
What are your long-term plans, particularly for storage growth?
If you go with one vdev, the usable capacity will be roughly that of 6 out of 8 drives.
If you go with two vdevs, the usable capacity will be roughly that of 4 out of 8 drives, but IOPs will be a bit higher and upgrading will be easier.

- The workload will be an office of 4-5 users, all graphics and video related. I do not image it to be a ton of small files, but more of 15mb minimum, all the way up to multiple GB.

- At the moment, no real plan. However, thoughts are possible using a dumb enclosure with disks.

- What makes it easier to upgrade? I guess I missed something, as I thought adding in vdevs into the zpool would be the same if I went 1 or 2.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

- The workload will be an office of 4-5 users, all graphics and video related.

If users will be editing video directly on the NAS, you will need to design for high performance - think more RAM and more vdevs, perhaps even striped mirrors. If the NAS is simply a repository for completed work, capacity and reliability would matter more.

What makes it easier to upgrade?

You are correct that adding a vdev to a pool can be done regardless of how many vdevs you start with. However, consider two factors:

1. You should try to make all vdevs as similar as possible. This means if you go with small vdevs, adding another vdev costs less.
2. If you decide to grow the pool by replacing all the drives in a vdev with larger drives, doing so with smaller vdevs is easier and cheaper.